Advocates for adjuncts who have long sought more data about their working conditions on campuses have gotten the attention of Congress.
Legislation that passed the U.S. House of Representatives and is now pending before the Senate would require colleges to collect and report more information about their part-time instructors.
The bill (HR 4983), dubbed the Strengthening Transparency in Higher Education Act, would require colleges to publish data on a government-run website that would show the ratio of the number of courses taught by part-time instructors to those taught by full-time faculty members. Colleges would have to break down that information by courses largely intended for undergraduates and those largely designed for graduate students. Colleges would also be required to report the mean and median years those part-time instructors have been employed.
The bill was approved last week by the House, where it had bipartisan support. It’s unclear if, or when, the Senate might take it up.
Even if the bill doesn’t make it into law, advocates for adjuncts say they are pleased to have at least made Congress aware of the issue.
“Right now we don’t have accurate statistics about a lot of employment issues related to part-time faculty,” said Maria C. Maisto, president of the New Faculty Majority, an advocacy group for contingent faculty members. “It’s important that the government gather, report, and disclose that information as thoroughly and accurately as possible.”
Colleges should be required, Ms. Maisto said, to disclose the working conditions, pay, and benefits of their part-time faculty members and how quickly those positions are filled. “All of that influences college students’ experiences,” she said, “and to pretend that it doesn’t affect that is really disingenuous.”
Colleges now submit information to the Education Department’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, or Ipeds, on the number of instructional and noninstructional staff members employed full time or part time and the tenure status of each category. Institutions also report average salaries and benefits for full-time faculty members, but not for part-time ones.
Setting the Tone
There is little national data about adjuncts and other faculty members who work off the tenure track, who make up about 70 percent of the instructional faculty at American colleges. Many colleges don’t collect data about their part-time faculty members, and higher-education groups like the American Association of University Professors have not found a way to systematically track the salaries and other working conditions of adjuncts.
“Over the past year, adjunct faculty have joined together to raise standards in our profession, and it’s good to see Congress is interested in shining a spotlight on trends in higher education that have marginalized contingent and part-time faculty,” Mary Kay Henry, international president of the Service Employees International Union, wrote in an emailed statement.
Daniel T. Madzelan, associate vice president for government relations at the American Council on Education, said the bill was unlikely to make it through Congress this year. But, he added, it sets the tone for the next session.
“These ideas are out there, and they’re words on paper,” he said, “and we suspect that going forward into the next Congress that these will be jumping-off points.”
There isn’t much information about the workplace issues that affect part-time faculty members, he agreed, but he said the provision seems out of place in legislation designed to “help consumers of higher education make better decisions.”
If the requirements for more reporting of information about part-time instructors do ever make it into law, Mr. Madzelan said, collecting the information should not be too burdensome for colleges’ institutional-research offices.
“Colleges and universities maintain personnel files,” he said, “and it’s just a matter of querying their results.”
The transparency bill would also require colleges to publish data about a number of other subjects, including enrollment numbers, completion data for full-time and part-time students, net cost of attendance, and average student-loan debt and repayment rates.
