The California Federation of Teachers Part-time Committee recently sent a letter to Jill Biden, wife of vice-president Joe Biden, calling on her to urge better treatment of part-time faculty at institutions of higher education.

"We are thrilled to have an advocate for community colleges who has the teaching experience and influence within the White House that Dr. Jill Biden possesses," said Phyllis Eckler, chair of CFT's Part-time Committee. "However, we believe, as we state in the letter, that Dr. Biden's stature as a public figure and status as a part-time instructor could attract much needed attention and help prod change if she were to advocate on our behalf."

The letter calls for Biden to support four basic policy positions:

1. That every college or university have at least three-fourths of their faculty members be full-time, tenure-track employees.
2. Part-time faculty get the same pay per class as their full-time peers if they have achieved the same qualifications and length of service.
3. Part-time, nontenure-track faculty be granted proportionate benefits compared to their full-time, tenure-track peers.
4. At universities, a tenure track should exist for teaching faculty, not just research faculty.

Eckler, who is an assistant adjunct professor of dance at Glendale College as well as a women's physical education instructor at LA City College explained the committee's thinking.

While we know there are excellent adjunct faculty currently teaching in our colleges and universities, higher standards and the matriculation of well-trained students into the workplace and post-graduate institutions requires more investment in these teachers who have become the new faculty majority. Without equal pay for the same work that tenured faculty do, part-time faculty will be forced to run from campus to job to campus while missing important opportunities to contribute to curriculum improvements, learn new teaching methodologies, and provide adequate help to their students.

CFT has not yet received a response to the letter.

One might think that today's news that the Department of Education's new report on higher education staffing levels shows a decline in the numbers of part-time faculty would be seen as welcome news here at FACE Talk. Not really.  Why?  Because the numbers don't represent anything remotely like an indication that higher education is starting to shift back toward more full-time, stable faculty jobs and, of course, says nothing about the treatment or promotion of contingent faculty.

More likely, since the data comes from Fall 2008, a full year before the mess we are now in, the report represents the initial signs of things to come.  In the face of the first rumblings of economic downturn and tight budgets, we see institutions tightening their belts just a little and that is most easily done by letting go and/or hiring fewer contingent faculty members.  But that does not appear to be the case now that we are fully into the economic crisis.

We are now seeing a different trend and one that I fear is not only bad in the short term, but one that is going to have long term effects.  Colleges, particularly community colleges, are seeing massive enrollment growth as traditional students are joined by thousands of returning students.  Simultaneously state budgets are being slashed and tuition and fees going up (I know, this is not exactly breaking news, but stick with me).  The result is that the only faculty hiring that is going on (with little exception) is occurring where institutions can't get by with increased class size, workload increases, and ramping up distance education programs-and that growth is almost all underpaid, contingent labor.  Any chance that is going to change down the road?

This week brings another report that raises the issue of whether or not there is a connection between a college's, or in this case a higher education sector's, reliance on contingent labor and the success of its students.  The report, Making Connections, Dimensions of Student Engagement, flows from the annual Community College Survey of Student Engagement. 

As Inside Higher Ed reported, this year's findings lead the authors to the issue of "part-timeness" which "stands as one of the greatest challenges community colleges face in creating strong connections with students."  "Part-timeness" is both about the large number of students who attend community colleges part-time and the heavy reliance on part-time faculty at these institutions.  Now, as several commenters in the IHE story (and also over on the New York Times blog "The Choice" have pointed out), the study falls into a usual pattern implying that the lack of engagement is somehow the fault of part-time faculty members rather than the lack of support and investment in those part-time faculty by the institutions.

But, given that there continues to be research correlating the lack of support for part-time faculty with lower student outcomes, here is the question: What should we do about/with that research?  Perhaps we should start with what we shouldn't do with the research.

According to their Facebook status update, GEO and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have reached a tentative agreement that will secure tuition waivers for TAs and GAs at the university and most likely bring an end to the job action that has disrupted classes for the last day and a half. GEO will hold a membership meeting this evening where a vote will be taken to officially call off the strike. Details about the tentative agreement will likely be released after that. 

Thanks to everyone who took the time to support GEO through telephone calls, e-mails, and getting the word out to friends and fellow unionists. But mostly, a HUGE congratulations to the members of GEO who made a difficult decision to stand firm on their principles, and in doing so won an enormous victory for themselves and for the rights of graduate employees. Go go GEO!

The body of research on academic staffing practices in higher education is growing, and so too are arguments that we need a change of course.  How do we make that happen?

A study released at the Association for the Study of Higher Education's annual research conference entitled "Institutionalizing Equitable Policies and Practices for Contingent Faculty" attempts to answer that question. Adrianna Kezar, an associate professor of higher education at the University of Southern California, and Cecil Sam, a USC graduate assistant in higher education, studied 30 institutions to see how changes in institutional practices could lead to a more supportive environment for contingent faculty. They believe that their study is among the first to move from calling for change to actually documenting changes that are taking place.

In picking the institutions to study, Kezar and Sam looked for places that had promising practices and showed progress in their policies on contingent faculty. But their close examination showed that institutions that were furthest along the progressive path were those where faculty focused not on a set of working conditions, but on changing the overall climate to be more inclusive of contingent faculty in institutional life and governance.

Recently, FACE Talk asked Kezar to talk about the results of her study.  Click on Read More to read the full interview.