California community colleges rely too much on part-time faculty; misspend funds
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Re: California community colleges rely too much on part-time faculty; misspend funds
#2I'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-l..., and many in or adjacent to academia yearn for a return to those days. But it's probably not happening.
The administrators and Boards who control budgets are also keenly cognizant of the fact that birthrates fell off a cliff in 2009 and haven't recovered since. Those of you who can add 18 to 2009 will know what's coming for an industry that depends heavily on 18 year olds for customers. Tenure is, in the absence of mandatory retirement ages, a 40+ year employment promise.
And one dark truth is that academia insiders with tenure accrue far more power over their adjunct colleagues than they do over their tenured colleagues. Academia insiders rarely emphasize this, for obvious reasons.
Re: California community colleges rely too much on part-time faculty; misspend funds
#3In this case, I'd say I very much liked that the community colleges I attended in California had part-time faculty that were working in the industry. I feel the quality of education for some classes was better than what I received in university. (Thanks Mrs. Wong (Math) and Mr. Vedrin (EE)!)
Re: California community colleges rely too much on part-time faculty; misspend funds
#4This is true of big name research institutions too. Since 2000, spending on administration in US colleges nationwide has increased faster than the combined increase of scholarships, grants, and professorships. (Source: Graeber, 2018ish).
This requires cost savings, and that comes at the cost of the things a college should be doing: teaching, and educating. After all, the bureaucrats who make the budgets aren't going to reduce their own salaries. Savings must be found, and it can't possibly be found in cutting the fifth community outreach residential assistant wellness officer.
Re: California community colleges rely too much on part-time faculty; misspend funds
#5In this case, I'd say I very much liked that the community colleges I attended in California had part-time faculty that were working in the industry. I feel the quality of education for some classes was better than what I received in university. (Thanks Mrs. Wong (Math) and Mr. Vedrin (EE)!)
Same experience for me
Re: California community colleges rely too much on part-time faculty; misspend funds
#6In this case, I'd say I very much liked that the community colleges I attended in California had part-time faculty that were working in the industry. I feel the quality of education for some classes was better than what I received in university. (Thanks Mrs. Wong (Math) and Mr. Vedrin (EE)!)
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.
Re: California community colleges rely too much on part-time faculty; misspend funds
#7I used to be a PT teacher at my local California community college, in the art department (graphic design, illustration, Photoshop, Illustrator, web design, etc.). I definitely heard from other teachers that some things were off (that seem like they could be related), but who knows if they were really related to the use of funds described here.
I taught for just a couple of years and I was told that my classes were appreciated to some degree because I was a working professional in my field at the same time.
Still, it was kind of annoying that some students only wanted that. When you have massively-high-achievers and middle-age homeless students with obvious struggles in the same class, the UMC people angling for their particular needs and also trying to min/max every class start to seem kind of off-putting. Not to blame anybody really, but it had a real feeling of inequity-upon-inequity to it.
One couple really grilled me before a digital photography class, asking trivia questions about the topics we'd be covering and _how much I could teach them_, because they were trying to figure out _how much_ of a waste of time it would be. For a simple weekend class! They had nearly five figures worth of gear and a lot of expectations from a community college.
I believe this is about when boot camps started to really pick up speed, and I could feel that tension building around traditional educational institutions.
I do feel like there are pros/cons of "working professional teacher" vs. traditional FT college faculty for sure, which I didn't really understand before working there.
Unfortunately it was also kind of a slow-motion "that's like a dollar an hour" [1] experience, and after reviewing the whole situation, with its variety of little pros and cons, decided to move all my energies back into my normal business.
One thing I really miss though is how much I learned! My students thought _they_ were learning but holy smokes did I learn a lot from creating lessons, lesson plans, and websites for the courses.
BTW tech-wise it was a lot of fun too. I gave extra credit points for trying non-Photoshop software, including some FOSS titles like GIMP, Bluefish, Inkscape, etc.
Some of my students also got a bonus intro to web development with PHP, Python, and one was I believe a Rebol programmer who showed me his homebrew back-door VNC client with a one-click button palette to control any of his IT-company clients' computers.
I also believe I came close to mastering the art of carrying my teacher's life on a USB disk. I had so many Portable-Apps downloads on there, even some servers I believe.
Re: California community colleges rely too much on part-time faculty; misspend funds
#8I'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…
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Re: California community colleges rely too much on part-time faculty; misspend funds
#9In Oregon, already in the 1990s community colleges were replacing retiring full-timers with part-timers as a cost-cutting measure. This is something administration will always do when they can get away with it. We need a formal policy on what ratio of part-timers is allowable.
Re: California community colleges rely too much on part-time faculty; misspend funds
#10In this case, I'd say I very much liked that the community colleges I attended in California had part-time faculty that were working in the industry. I feel the quality of education for some classes was better than what I received in university. (Thanks Mrs. Wong (Math) and Mr. Vedrin (EE)!)
I really appreciated by CA community college experience with part-time faculty. My math, physics, and chemistry teachers were literally rocket scientists at their day jobs (military R&D).