BY JANE S. GABIN
College Counselors responsible for steering high school students towards college might not realize it, but they are crucial allies of instructors at those colleges and universities.
Counselors connect admissions representatives with prospective students by scheduling college fairs with tables or booths and information sessions with individual college representatives. They are busy throughout the annual recruitment cycle and constantly bombarded with posters, flyers, and emails from colleges and universities. Public-school counselors often have heavy caseloads of up to several hundred students, while private-school colleagues may have a relatively light load of only forty or fifty.
Counselors sometimes visit colleges on their own or on college-sponsored group trips with other counselors. But unless counselors know the questions to ask, they are likely to rely primarily on information the colleges provide. The emphasis on college rankings—based in part on the number of applications received, acceptance rates, and the “yield” of admitted students who enroll—increases the competition for admissions places, and the related stress, and encourages the marketing of each college as the best place with the most caring faculty.
This information is advertisement. Is it always true? Is it factual?
Digging beneath the surface to uncover the data, counselors will see what many schools want to obscure: the fact that legions of college instructors are underpaid and work without any kind of job security.
Many students and parents are unaware that colleges economize by overusing part-time faculty. Whether they are called “adjunct faculty,” “contingent faculty,” or “part-time instructor,” their salaries or per-course payments are often too low to live on. This is not new—it has been going on since the 1970s, when adjuncts sometimes referred to as “freeway flyers” had to teach at several schools in order to earn the equivalent of one salary. While some contingent faculty have benefited from union representation, most lack health insurance and other benefits; prospects for future full-time employment; office space; and a voice in departmental matters and institutional governance.
As I argued in a recent editorial for Inside Higher Ed, counselors have unwittingly enabled this academic labor exploitation. They want their students to be admitted—and do not see some of the things colleges hide. While parents and students worry about increasing admissions selectivity, and the rising cost of attendance, they must also speak out about the quality of the educational experience.
Counselors should tell students who is actually doing the teaching at the schools they are considering. But it is unlikely that they will get solid information from most admissions staff, who are, in general, not privy to administrative decisions. So counselors and students have to do their own research.
Here is one way to find the truth. The best source of academic facts—accessible to the public on college and university websites—is the Common Data Set (CDS), a statistical compilation made by each college or university, usually by that school’s office of institutional research. Some schools are very upfront about their CDS information; others make it extremely hard to find; still others provide only partial information.
The CDS always gives the same information in the same order, so statistics on teaching staff are always in section I, between H and J. Compare the numbers of full-time teachers with the number of part-timers. A university with a part-time faculty percentage of 20 or even 30 is not uncommon, as pedagogical experience is part of the training of upper-level graduate students. But any school—except those with special circumstances—hiring more than half its faculty on a contingent basis is either in financial trouble or is a questionable employer.
The CDS is not flawless. It does not distinguish between the types of part-time teachers. An instructor may work full-time elsewhere and also teach one college class. Or the instructor may teach one class and work part-time at two more schools to make ends meet. To get at the truth, counselors must ask, and train their students to ask: “What is the percentage of undergraduate courses taught by part-time faculty?”
Colleges and universities must understand that their reliance on “cheap” teaching may cost them dearly. Can they explain why the person teaching the literature survey course or Bio 101 doesn’t get insurance while the college president makes $700,000?
This persistent exploitation of adjunct college faculty is a significant labor issue in higher education and is a national problem. The bottom-line emphasis creeping through higher education for the past twenty years is now standing almost upright. Just look at the new publications about privatization and outsourcing being peddled by the Chronicle of Higher Education.
If we do nothing, colleges will continue to exploit part-time teachers from the seemingly endless supply of cheap-to-employ, bright, idealistic people who love teaching and hope to advance by “getting a foot in the door.” In economic terms, the colleges will win.
But our students will lose. They will lose the quality of individual teacher attention and the camaraderie of a stable, cohesive community seeking intellectual growth. And of course, they will realize the obvious: that their academic development is not a priority.
The struggles of college teachers and school teachers are connected. Despite creating professional organizations and building connections in the community, teachers, especially adjuncts, have gained little ground in the past thirty years. The way this country treats some educators—as an expendable resource—is unfortunately consistent with the way education itself is regarded.
Unified action by all academic labor and their allies, nationwide, can save higher education. We can make a start by reaching out to our colleagues in college counseling.
Guest blogger Jane S. Gabin received a PhD in English from UNC-Chapel Hill and has taught high school and college classes and published four books. A member of NACAC and SACAC, she worked for ten years in undergraduate admissions at UNC-Chapel Hill and for more than a decade in college counseling in the NYC metro area, most recently at the United Nations International School (UNIS).
