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California community colleges rely too much on part-time faculty; misspend funds

bakersfield.com

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Re: California community colleges rely too much on part-time faculty; misspend funds

#51
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The job of a tenured STEM faculty member is not the same as contract lecturer. Tenured faculty do research and run the university as well as teach. At a major research school a STEM faculty member will often raise hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in outside research funds, which will pay upwards of ten graduate students and the other running costs of a research lab. They will do and publish new research, usual…

> Tenured faculty do research and run the university as well as teach At community colleges?

research, rarely. running their department, designing courses and materials for other faculty to teach with, as well as a lot of organizational housekeeping chores (of the sort handled by non-faculty staff) at 4 year schools? constantly.

Re: California community colleges rely too much on part-time faculty; misspend funds

#52
post #2

I've taught a bit at Arizona community colleges, which also rely heavily on part-time faculty. There are many more people with grad degrees than demand for them from universities, resulting in the obvious when supply exceeds demand: https://jakeseliger.com/2016/02/25/universities-treat-adjunc... . In the 1945 - 1975 period, demand for faculty exceeded supply: https://jakeseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy…

> birthrates fell off a cliff in 2009 US births per thousand fell from 13.8 to 13.5 from 2008 to 2009, less than a 2% decrease. There wasn't a sudden cliff; US birth rates have decreased every year but 9 (1979-1988) from 1950 to 2019, going from 24 in 1950 to 12 today. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/birt... .

Yeah, probably a bigger effect has been reduced foreign enrollment (COVID etc) over the last 3 years, however this will rebound. This is less true of applicants from China.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2022/06/23/fore...

That demand in turn affects positions filled/available at community colleges.

Re: California community colleges rely too much on part-time faculty; misspend funds

#53
As a community college student in California, one of my biggest complaints about the system (which I like overall!) is that some of the professors don't care or are too overworked to help students. Hopefully the results of this audit spur some change.

Re: California community colleges rely too much on part-time faculty; misspend funds

#54
post #46

Unfortunately, this article misses the mark and distracts from the overall problem. If you poll that vast number of college dropouts regarding the issues for why they dropped out, you will find a common picture. Its finances or its unfairly structured or misrepresented classes. Some professors structure their courses in an optimized to fail way. These are often called Weed-out classes, Engineering has the most, Econo…

My understanding is that weed-out courses largely only happen in the US, and not in Europe or Asia. In the latter, students are usually admitted into a major, sometimes after passing an entrance exam. In the US, admissions are much more "holistic" and students have much more freedom to choose their major. This inevitably results in some people who have very low aptitude for a major enrolled in it. So Departments have…

> Its ridiculous notion to normalize each course to the same amount of time/week - some subjects are simply more difficult.

Those courses should have higher credits.

Re: California community colleges rely too much on part-time faculty; misspend funds

#55
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it’s totally about the money. You can get the classroom coverage of a TT faculty member for a tiny fraction of the cost if you use adjuncts.

For reference, a typical adjunct (non tenure track instructor) will make $5000 per course per semester with no benefits. Tenured and tenure track faculty in STEM are typically paid around $60-120k per year with benefits and will teach, at most, six courses a year.

It's a bit more than six courses a year at community colleges and teaching-oriented 4-year colleges (though you're still right that adjuncts are much cheaper). In California, most full-time faculty at community colleges have a 15 credit per semester teaching obligation, which works out to ten 3-credit courses a year. Some do get credit in lieu of a course for taking on other responsibilities (dept chair, director of a program, etc.), but that's the baseline workload. Even the Cal State system, which is made up of 4-year schools, has a baseline teaching load of eight classes a year ("4/4").

Re: California community colleges rely too much on part-time faculty; misspend funds

#56
post #25
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Background: the California Master Plan for Higher Eduction (1960) essentially set up a system of free college education to all residents. It was slowly chipped away until "free" became "not free". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Master_Plan_for_Hig... The Adjunct job title makes sense in certain situations, but when a college system is relying on Adjuncts for the majority of credit hours taught, simply to sa…

It is not just about money it is about "flexibility" or else said, ability to kick people out to update curriculum and take younger ones more up to date with recent research.

If it were just that, they'd hire full time contractors with benefits for one year terms.

