The University of North Florida will trim its adjunct faculty by about 20 percent, eliminating instructors whose credentials have been questioned by the university’s accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
The university, in Jacksonville, sent letters to 46 of its 229 adjunct faculty members last month, telling them that they could finish the semester but would not be rehired in January.
The accrediting group first questioned the qualifications of the university’s adjunct instructors during a routine review in 1999. According to the association’s standards, adjuncts who teach undergraduate courses must have a master’s degree in the subject or in a related field, or a bachelor’s degree plus 18 hours of graduate work in the subject. Those teaching graduate courses must have a master’s degree.
Colleges may hire people who lack those credentials, but only if they have “exceptional qualifications.”
Last year, after the association voiced its concern, North Florida cut 15 adjuncts whom it determined did not have the proper credentials. But a three-member review panel from the association visited the university again in September and determined that it had not gone far enough.
The problem, said Anne H. Hopkins, president of the university, is that she believed that the category of “exceptional qualifications” offered much more leeway than the association had in mind.
North Florida has employed instructors who lack credentials but whose life and work experiences, administrators felt, made them qualified. The association wanted the university to use the category of “exceptional qualifications” much more sparingly, however, reserving it only for instructors who lacked credentials but had won major national recognition.
“If you want to hire John Updike to teach creative writing, he’s an exceptional case,” explained Anita S. Lawson, an associate provost at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, who led the review panel that visited North Florida. “No one would want to deny a campus the right to hire somebody with that kind of national renown or expertise.”
Ms. Lawson said it is important for adjuncts to be not only proficient practitioners, but also academically qualified. “An attempt to think about the field as a discipline and be reviewed by peers is one of the things one would look for,” she said.
The cuts come two months before the start of North Florida’s winter term. Ms. Hopkins said the university would ask administrators to teach some of the classes that adjuncts will no longer cover, and would press full-time faculty members into duty as well, paying them for teaching more. The university also will begin trying to hire adjuncts who have the proper credentials. No classes will be canceled as a result of the cuts, she said.
Ms. Hopkins said she supported the accreditor’s criteria for adjuncts, but added, “A lot of these people are fine teachers, and I’m sorry they won’t be teaching in the future.”
A quarter of the adjuncts who were eliminated teach in the department of communications and visual arts. Charles R. Day Jr. is one of them. He has taught “Principles of Advertising” and a journalism writing lab since 1999. He has a bachelor’s degree and has worked in magazine writing for 32 years. “The credentials cops don’t seem to be interested in performance in the classroom,” he said. “All they seem to be interested in is stripes on the sleeve.”
http://chronicle.com Section: The Faculty Page: A14