Earlier this week I had the opportunity to attend the U.S. Department of Education's Forum on Fostering Persistence and Degree Attainment, which was held at the Community College of Philadelphia, where I teach as a part-time faculty member.   As Barbara reported, I wasn't able to be on the panel.  The panel was totally made up of college administrators, with the exception of Larry Gold, director of AFT higher education.  I was the lone faculty member in the back of the room, an interesting position in which to be.  The goal of my attendance at this meeting was to help promote the idea that academic staffing ought to be a consideration as the federal government considers how to distribute the money going to the College Access and Completion Fund for staffing.  The fund is a 5-year, mandatory $2.5 billion investment in improving degree attainment rates in higher education.

When given the opportunity, though persistent hand-raising, I spoke about how the best way to achieve student persistence was through engaging faculty, giving them positive reinforcement, perhaps even creating a pool of money for contingent faculty to engage students and contribute to college life (through office hours, advising, committee work).  If some contingent faculty are willing, they should be asked to and paid to participate.  This will engage more and more students.

What does it take to get more students--new and returning--through college?

The U.S. Department of Education wants to know and has been sponsoring forums this month to seek practical advice on what works. But is the department listening to those on the ground and in the trenches?  The faculty?

Upon taking office, Pres. Barack Obama stated that by 2020, the U.S. population must resume its place in the world as first in the percentage of adults with postsecondary degrees or credentials.

To that end--and as part of its implementation of the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008-- the U.S. Department of Education embarked on a listening tour this month, sponsoring forums in Denver, Little Rock and Philadelphia,  to gather up examples of best practices that bring students to college and ensure that they persist through to a degree. The department is looking for ways to leverage federal postsecondary programs to produce a more educated and skilled adult population.

Education officials also want to know what obstacles institutions and students encounter on the path to degree completion. And, because the goal is to reach all adults, not just college-aged students, the department is interested in both traditional and nontraditional-aged college students. With a net cast this broadly, the administration has indicated community colleges will be significant players in achieving the goal.

That's a good start, but at the last forum, which took place June 23 at the Community College of Philadelphia, it was surprising to see a panel filled with administrators and nonteaching staff. Had not AFT Higher Education director Larry Gold signed up and CCP Faculty and Staff Federation Secretary Jennie Smith attended as a vocal observer, the three DoE officials might not have heard about how the trend of hiring fewer and fewer full-time faculty is affecting persistence and degree attainment.

The ubiquitous Kevin Carey recently posed a question that we care a great deal about:  "Do Full-Time Faculty Help Students Complete College?"  Kevin's take, over at The Quick and the Ed (and Brainstorm), is that there are a lot of "correlation/causation issues to work out here" and lots of other factors to account for in answering this question. Ultimately he wonders if there is any good research he is unaware of on this topic and if not, why?

A few folks have weighed in regarding some of the existing research that is out there, research that we have been compiling here, but the basic point that the body of research that exists is relatively small, is accurate.  On the other hand it is increasing at a fairly rapid rate as the academic staffing situation becomes both more apparent and of more concern-that is, of enough concern that people are now looking at the impact of the changes.

We have talked quite a bit here about the paradox faced in higher education during economic downturns such as our current fiscal crisis given its counter-cyclical nature.  On the one hand, colleges often see enrollments rise during these downturns as workers return for further education and training and more students look to college as a better alternative to heading into the job market.  At the same time, states looking to slash budgets to save money look first to higher education.  The result is more students with fewer resources (even assuming tuition hikes). That situation always ends up with someone losing out and it always seems to be the most vulnerable that are the first to get cut.

That appears to be the case at Renton Technical College in Washington state where the college is cutting its English as a Second Language (ESL) program in half. This will mean that about 450 students won't get the opportunity and support they are seeking from the program and 13 part-time faculty members are out on the street.  According to the Renton Reporter, these cuts come on the heals of "21 ESL classes at RTC during the current winter quarter. The cuts are part of the $884,000 RTC is eliminating from its Basic Studies this school year." They are probably just the beginning of much more massive cuts as the state works to balance its budget.

And of course, these kinds of cuts are not limited to Washington.  Programs such as ESL and basic education will get hit all over the country and contingent faculty, particularly those teaching in continuing education programs will be the first to lose jobs.  How is it that we continue to operate our higher education system so that just when it is at a critical point in helping individuals, communities, states and the country as a whole get back on our collective feet, we can't  produce the resources needed? We end up providing those who need the most help with the least. When will we learn?

