November 15, 2010. FAU’s teaching mission is partly dependent on faculty members who receive limited pay and job security, Recent research suggests their compromised working conditions negatively impact student learning and retention
FAU has a big problem, mostly neglected by both administrators and professors: the salaries and working conditions of full-time instructors and other non- tenure track (NTT) faculty who, along with other contingent faculty like teaching assistants and adjuncts, teach many if not most of the introductory and general education courses that students are taking, often in in their crucial first two years at FAU, not to mention some who teach important upper-division courses. While many professors are underpaid and lack adequate institutional support, the problems for instructors and other NTT faculty are much greater.
UFF-FAU does not (yet) represent graduate assistants or adjunct (part-time) faculty at FAU. But we do represent full-time instructors. In order to do a better job at this, union organizers have been talking with faculty in their offices and signing them up as members. When we talk with instructors and other NTT faculty, who number about two hundred of the nine hundred full-time faculty at FAU, the issues they raise so far are similar to those identified in the scholarly literature on contingent faculty across the country:
1. Starting salaries for instructors and other NTT faculty are often so low, around $30,000, that you can barely live on them in south Florida. This lack of a living wage (especially for professionals) causes excessive turnover, the need to get second or third jobs, and low morale, all of which erode the learning environment for students. (In addition, there is no relatively consistent market increase in starting salaries from year to year as there is for new assistant professors, so entry-level salaries often fall farther and farther behind national averages.)
2. Although some instructors teach four courses every semester for ten or twenty years or more, consistently receiving excellent teaching evaluations, the university has no promotion structure or career ladder for them as it has for professors. As a result, those who teach most of the basic courses in many disciplines (or perform other vital tasks) are denied institutional recognition of their experience and expertise as well as any status as professionals. The message is clear: NTT faculty are easily replaceable, so they can be exploited.
3. Instructors and other NTT faculty have virtually no job security, and are in effect fired and rehired each summer in order to preserve “management flexibility,” even though their work is crucial to many programs. This creates a kind of institutional uncertainty or hypocrisy in which they are treated like casual employees to whom the university has no commitment – at the same time the university would collapse if large numbers of them disappeared. Again, the way the university treats instructors makes quality teaching and learning more difficult.
4. Instructors and other NTT faculty are often treated as second-class citizens by professors, administrators and the institution as a whole. They are not generally eligible for faculty development grants, are often marginalized within departments, colleges and faculty governance generally, and usually lack a collective voice.
These problems are systemic and nationwide, and will not be solved quickly or easily. But together they degrade the working conditions of many of the most vital faculty at FAU, failing to integrate them into the university and eroding their ability to create a supportive environment for teaching and learning. And research on contingent faculty demonstrates that these institutional failures constitute a significant and independent factor in students’ high drop-out rates in the first two years. Instructors and other NTT faculty are generally well prepared and perform at high levels; it is their working conditions that interfere with students’ learning.
UFF-FAU seeks to articulate the voice of instructors and other NTT faculty, as we do all faculty. To this end, NTT faculty union members are developing a Task Force to address issues specific to this group and formulate a proposal to be presented in collective bargaining to the Board of Trustees’ bargaining team in Spring 2011. If you are an NTT faculty member at FAU and want to join this Task Force, please contact Pam Brannon, an instructor in Political Science, at pbrannon(at)fau.edu. And join the union to give the faculty a stronger voice!