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Contingent Faculty: Some Have Taken to Organizing

Less than a third of each dollar spent on higher education today goes to those who do the teaching.  The rest is spent on administration, campus maintenance and other services students expect for the often high tuitions they pay, but that situation may be changing as low-paid faculty members join unions and find new ways to get better compensation. 

You might expect a woman who has years of professional experience, a PhD and great reviews from students to be paid a working wage for teaching at schools like Virginia Tech, Georgetown and George Mason University, but Rose Forp - not her real name - could qualify for government assistance were it not for her husband’s income.  Many contingent or adjunct professors get no health insurance, and some lack the usual perks of a white collar job - a computer, a copy machine - even an office.

“You have adjuncts who are running from one college to another, literally working out of their cars, or they have a little bag with wheels on it, because they’re moving quickly from one place to another.  Their papers, their books are all with them. It’s very unsettling.”

  And as she rushes from one class to the next, she often sees where millions of university dollars are being spent.

“You see beautiful new buildings or buildings in construction, but they always tell you, ‘That’s from another budget, and we have to cut costs.’  And where do they cut costs?  And where do they cut costs?  In the teaching.”

So Forp and other contingent faculty around Washington, D.C. are joining unions.  The American Association of University Professors was slow to begin organizing graduate students, part-timers and full-time contract employees who teach.

Peter Schmidt, a senior writer at the Chronicle of Higher Education, says existing members of the AAUP weren’t sure they wanted to support these new members of the profession.

“These other members were kind of seen as competitors for resources -- little bit of a threat for tenure, and so some other institutions you don’t normally see associated with higher education stepped into the gap: the United Autoworkers, for example, United Steelworkers, the Service Employees International Union is a big organizer right now.”

That’s right - the Service Employees International. 

"You see beautiful new buildings or buildings in construction, but they always tell you, 'That's from another budget, and we have to cut costs.' And where do they cut costs? In the teaching."

“Which is a group that normally represents the cafeteria workers and janitors. While adjuncts typically have a much higher education level, their incomes are roughly the same.  Their incomes are the same. They’re dealing with the same kinds of bread and butter issues and the same level of job insecurity.”

Virginia law bars public universities from negotiating with unions, but because the Service Employees are organizing at schools in nearby Washington, D.C., the pressure may be on at George Mason, which must compete with Georgetown, American, George Washington and Howard Universities for top teachers.   Again, Provost David Wu:

“We want to attract the most talented people to work here and teach our students, and to maintain that, we have to be very conscious of our pay scale and whether our salaries are competitive.”

As organizers target other big cities, schools in smaller places like Charlottesville, Fredericksburg, Lexington, and Blacksburg, may also find their best faculty members lured away.  And as they push for better pay and benefits, organizers hope those who pay tuition will speak up.  Again, Professor Rose Forp.

“Where’s the voice of the students, and then where are the parents? I would want them to have every professor be fully engaged and interested in the education and in the teaching.  Yes - research and publications are important, but the ability to impart knowledge is really important.”

If they’re short-changing teachers, she concludes, universities are short changing their students.   

Sandy Hausman is Radio IQ's Charlottesville Bureau Chief
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