Understanding of Labor at a Community College

I suggest a blog post at SAS Confidential explaining "What Parents Need to Know About College Faculty." I recommend reading the post and sharing the post with your families -- not only your parents, but your brothers and sisters, tios and tias, and cousins. Then, when your younger siblings and cousins have talks with high school counselors, bring this conversation about preparing for college.

You've heard the metaphor about sausage, right? "Legislation is like sausage. You want the outcome but you don’t want to see how its made."

Spirn "Sausage Making"

The metaphor is appropriate regarding your own experience of power on campus, in the multiple bureaucracies in college, and especially in the classroom. One of the ugly hidden American higher education is the burden on professors with underpaying and overworking (UPOW). Now, to be clear, some professors at some institutions do very well, especially depending on elite universities, cash cow departments (STEM), if they've had administrative experience, and their years. But the realities that, especially in community colleges, and especially in Texas, professors are often not rolling in the dough. Especially in community college, some departments are in fact "adjunct" instructors, which essentially means that they are part-time instructors. Think, for a minute, how that affects your power and your relationship as a student and your professor?

The differences between adjunct and full-time professors ships affect you immediately:

1. Colleges choose adjuncts because it's cheaper -- the salary for an adjunct part-time professor receives much, much less for just as more instructional and assessment in the course. Similarly, full-time professors have benefits including real office space for meeting with students. This means that, while you need to meet your professor, that adjunct professor may a) not have the space for a private space, or b) may not have the time to meet you because adjunct professor might need to drive off for another job.
2. Adjunct professors demonstrate lower satisfaction for their job than full-time professors. Consider how that less satisfaction affects preparation for instruction time, assignment design, assessment feedback, and connection with students?
3. In my discipline, in writing studies and rhetoric, sometimes adjuncts lack time and academic training to be up to date for contemporary scholarship and theory. Adjuncts often lack time or resources to read contemporary academic journals to keep current scholarship. How does this affect your introduction into a discipline, if the instructor does not understand important new knowledge?

Unfortunately, American society is not committed to needed funding for public higher education. On the other hand, American society, and especially in Texas, communities despair of higher education and have already thrown their commitment for success higher education on the false myth of "taxes are bad" fire pyre. So be prepared for that. The increasingly ratio of more adjuncts, and fewer full-time professorships will continue because our community refuses to support best resources. 

This means, for you, you must fight to take advantage of every resource on and off-campus resource. When I suggested to re-frame the power of the classroom, I really suggest get started immediately. When I suggested to schedule your professor, get started immediately. Be open, frank, and talk with other students about what you must have to be successful. This is not a time to be passive. 

Student Learning Involvement

1. You have the right to understand if your course instructor is employed as a full-time professor or an adjunct. Once you identify that, be sure to support your adjunct professor with an understanding of time and space. 
2. Reflection about your community's attitudes about supporting the community college. How do your parents and other family members engage with the decisions to support the community college. Start reading college news, attend meetings, and learn how these decisions affect you.

Professor Learning Involvement

1. As a former adjunct professor, I was most frustrated without real resources to support students -- real space, real instructional resources, and a real voice in the department to influence decisions for instruction, assignment, and assessment. Adjuncts must be vocal, written, and oral. 
2. As a current full-time employee, we need to support adjunct instructors with more resources, especially with scholarship in our disciplines. Perhaps Math hasn't changed much over decades, but social sciences such as writing and rhetoric, political science, sociology and psychology change fast. Yet adjunct instructors don't have time to read contemporary peer-review journals and rarely have time or money to meet with conferences. We need to change that. Until then, we need to pair with adjuncts and share space to support student empowerment. 

Resources

Frederickson, Caroline. "There is No Excuse for How Universities Treat Adjuncts." The Atlantic. 15 September 2015. Web. 7 January 2016.

Hoeller, Keith. "The Wal-Mart-ization of Higher Education: How Young Professors are Getting Screwed." Salon.com. 16 February 2014. Web. 7 January 2016.

Spirn, Karin. "Sausage-Making." Smythologies: Tales of Normal America. 20 August 2009. Web. 7 January 2016.