A New Initiative for Part-Time and Adjunct Historians

Donald Rogers, Chair, Elizabeth Hohl, Arlene Lazarowitz, Howard Smead and Mark Spence, Members of the OAH Committee on Part-Time and Adjunct Employment

Last October, the OAH Executive Board reorganized the Committee on Part-Time and Adjunct Employment (CPAE) as a service committee to replace the now defunct Joint AHA-OAH CPAE founded in 2001. The new OAH CPAE marks the latest in a series of actions, which the OAH has taken over the past decade, that address the surge of contingent faculty employment. With today’s recession intensifying pressures on colleges and universities to economize, the committee is seeking new initiatives to help historians come to terms with the seemingly unstoppable shift from tenured to adjunct faculty, and to ensure that adjunct historians receive the compensation, benefits, employment seniority, teaching conditions, collegiality, and career opportunities that they deserve as professionals.

Well-known changes in the academic workforce inspired the course of action that has led to the OAH’s revitalized CPAE. As a typical report by the AAUP indicates, the academic labor force across disciplines has changed from nearly three-fifths full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty in the 1970s to almost two-thirds contingent and part-time faculty today. Indeed, nearly half of instructors in higher education today are employed part-time, and part-time lecturers teach nearly half of all undergraduate classes, although the reasons for part-time employment vary (1).

The OAH, the AHA, the AAUP, and other professional associations first recognized this enormous change in higher education in the 1990s. At the interdisciplinary Conference on the Growing Use of Part-Time and Adjunct Faculty held in Washington D.C. in 1997, the OAH and other groups viewed the erosion of the traditional academic workforce as a “crisis,” and issued a grim report on working conditions faced by the growing ranks of part-time instructors. Observing their low salaries, insecure appointments, and frequent lack of the bare essentials of institutional support, like office space and computers, the report warned that adjuncts were being reduced to “a growing caste of ‘untouchable’ service workers.” It recommended concerted action to limit the proportion of part-time faculty hired and encouraged the promulgation of “good practice” standards for those who were employed (2).

Historians followed suit. In 1998, the AHA Professional Division issued “Guidelines for the Employment of Part-Time and Temporary Faculty in History.” In 1999, Professor David A. Berry published an important report in the OAH Newsletter on the rising use (and abuse) of adjunct faculty in community colleges. The OAH and AHA, meanwhile, participated in a widely reported survey by the Coalition on the Academic Workforce that documented the pervasive use of adjunct faculty and graduate students to teach undergraduate classes. In 2000, AHA President Eric Foner led his organization to create a permanent committee on part-time and adjunct faculty, and the OAH Executive Board, led by President David Montgomery, voted to join forces. Their collaboration resulted in the establishment of the Joint AHA-OAH Committee on Part-Time and Adjunct Employment in January 2001 (3).

The Joint CPAE initially focused on two goals: halting the escalating use of part-time faculty and improving the job conditions of those hired. Toward these ends, the joint committee conducted a new survey in 2002 through questionnaires published in AHA Perspectives and the OAH Newsletter. They found, among other things, that part-time faculty were indeed proliferating and that most adjuncts accepted part-time jobs due to “an inability to find a full-time college or university position.” To provide a forum and sense of community for adjunct historians, moreover, the joint committee established the listserv H-Adjunct in 2005 with Professors Howard Smead and Amy Kinsel as moderators. Most important, the joint committee headed by chairs Maxine Lurie and Juli Jones developed “Standards for Part-Time and Adjunct Faculty” that were approved by the OAH Executive Board and the AHA Council in spring 2003. OAH and AHA leaders regarded the standards as an important symbolic statement in support of part-time faculty, and a “weapon” for persuading administrators, state legislators, and accrediting organizations to curb adjuncts’ use and improve their working conditions (4).

Very much a product of the moment, the joint OAH-AHA standards established five guidelines regarding part-time and adjunct employment. In their most substantive section, the standards stipulate that basic work conditions include adjuncts in “the collegial relations and communications of their departments,” thus envisioning them as real colleagues, not just as hired hands. This standard recommends that departments provide part-timers with a clear evaluation system, seniority for hiring and pay increases, basic institutional support such as office space, telephones, computer equipment, library privileges, clerical support, modest support for professional travel to conferences and workshops, and access to health benefits, sick leave, and retirement plans. The standard is silent on professional development issues such as research support, sabbaticals, and the possibility of access to full-time jobs.

Secondly, the standards call for history departments to provide a statistical portrait of adjunct usage: the total number of part-timers hired, the number and percentage of history courses that they teach (including courses taught by graduate students), the length of service for part-time faculty, and provisions departments give for retention. This standard aims to generate an evidentiary record on the extent and conditions of adjunct employment, not only for the AHA-OAH joint committee’s use, but also to inform accrediting agencies and the public.

Thirdly, in what was regarded as a crucial suggestion in 2003, the standards propose a limit on the “appropriate proportion” of courses to be taught by part-time and adjunct instructors (including graduate students). The standards recommend that no more than thirty percent (forty percent maximum) of courses be taught by adjuncts at community colleges, ten percent (twenty percent maximum) at four-year schools, and twenty percent (thirty percent maximum) at research institutions. This standard aimed at encouraging academic institutions to retain full-time lines and promote part-time instructors to fill them. Whether it remains realistic today is controversial. No doubt, preserving the full-time faculty as the core of good history education is a goal that OAH members ought to address. Yet, given contemporary trends, especially in a bad economy, some observers argue that the profession will serve the burgeoning ranks of adjuncts better by concentrating on the improvement of their job conditions.

