The work and pay just don't match up.
When Karen Connor went from a teaching assistant to a faculty associate at Arizona State University this fall, she was pleased: She was no longer at the bottom rung of the academic ladder.
But then she looked at the pay difference and realized she would be earning exactly $11.50 more a week.
"What is fair and equitable about that?"asked Connor, 55.
Faculty associates and other non-tenure track teaching positions have long been a part of the academic landscape at ASU and other colleges and universities. But as their numbers grow, so do questions about pay, treatment and how they affect the quality of instruction.
Non-tenure track professors, including instructors, lecturers, research and clinical faculty, faculty associates and visiting faculty, are paid markedly less than other faculty members. They work without long-term contracts and usually lack the rights afforded other faculty members, such as voting privileges in their departments. And unlike traditional faculty, they are not eligible for tenure, which affords significant job protection and status.
At ASU most faculty associates are full-time, which means they get benefits and usually are assigned office space. But part-time associates don't even get that.
The use of non-tenure track, temporary faculty has increased dramatically at ASU during the past decade. An ASU accreditation report conducted by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools in March 2003 showed a 35 percent rise in non-tenure track positions from 1996 to 2001, the latest year for which figures are available. In 2001, ASU had 510 such faculty.
At the same time, the number of full-time tenured or on-the-tenure track professors at ASU Main and East campuses increased a mere 4 percent -- from 1,285 in 1996 to 1,331 in 2001.
Universities nationwide are experiencing a similar trend.
"Writ large, college teaching is moving toward a contingent work force," said Martin Finkelstein, a professor of education at New York's Seton Hall University in a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
While many think of this as a community college phenomenon, Finkelstein said four-year colleges are not far behind. The majority of new hires at four-year colleges in the 1990s were temporary hires, he said, and more than half of the new full-time positions at universities across the country are "off the tenure track." These are faculty who are paid by the course or to exclusively teach, as opposed to permanent, tenure-track professionals whose work includes research, service and teaching.
Finkelstein and others believe this trend is largely going ignored by universities, even though it will have profound effects on the kinds of places they become - for both students and the people who teach them.
Too much of a good thing
Faculty associates, lecturers and other temporary faculty often bring real-world experience into the classroom. They are working lawyers, journalists, business owners and others who can offer students up-to-date and practical information about their fields, as well as networking opportunities and professional contacts.
ASU faculty associate Howard Cabot has tried several complex cases both locally and nationally and served as a Judge Pro Tem on the Arizona Court of Appeals and Maricopa County Superior Court.
He is currently teaching second- and third-year law students about trial advocacy, in addition to his job as a trial lawyer for the firm of Brown and Bain.
Cabot said he believes instructors who are actually practicing in their fields can offer knowledge students won't get from textbooks.
"My courses lend themselves to day-to-day, real life practice experience, which is a good complement to classroom study," said Cabot, who is interested in seeing law schools graduate more students who are trained to be trial lawyers.
Cabot, who donates his paycheck back to the university, said he believes faculty associates are an integral part of ASU's College of Law program.
Other colleges and divisions across the university have similar things to say about the benefits of using faculty associates, but it's also true that that no self-respecting university wants too many of them.
Nancy Gutierrez, vice provost for the university, said having temporary instructors with a high level of expertise is good for the campus, but hiring a large percentage of them is not.
"In order to have a stabilized curriculum and program, you want to have faculty members on tenure-track lines who are committed and have a history with the university," Gutierrez said. "With too many temporary faculty, there is no program stability."
When she was associate dean of the College of English, Gutierrez said she made sure that the college had a dominant contingent of tenured professors teaching courses.
The chair of the English Department, Elizabeth Horan, said she struggles to maintain the quality of teaching while also finding ways to handle growing enrollment.
Faculty associates make up a significant number of the instructors in the college, some who are accomplished and highly respected writers, she said. However, the majority are assigned to teach the classes that are affected most by enrollment growth, which are usually lower-level courses.
Gutierrez said the amount of money the university gets from the state and other sources, such as tuition, is not enough to keep up with a student population that just keeps growing.
One way to get by, she said, is to hire cheaper, temporary faculty.
"In the grand scheme of things, when your money goes down and you're continuously expanding, you have certain responsibilities to make the dollar go farther," Gutierrez said. "The fact is, faculty associates are cheaper and some departments may make the choice of using them, while others may not."