Re: California community colleges rely too much on part-time faculty; misspend funds

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that weed-out courses largely only happen in the US, and not in Europe or Asia. In the latter, students are usually admitted into a major, sometimes after passing an entrance exam. In the US, admissions are much more "holistic" and students have much more freedom to choose their major. This inevitably results in some people who have very low aptitude for a major enrolled in it. So Departments have…

> Its ridiculous notion to normalize each course to the same amount of time/week - some subjects are simply more difficult. Those courses should have higher credits.

In an ideal world, yes. But, it is all administrative issues. Regulation demand that every undergrad degree be 4 years with something like 130-150 credits. The other constraint is that you have to teach the undergrad enough material. And simply speaking a degree in mechanical engineering requires mastering a lot more material than a degree in journalism. So inevitably, the average mechanical engineering course will require more time and effort than the average journalism course.

Its just all stupid regulations. I don't even understand why all courses have to run 16 weeks, when a lot of them have filler content at the end. Just let the course end early, and gain the benefits of student motivation.

Re: California community colleges rely too much on part-time faculty; misspend funds

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its ridiculous notion to normalize each course to the same amount of time/week - some subjects are simply more difficult. Those courses should have higher credits.

In an ideal world, yes. But, it is all administrative issues. Regulation demand that every undergrad degree be 4 years with something like 130-150 credits. The other constraint is that you have to teach the undergrad enough material. And simply speaking a degree in mechanical engineering requires mastering a lot more material than a degree in journalism. So inevitably, the average mechanical engineering course will r…

I agree with a lot of what you've said, most of the issues are regulatory, or structural issues. Some teachers also simply don't want to teach, and prefer to be gatekeepers, but not all of them.

I was one of those who had been weeded out of an engineering degree at the Mechanics of Solids level, attempted it something like 9 times before giving up, passed the labs with A's. B average up to the required math for engineering which included Discrete Mathematics, Differential Equations, and Linear Algebra (iirc) all those were already completed for most of those attempts.

Tests were 3 questions, 5-10 steps, Answer to the 2nd was dependent on the first correct answer, Third dependent on the second. If you one, you could potentially have failed the class by week 4 which was just outside the withdrawal date for a full refund. Its pretty sad when you have a large number of people pass upper division math, who then in turn can't pass basic physics because of academic structure. I remember getting an award on one of those labs for being the only group to have their egg survive a 3 story drop with just a plastic baggy full of water (at my insistence).

Almost all professors in my local geographic area had decided to push that structure. Economics for Business had issues with deterministic tests. Professionally I deal with a lot of automation so ensuring determinism in systems we use gets back-checked quite often.

Its a sad state of affairs, and most of those issues are solveable with proper incentives and design, but getting to that point would require firing a lot of vested interests. I don't know what it is about a central structure that tends to gravitate towards the lowest common denominator in terms of work.

High performing people often get socially punished for making the people slacking off look bad. Such a backwards system.

Re: California community colleges rely too much on part-time faculty; misspend funds

#59
post #17
post #2

I've taught a bit at Arizona community colleges, which also rely heavily on part-time faculty. There are many more people with grad degrees than demand for them from universities, resulting in the obvious when supply exceeds demand: https://jakeseliger.com/2016/02/25/universities-treat-adjunc... . In the 1945 - 1975 period, demand for faculty exceeded supply: https://jakeseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy…

Background: the California Master Plan for Higher Eduction (1960) essentially set up a system of free college education to all residents. It was slowly chipped away until "free" became "not free". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Master_Plan_for_Hig... The Adjunct job title makes sense in certain situations, but when a college system is relying on Adjuncts for the majority of credit hours taught, simply to sa…

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Re: California community colleges rely too much on part-time faculty; misspend funds

#60
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad thing is that major universities are filled with researchers who are distracted by pushing on the frontiers. They often do a very basic job with teaching.

The sad thing is that the job market favors graduates from major universities. Research universities are doing what they are supposed to do, but their reputation attracts talented and ambitious students in general. When those students end up being successful in their careers, they maintain the reputation. Some countries have tried establishing two parallel higher education systems. Universities provide research-based…

I'm not saying that the research universities aren't performing according to plan. Only that the plan was never focused on helping the undergraduates learn.
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