Colleges across the country are committing consumer fraud.  They are packaging the campuses with attractive buildings and technology, and pouring money into the trappings to lure students and their parents to their campuses.  College boards and administrators are only able to pull this off because they have a "dirty little secret."  That secret is that the faculty who are actually responsible for educating these students are underpaid part-time faculty and overworked full-time faculty.  Therefore, at many public institutions, no matter how nice the campus looks to consumers, they are being sold a bill of goods.  The average consumer assumes that what you see, you get.   At the grocery store, a smart shopper reads the ingredients, looks at the cost per oz. for an item that costs just a few dollars.  Why then should consumers spend thousands of dollars without knowing what they are getting?  The packaging might be nice, but a consumer doesn't buy soup because it has a pretty label.  As faculty in-the-know, we have an obligation to report this fraud to the public, most of whom will never think to ask the question.

It is time for legislation that would require colleges to report their ratios on a regular basis, the way they report campus/city crime statistics.  AFT lobbied for this reporting in the last reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, but the institutional associations opposed this reporting, knowing how bad the truth would make them look.  We need reporting not just of numbers of full-time and contingent faculty, but the percentages of undergraduate courses taught by these two groups, which will tell the real story about the lack of concern the colleges have about investing in the students once their tuition bill is paid.  We also need to have reporting of faculty salaries, especially underpaid part-time faculty salaries, so the public will realize how undervalued these faculty must feel as they teach their students.   Consumer fraud is a crime after all, and these colleges are robbing the public blind, taking thousands of their dollars and delivering a package that contains less each year.

Since recent studies seem to show that part-time faculty have less ability to retain, graduate and transfer students, let‘s educate the public about the working conditions of those part-time faculty.  Are the conditions conducive to engaging students?  Engaging students is what these studies are about, not quality of teaching.  When faculty engage students, we retain them, graduate them and transfer them successfully.  Does the public know that the majority of part-time faculty do not have good pay, benefits, offices, job security, or any inclusion in the life of the colleges at which they teach?  Does the public know that many part-time faculty walk around in a state of latent anger at their mistreatment, with a type of "part-time radar" that makes it easy to wash their hands of problems because they have no power or incentive to correct them?   If these colleges must tell about their over reliance of part-time faculty, then this conversation would be started.

I refuse to listen to demands for teacher accountability in higher education until the teachers have the time and money to do their job right.  Does the public know that colleges' committee work, curriculum writing and revision, advising, and numerous other duties are done on the backs of the 27% full-time tenured track faculty who remain nationwide?  If these colleges must tell about their dwindling number of full-time faculty, then this conversation would be started.

So let this reporting be the administration's evaluation and accountability to their masters, the students and public, their self-acclaimed number one priority.  If the students and the public are indeed the first priority of our colleges' administrators', let's start by being honest with them.