Steve Doig, interim director of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, said his school hires faculty associates because there isn't enough money to hire full-time professors.
Doig said associates, most of them working journalists, make up more than half of the faculty in the journalism school. Although they provide a great service, he said, becoming dependent upon them could hurt the program in the long run.
"Relying on faculty associates decreases the pressure to hire more full-time faculty," Doig said. "This could take away from other parts of the program, such as research and service of the profession to the community."
Gail Hackett, ASU vice provost of academic personnel, said the university has been making efforts to reduce the number of full-time temporary professors by hiring more adjuncts - unpaid lecturers who volunteer their time and expertise, much like Cabot.
The university also has been offering more nine-month or three-year contracts to temporary professors. The number of such contracts grew from 3 percent in 1991 to 13 percent in 2001, a 10 percent increase, according to the Higher Learning Commission report.
Hackett said hiring temporary faculty - on any terms -- is not the perfect answer, but it does allow the university to offer students the general courses they need.
If the current budget crisis continues, she said the university may have to hire more such faculty, but the reliance on temporary faculty will be - well, temporary.
"If we are in fact hiring more, it will only be on a temporary basis," she said.
Low pay
A faculty associate at ASU is paid anywhere from $3,000 to $7,000 per course, according to ASU's fall 2002 payroll. Tenured or tenure-track professors can make 10 times that amount per course if their salaries are averaged over the number of courses they teach.
Doig called the pay for faculty associates ridiculously low.
Horan said she worries that faculty associates will end up taking on more classes than they can handle in order to boost their pay.
"There will be some professors who take on a full load. I worry that sooner or later, they will get burnt out, and students may be the ones to suffer," she said.
Horan said she has argued to no avail for years that faculty associates should get across-the-board raises. She is now pushing to at least hire on one-year contracts instead of semester-to-semester, she said.
She is also arguing to even out pay among faculty associates. Currently, faculty associate pay varies from college to colleges, with those teaching the sciences or specialty areas receiving more than those who teach core courses like math and English.
For Horan, that is simply unfair. No one college is more important than another, she said, and she's hopeful that a change will come soon.
Gutierrez said pay discrepancies can be expected because the pool of qualified candidates is greater for some courses than others.
However, she said that, in general, the university "should do a better job paying faculty associates" than it does now.
A few years ago, a university task force was formed to examine the issues surrounding non-permanent full-time faculty. The task force recommended that the university gradually bring salaries up to competitive levels, that these faculty get more professional development opportunities, and that they be eligible for three-year appointments.
There is no evidence, however, that pay or other working conditions have undergone significant change since the report was issued in 2000.
The university has been successful, however, in decreasing the number of part-time faculty. That number dropped 32 percent, from 182 to 122, from 1996 to 2001, according to the Higher Learning Commission report.
In the classroom
Students often don't know or care if their teachers are permanent tenure-track professionals or not.
What they're interested in is how good the teacher is in the classroom and how accessible the teacher is outside the classroom.
If a teacher is part-time, access can be a problem.
Tammy Blackburn, 21, a junior majoring in justice studies, said she worries that faculty associates may not be available for students when needed.
"They need to have more resources, otherwise they won't be helping students get the education they need," she said.
Pushpak Karnick, 26, a graduate student in the college of computer science and engineering, remembered one faculty associate who went out of her way to be available for students.
"She would make it a point to come if we needed to speak with her," even though she was also teaching a class at the University of Arizona in Tucson, he said.
But he still believes that the more closely professors are connected to the university, the more likely they are to be available to students. "Otherwise accessibility will depend on what professor you have," he said.
The 2001 Higher Learning Commission report notes that when it comes to quality of teaching, students seemed content with faculty associates. Student evaluations showed students were actually more satisfied with courses taught by full-time, non-permanent faculty.
That, of course, doesn't mean that faculty associates are satisfied - or that they'll stick with it, Connor said.
She said that until the university addresses the larger issues faced by faculty associates, most of whom work full-time for little pay, many will feel exploited.
"I love to teach, and I think (ASU) uses that to their advantage," she said. "They know we will do this for the amount of money we make, so they don't bother changing it."
Connor said she had hoped to stay at ASU permanently, but she's decided to get her teacher certificate so she can get a job in secondary education. She has not been rehired for the spring semester.
Reach the reporter at joanne.yuan@asu.edu.