Inside Higher Ed reported yesterday on a new study out of Washington State that was originally focused on the impact of statewide articulation agreements on transfer rates.  While the researchers didn't find evidence that those articulation agreements were as key to student transfer rates as some have argued, they did find that investing in a full-time faculty matters.

While the study did not find the expected impact for articulation agreements, it did find another characteristic that matters: the percentage of tenured faculty members. For every 10 percent increase in the share of tenured faculty members at a community college, students were 4 percent more likely to transfer to a four-year institution. Many community colleges rely on non-tenure track instructors for much of the teaching, and Gross said the finding suggested that there are educational benefits for not doing so.

Yes, but I think the key words are missing.  I think they meant to say that community colleges rely on horribly underpaid and under-supported non-tenure track faculty.  I am going to guess that if institutions would actually invest in all of their faculty--full- and part-time alike--we wouldn't see these correlations.

How many times have we heard this? FACE is a great idea, but you don't really think colleges and universities can do this, do you? I mean it is expensive, right? True. Implementing the goals of FACE would take careful and thoughtful planning and a long-term commitment to creating a stable, full-time instructional workforce. Apparently, Elon University knows that. I would like to think of them as an example, rather than an exception.

Colleges' and universities response to declining support over the years has been to skimp on labor costs, shifting from a faculty of predominantly full-time, permanent instructors to one that relies heavily on contingent instructors-part-time and adjunct faculty, graduate employees, and so on. Not only are contingent faculty frazzled and disgruntled by the experience of cobbling together a living with few resources, three new studies released at the November meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education show this instructional staffing approach leaves students and full-time faculty in the lurch as well.

Both the Chronicle of Higher Ed and Inside Higher Education are reporting on two new studies examinig the correlation between the high use of undersupported contingent faculty and student and institutional performance. Not having seen the studies yet, they seem to take a perspective that we here at FACE and many higher ed activists take--the problem is not contingent faculty, the problem is how they are treated and what that means for education. As IHE points out:

Some studies looking at the impact of part-time faculty members in the past have frustrated many adjuncts because of the implication that these impacts suggest poor performance by the adjuncts themselves. These studies don't make such a suggestion and are in fact consistent with the views of adjunct activists that mistreating part timers creates conditions that hurt students.

As soon as we here at FACE Talk get a chance to look more closely at these studies, we will report more on them and include summaries in our Research & Data section.

A few weeks back we began running a series of posts orginally written for the Clarion, the union newspaper of the Professional Staff Congress at the City University of New York. While these pieces were composed with CUNY in mind, we felt they would resonate with our readers here at FACE Talk. Here is installment number two looking at the "adjunctification" of CUNY.

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Bad for adjuncts & students
By DANIA RAJENDRA and PETER HOGNESS

CUNY students often don't know that their class is taught by an adjunct - until they need to talk with the instructor outside of class.

Adjuncts often can't speak with students right after class, because they have to run across town to teach at another campus. And parttime faculty may not have an office hour - or, if they do, they may not have an office. If they have an office, they may have to share it with dozens of others.

Brian Foote, a Hunter College junior double major in political science and religion, appreciates that his adjunct professors make a big effort to meet with him. "I've had professors meet me at a bar," he told Clarion. "I'm sympathetic, so I try to be as flexible as possible." Ingrid Hughes, an adjunct lecturer at CUNY for many years, often goes over assignments with her students in the hallways at BMCC, because she shares office space with 50 other part-time faculty.

"You may set office hours, but your office is crowded with other adjuncts," said Ruben Rangel, an adjunct lecturer at Bronx Community College. "That sends a general signal to students that their education is not highly valued." In contract bargaining, CUNY management rebuffed a PSC demand that every adjunct be guaranteed a desk and a chair.

The start of the fall classes approaches and I am trying desperately to motivate myself to begin structuring my courses. I remember as a student that my professors walked in and sorted out the course week-by-week, announcing dates of exams and deadlines of papers as they went. No more. Now we are required to have the entire term mapped out in advance, not only the exam dates but each class day's reading coverage. This can be daunting. As a general education instructor at a 4-year school, I do not teach anything near my research area, but I have taught the gen. ed. classes for over 20 years and have a good sense of where students should be at the end of the term. At the same time, I have a sense of how far I can move them in 10 weeks while still keeping my student evaluations good, but not too good, and simultaneously avoiding grade inflation. This balancing act is necessary for rehiring.