Uneven labor standards undermine community colleges

Believing that we need free trade to expand markets and ensure low prices, U.S. policymakers are reluctant to legislate labor standards that provide workers with economic independence. Instead, politicians almost exclusively turn to education to drive social uplift.

Community colleges play a pivotal role in America's post-secondary education. Those who have had the most difficulty succeeding in our knowledge-based economy, low-income and minority students, disproportionately choose public community colleges as their gateway to better jobs. A major reason for this is that these schools are relatively inexpensive.

A high percentage of community colleges find themselves entrapped in the larger unwillingness to regulate labor standards. In the pursuit of false economies, these institutions heavily rely upon a relatively unregulated part-time faculty labor system that shortchanges students.

Student success is particularly jeopardized by staffing policies that make it impossible for many instructors to commit themselves full-time to their profession. Advising, curricular coordination, and even the quality of homework assignments are all undermined when, to make ends meet, faculty must use their available time to obtain additional employment.

The evidence will appear in the November/December issue of the Journal of Higher Education, when I report the findings of the first systematic study to demonstrate that institutions with higher part-time faculty ratios have substantially lower graduation rates.

Over the past 30 years, reliance upon part-time faculty has increased, so that now nearly half of all community-college courses are taught, and roughly two-thirds of the faculty are hired, on a part-time basis.

Administrators opt for part-time faculty because they are typically paid half the salary received by their full-time colleagues. Further cost advantages are realized because part-time and temporary employment typically render faculty ineligible for a host of benefits, from pensions to health care to tenure. Finally, part-time faculty can be discarded at will. Many instructors accept such conditions hoping that a foot in the door will eventually result in a traditional career.

Part-time faculty employment epitomizes policies touted by human-resource specialists who believe increased labor flexibility will increase America's productivity and competitiveness. This is a dubious proposition, and it is especially wrongheaded when it comes to education.

The evidence is compelling that academic labor cannot be treated like so much coal, dumped and mixed at will. Studying the graduating class in the year 2001, I found that after controlling for a host of variables, the part-time faculty ratio of an institution significantly and negatively affected its graduation rate.

The accompanying table uses statistics from the National Center for Educational Statistics to replicate key elements of my Journal of Higher Education study by examining 2003 graduation rates and faculty data.

The third of schools having the lowest part-time faculty ratios graduated an average of 30.6 percent of their students, while the bottom third, those with the highest part-time ratios, had graduation rates averaging 21.5 percent.

If faculty-student ratios are also considered, we see a consistent pattern in which higher numbers of faculty per student and lower part-time faculty ratios result in better graduation rates. Some argue that official graduation rates do not appropriately measure community-college success, especially given that these schools have multiple missions involving the remediation, training and education of a very diverse student population.

However, adjusting for part-time students, transfers, and the diversity of student backgrounds and goals renders the same basic result. The problem is not in how we measure school success, but rather in the way we staff our community colleges.

Blame should not be shifted to the faculty members themselves, as there is little to suggest that their characteristics differ substantially from those who are more securely employed. While data do reveal that, as compared with full-time instructors, part-time faculty invest proportionally fewer hours in their instructional activities, it is hard not to reach the conclusion that this reflects their need to make ends meet through additional employment at other campuses or in other jobs.

Our public community colleges are the front line for American opportunity and disproportionately serve students who have greater educational and social needs. It is cynical to provide low-cost education by withholding the resources necessary to ensure student success. We have no right to expect faculty employed under precarious and often degrading circumstances to be able to deliver student success.

Dan Jacoby holds the University of Washington's Harry Bridges Chair in Labor Studies and teaches in the UW at Bothell's Masters in Policy Studies Program.