Fourth, the standards recommend that part-time faculty receive pay that is approximately eighty percent of what full-time instructors receive for similar training and experience, and one hundred percent if adjuncts take on administrative duties. Given the increasing permanence of the part-time portion of the academic labor force, and unlikelihood that most modern adjuncts will get promoted into full-time ranks, current members of the OAH CPAE agree that this is one area where historians can very constructively focus their attention. Surveys and anecdotal reports indicate that adjunct compensation still lags short of this standard. Improving wages is not only fair, but also essential to attracting and retaining talented people in the profession.

Finally, the standards promise a publicity campaign to keep accrediting organizations, professional groups, and the mass media informed about the status of adjunct history faculty. Presuming that the glare of publicity will inspire reform, the standards recommend that AHA and OAH publicize the proportion of faculty that part-timers represent at various institutions and the percentage of courses that they teach. Furthermore, the standards propose that the AHA and OAH commend history departments making “substantial progress” toward satisfying “good practices” for adjunct employment in their respective newsletters for other departments to emulate (5).

The Joint AHA-OAH CPAE published its standards in the midst of a nationwide surge of activism on behalf of adjuncts. That surge has somewhat abated. Until the middle of this past decade, professional associations, local faculty unions, and the AAUP all promulgated their own codes of “best practices” in regard to adjuncts’ job security, healthcare benefits, professional development, and even sabbatical leaves and “part-time” tenure. Faculty unions in Washington State, California, Connecticut, and elsewhere were notably successful in securing medical insurance, course cancellation fees, multisemester contracts, and legislation improving pay for adjuncts. Recently, however, the activities of professional groups have declined. Despite early enthusiasm, even the Joint AHA-OAH CPAE fell off after 2006 and stopped functioning. Across disciplines, part-time instructors remain a marginalized and beleaguered lot, causing some to gravitate to advocacy groups such as the Coalition for the Academic Workforce, the Coalition of Contingent Faculty Labor, and recently, the National Coalition for Adjunct Equity (6). The current economic crisis only increases the insecurity of adjunct faculty.

The adjunct issue, thus, remains compelling. With its new life, the OAH CPAE aims to push aggressively ahead to make recommendations on the employment of part-time history faculty, to serve as an advocate for adjunct history instructors, and to work as a watchdog on adjunct faculty issues as they affect the historical profession.

The committee plans to concentrate on three immediate issues. First, it proposes to update information about adjunct historians’ employment conditions across regions and institutions, and investigate the impact of the current economic crisis on part-time history instructors. Second, the committee will revisit the 2003 standards to determine how appropriate they remain for adjunct employment today, giving increased attention to adjuncts’ prospects for career development beyond dead-end or career ending part-time jobs. Finally, the committee aims to reassess its most difficult mandate—exerting a real impact on adjunct working conditions, especially to assure that part-time instructors receive the support that they need to be effective history teachers. After all, good education is a central goal of the history profession. With part-time and adjunct employment likely to continue as a part of historians’ future, the OAH CPAE proposes robust support for good teaching an expected part of adjunct employment. To do this, the committee invites ideas, suggestions, and testimony from OAH members at <cpae at oah dot org>.

Endnotes

1. “AAUP Contingent Faculty Index, 2006” Pamphlet Circulated by the American Association of University Professors, 5, 10-12; Audrey Williams June, “Nearly Half of Undergraduate Courses are Taught by Non-Tenure-Track Instructors,” Chronicle of Higher Education (December 3, 2008), <http://chronicle.com.daily/2008/ 12/7951n.htm>.

2. “Statement from the Conference on the Growing Use of Part-Time and Adjunct Faculty,” by the Conference on the Growing Use of Part-Time and Adjunct Faculty, Washington, D.C., September 26-28, 1997, <http://www.oah.org/reports/ptfaculty.html>.

3. David A. Berry, “Community Colleges and Part-Time and Adjunct Faculty,” OAH Newsletter, 1999, <http://www.oah.org/pubs/ commcoll/berry.html>; Minutes of the Executive Council, American Historical Association, May 29-30, 1999, January 6, 2000, May 6-7, 2000, January 7, 2001; Lee W. Formwalt, “Change,” OAH Newsletter, February 2001, <http://www.oah.org/pubs/nl/2001feb/formwalt.html>.

4. Minutes of the Executive Council, American Historical Association, January 6, 2000, January 4, 2001, June 16-17, 2001, June 29-30, 2002, and May 3-4, 2003; Minutes of the Joint AHA/OAH Committee on Part-Time and Adjunct Employment, April 2, 2005; “Results of Part-Time and Adjunct Faculty Survey,” OAH Newsletter, November 2002, <http://www.oah.org/pubs/nl/nov02/adjunct.html>; David Montgomery, “Colleagues on and Off the Tenure Track,” OAH Newsletter, August 2003, <http://www.oah.org/pubs/nl/2003aug/montgomery.html>.

5. “Joint Committee Issues Standards for Part-Time and Adjunct Faculty,” OAH Newsletter, August 2003, <http://www.oah.org/pubs/nl/2003aug/ptstandards.html>.

6. “2005 Best Employment Practices for Part-Time Faculty Taskforce Report and Recommendations,” <http://www.sbctc.ctc.edu/docs/ hr/best_practices/ best_employment_practices_report_2005.doc>; “Recommended Institutional Regulation for Part-Time Appointments,” American Association of University Professors, 2006, <http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/issueed/ contingentfaculty/parttimerir.htm?PF=1>.