Nationwide trends surface among adjuncts across universities in the US

One in four families has someone who works part-time as a college faculty member and is enrolled in at least one public assistance program, according to the Center for Labor Research and Education at The University of California-Berkeley. Part-time teaching faculty receive no benefits and are earning wages near or below the poverty line.

According to the report from NBC News Berkeley gave these facts about part-time faculty life:

• 1 in 5 families of part-time faculty receive Earned Income Tax Credit payments.

• 7 percent of families of part-time faculty members receive food stamp benefits.

• 7 percent of adjuncts and 6 percent of their children receive Medicaid.

• Families of close to 100,000 part-time faculty members are enrolled in public assistance programs.

 

Alyssa Colton is an adjunct professor from New York. She has been teaching at the college level for nearly 20 years, and she is a former full-time faculty member at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York.

When her contract ended in 2012, she had to look for other teaching jobs to make a living. She started to work as a part-time instructor with a lower salary and lack of benefits that her previous full-time position provided.

“I essentially took a pay cut, doing the same work for less money and less respect,” said Colton in an NBC News interview.

 

http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/in-plain-sight/poverty-u-many-adjunct-professors-food-stamps-n336596

Institutions around the United States follow similar trends, keeping adjunct professors as part-time. Adjuncts make up more than 50 percent of institutions, and universities plan to continue this approach of hiring, according to the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).

Universities have made it a priority to offer cheap labor to adjunct professors and compensate with high-tech equipment. James Talerico, an adjunct professor of English at Robert Morris University, the University of Pittsburgh and the Community College of Allegheny County has been teaching for more than 13 years and is still receiving part-time pay with no raise.

 

“I’m good enough to teach as an adjunct, but I’m not good enough to teach full-time,” Talerico said. “Two times in the past few years I’ve applied for a full-time position in my department, and I have not gotten it. Why haven’t I gotten it? Well, it’s political.”

Talerico teaches English seven courses at three different colleges to make up for the low salary he receives as an adjunct. He said taking on the workload is helpful financially, but it’s very demanding.

“It has been much too difficult and overwhelming,” Talerico said. “It’s not like math or science where you can (use a Scantron) but I have to go through so many papers. From now on, I’m not going to take on more than five courses. We get paid so little, but work much harder.”

Talerico said despite his loyalty to the university, Robert Morris has not offered him benefits and gives minor salary raises, but the University of Pittsburgh and the Community College of Allegheny County offered select benefits in the past year.

“When [Robert Morris] finally gave me one, it was because they heard we were making a union,” Talerico said. “I was one of the people instrumentally finally getting a union to come to Robert Morris.”

In order to fix the unfair pay, Talerico said he joined his colleagues at Robert Morris to unionize adjuncts to gain benefits that can help him and his family. They are still in the process of bargaining a contract.

“They are not going to make it easy for us,” Talerico said. “For years they basically had us for free. Now they have to pay a higher salary, and they don’t want to do this.”