Fair Compensation for Quality Instruction

From: The Tennessee Conference of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP)

To: The Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR)

By the Tennessee AAUP Committee on Part-time and Non-tenure-track Appointments

January 2008

During the past decade Tennessee has reflected the national trend in which the number of part-time faculty hired by colleges and universities has increased tremendously, making non-tenure track faculty the new majority. According to data presented by AAUP in a national report based on numbers provided by the U.S. Department of Education, part-time faculty now constitute 48% of all faculty, and non-tenure track full-time faculty make up another 20%. Tenured and tenure-track faculty comprise only 32% of professors nation-wide (see attached graph). Despite the fact that TBR colleges and universities rely heavily on non-tenure-track faculty to teach their classes, TBR part-time faculty pay rates have not been increased in 10 years.

While a widespread misconception exists that part-time faculty already work full-time in another profession and teach as a kind of public service, our organization’s research on the topic does not confirm this notion. Many part-time faculty members would take a full-time position if one were offered, and almost all consider teaching to be part of their primary profession—not something to do “on the side.”

The Tennessee Conference of the AAUP agrees with our national organization when it asserts, “Excessive use of, and inadequate compensation and professional support for, such contingent faculty exploits these colleagues and undermines academic freedom, academic quality, and professional standards. It is essential to improve the compensation and professional support opportunities for contingent faculty.” We recognize that part-time faculty will remain a vital part of our institutions and thus recommend that TBR revise its part-time pay policy to reflect this reality and recognize that fairly compensated professors are more likely to provide higher quality instruction.

Since most part-time instructors teach courses at the introductory level, we should acknowledge that quality instruction in those courses contributes directly to student retention rates—a concern that administrators recognize as critical to our overall success. First-year college students expect their courses to be taught by qualified professionals, and proper compensation for part-time faculty helps guarantee that these instructors will not be overworked by teaching too many classes (often at multiple institutions) or holding down a second job simply to pay the bills. Fairly compensated professors are most likely to perform to the full potential implied by their credentials.

Finding qualified instructors requires us to be competitive with other institutions in the state and region. By conducting telephone interviews with administrators and HR staff at other schools in the region, we collected some anecdotal evidence about how other adjuncts are paid. While some institutions pay their instructors at rates comparable to TBR, others do better.

As it stands, most part-time faculty in the TBR system have never seen a pay increase because Guideline P-050 has not changed since 1998. While instructors who earn these stipends suffer from stagnant wages, most permanent employees have been receiving regular cost of living pay raises almost annually—at least in the 2% or 3% range. The absence of raises when many of an instructor’s colleagues receive them regularly is discouraging—to say the least.

Most importantly, the current level of pay clearly violates TBR General Personnel Policy (5:01:00:00 available from http://www.tbr.state.tn.us/) item D4, which states that “the president or director shall insure that all employees shall be paid equal wages or salaries for equal work in positions the performance of which requires equal skill, effort and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions.”

Because of these concerns, the Tennessee Conference of AAUP respectfully recommends that TBR revise Guideline P-050 to raise the maximum allowable per-credit compensation rate for part-time faculty by roughly 40% at each level. If a full-time, non-tenure-track English instructor makes approximately $30,000 a year to teach 10 courses, we can figure that he/she is paid $3,000 per class or $1,000 per credit hour. Following TBR’s General Personnel Policy, a part-time employee should earn equal wages for equal work. Therefore, we propose to raise the adjunct pay scale from its current maximum rate of $700 at level four to $1,000 per semester credit hour, which is roughly a 40% increase. While revising the maximum rate will allow but not mandate campuses to enhance their own pay scales for part-time compensation, we urge all institutions to consider some increase.

These proposed ceilings for the four levels used by TBR reflect implementation of this request:

Level Semester Rate per Credit Hour

1 $ 850

2 900

3 950

4 1000