Part-time faculty members undermine the quality of undergraduate education and student retention. Just ask Paul Umbach, Dan Jacoby, and Audrey Jaeger. Heck, just ask your grandmother. No doubt she reads a daily newspaper that employs an education reporter who copies quotes from press releases touting the research of the abovementioned scholars. The truth, however, is that the hoopla about the deleterious impact of adjunct instructors on the lives, loves, and retention rates of undergraduates is nothing short of a national effort to tar and feather part-time faculty members.

Last March, a national AFT leader stood before a room of reporters in Oregon and said he pined for the “good old days” when three in four faculty members were full timers and students knew where to find their professors. In the September/October 2008 issue of Academe, the president of the American Association of University Professors called part timers “transient” colleagues, and “fast-food faculty.” He hoped for the day when departments would benefit from a “stable, dedicated workforce” composed of tenured and tenure-track faculty members.

Thus, the zeitgeist tells us that part timers are unreliable and not really dedicated to their students or their jobs. Those poor students can’t even find their part-time instructors (they’re hiding, I suppose). In short, it’s a madhouse. We need more tenure-track faculty members. Right away.

What we really need is a deep breath and a reality check. Let’s start with the alleged “impact” of part-time faculty on student retention. Here’s a study for you: ACT researchers recently examined two decades of student-retention data. That research indicates a 20-year decline of only 2.2 percent in first-year students who return for a second year.

We ought to be astounded by that small drop in retention rates given the Scrooge-like pay and institutional support offered to the part-time faculty members who teach the majority of those students. Then, again, maybe the decline has nothing to do with part timers. In fact, the ACT researchers attribute the retention-rate drop to lack of student preparedness, and lax enrollment standards.

What about the “turnover rate” among part-time faculty members that is destroying “continuity” in programs and costing colleges a bundle? Here’s the latest solution from the education unions: Get rid of the unreliable part-time flakes and hire more tenure-track faculty members (I’m sensing a theme here). In 2002, the AAUP published a study called “Faculty Turnover at American Colleges and Universities.” The study concluded that pay rates affect faculty retention. Why education-union leaders didn’t immediately implement a national program for part-time faculty members to receive pro-rata pay is one of life’s great mysteries. Pay hikes and mentoring programs have been used to reduce turnover among minority faculty members in higher education, after all.

Let’s take a closer look at this alleged waste of money caused by adjunct faculty “turnover.” Typically, a fifth of tenure-track faculty lose their bids for tenure. Ronald G. Ehrenberg has calculated that it costs between $300,000 and $500,000 to replace each of those faculty members. Thus, it costs exponentially more to replace tenure-track faculty who lose their tenure bids and leave their jobs voluntarily than it does to replace part timers who are not rehired or who choose not to continue teaching.

I think tenure-track faculty leaders and the unions that represent their interests are disparaging part-time faculty members to justify hogging (and bargaining to hog) most of the salary money, offices, faculty senate seats, professional-development money, benefits, perks, and privileges. After all, there’s got to be some reason that full timers are paid far more than $2,700 a course, right? They’re justifying their own existence within higher education, and counting on the fact that reporters aren’t sitting around analyzing Department of Education statistics, compiling data, or combing through 15 years of writing and studies about part-time faculty members.

That’s my job.

Editor’s note: P.D. Lesko is executive editor of AdjunctNation.com, and will blog occasionally for On Hiring. Share your thoughts and questions about her posts in the comments section below.

Categories: Salary-and-benefits, Faculty-hiring