Invisible Faculty

They are the "invisible faculty," the ones who do a substantial part of the college teaching in America, but are the lowest-paid and least-respected. Some of them teach as a sidelight, working odd jobs, or shuttling from college to college as freeway faculty. Others work full-time, teaching the same classes as tenured colleagues who get paid far more. All of them can be dismissed for any reason, never knowing from one year to the next if they'll still be teaching.

They are called "non-tenure-track" faculty, or NTTs. Few of their students realize that the academy is internally divided into two classes. The tenured and tenure-track have the bigger salaries and the nicer offices and the job security. The NTTs fill in the other classrooms for half the pay, or less.

After years of neglect, NTTs are starting to stand up and make themselves noticed. ISU NTTs have created the ISU Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Association-IEA/NEA to help NTTs protect their rights.

Gretchen Knapp, who has worked as an NTT since 1995, and since 1997 at ISU, is one of the organizers among NTTs at ISU. Her personal story reflects some of the struggles that NTTs face. In the fall of 2001, Knapp was a "part-time" NTT teaching four Foundations Of Inquiry classes. During the semester, she testified before the IBHE about the poor conditions for NTT faculty. According to Knapp, "After I testified, I checked back and was told that the departments didn't need any NTTs. But that wasn't true because they hired two NTTs." Knapp says, "It very much looked like my testifying did lead to my not teaching foundations."

Knapp also discovered that she had nowhere to appeal her decision. There is a faculty committee that deals with such grievances, but only for tenure-track faculty. Knapp observes, "We are the only employees in the university who do not have any procedures to handle grievances."

ISU officials won't talk about Knapp's case for reasons of privacy, but they note that the unexpectedly large influx of new students into ISU this past fall forced them to turn to experienced NTTs at the last minute, a problem that was largely fixed by this spring.

Knapp was eventually hired in February as an instructional assistant professor in the biological sciences to do curriculum development and special projects. But she wants to return to the classroom.

NTTs are expected to press their demands for better pay and working conditions on April 2, when the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) will hold its regular board meeting at ISU, and discuss a February IBHE report it about NTTs. Advocates for NTTs and unions such as the Illinois Education Association were very critical of the IBHE report when it was released.

NTTs at ISU
ISU depends heavily on NTTs. Last year, ISU employed 457 NTTs, 176 full-time and 281 part-time. They represent 40% of ISU's faculty members. That's common at public universities nationwide. In Illinois universities, 49% of the faculty in 1999 were NTTs, after a dramatic increase during the 1990s. The IBHE reports that in Illinois, "Between 1991 and 1999, nontenure-track faculty at public universities increased by 27 percent (full time by 33 percent and part time by 23 percent). In contrast, full-time tenured/tenure-track faculty decreased by eight percent." Community colleges are even more dependent on NTTs, which represent 75% of their faculty (and since all full-time faculty at community colleges automatically receive tenure after a few years, only part-timers are considered NTTs).

Lou Perez, ISU's Director of General Education, observes: "Obviously, in the perfect universe ALL instructors would enjoy the employment security afforded by tenure. It is regrettably not so. All colleges and universities function only with the help of NTTs. Their employment gives ISU flexibility in scheduling to meet unforeseen needs and exigencies."

However, when 40% of the faculty is made up of NTTs, it is hard to imagine that "flexibility" is the sole reason for existence. A much bigger reason is money.

The IBHE found that at Illinois universities, full-time equivalent median salaries in fall 2000 were $31,100 for tenure-track faculty, $15,200 for full-time NTTs, and $13,100 for part-time NTTs. In other words, regular faculty got paid twice as much to teach as NTTs. If these rough numbers apply to ISU's 457 NTTs, ISU would save approximately $4,400,000 a year in salary by using NTTs-not to mention the substantial savings in benefits, office space, and other costs. The IBHE estimated that equalizing pay between NTTs and tenure-track faculty would require $62 million a year at state universities and $196 million a year at community colleges in Illinois.

In 1993, the American Association of University Professors recommended that institutions limit NTT faculty "to no more than 15 percent of total instruction." However, both ISU and the IBHE report refuse to make any recommendations about how many NTTs there ought to be.

While ISU is taking some first steps toward addressing the concerns of NTTs, the IBHE seems to be in complete denial. Blaming the "sensational" coverage of NTTs, the IBHE report notes "the discrepancy that exists between the public perception of nontenure-track faculty as an exploited class and the positive attitudes of this group."

The IBHE report cited the "surprising" result of the "general level of satisfaction with their jobs." In fact, more NTTs were "very satisfied" (50% of full-timers and 57% of part-timers) than tenured or tenure-track faculty (44%). But here the IBHE report is distorting the results. The question asked was, "In general, how satisfied were you with your overall experience teaching at this institution in fall 2000?" This is a question that asks teachers how much they enjoy teaching, not how they regard their status and low pay. As one ISU NTT in education observed at a recent meeting, "We like what we do. I love what I do. I'm fortunate that I have a pension." If she didn't, "I couldn't do it. I'd have to give it up." This is an example of a highly satisfied teacher who can't afford to live on NTT wages. How many other enthusiastic college teachers don't have pensions and must move on to different careers?

The IBHE report concludes, "most nontenure-track faculty report that are [sic] not dissatisfied with their compensation." The IBHE report bases this on responses to the question, "I feel that I was treated fairly relative to my compensation at this institution." At public universities, 63% of full-time NTTs and 72% of part-time NTTs (compared to 70% of tenure-track faculty) either strongly agreed or somewhat agreed. However, the question is highly ambiguous. Treated "fairly" is not the same as being satisfied. NTTs might have felt that they were treated fairly because they received the same pay as other NTTs. Or they might simply have been unaware of the enormous gap in pay compared to tenure-track faculty. "Unfairness" conveys a sense of arbitrary authority, rather than the systematic policies that result in low pay for NTTs.

According to the IBHE report, "nontenure-track staff are not favored by market conditions." Of course, nonprofit and state universities are creating these "market conditions" with their policies to increase the use of NTTs, pay them little, and make it increasingly difficult to join the disappearing tenure-track. NTTs are not voluntarily off the tenure track: 31% of the part-time NTTs and 44% of the full-time NTTs at Illinois universities have a tenure-track position as their goal.

NTT Complaints at ISU
ISU's nontenure-track faculty are not likely to be appeased by appreciative words or discussions about the inevitability of "market conditions." They complain about low salaries, low benefits, and low respect.

• "I can't afford to get health insurance this summer," one says, since her health insurance ends on May 15 and she can't buy it for summer unless she has a letter of intent to work in the fall. Another is working at Sears on evenings and weekends to pay the bills. "Not knowing what I'm going to teach, not knowing how many classes I'm going to teach," are the complaints of a third NTT.
  
• A self-study conducted by the ISU Nontenure-Track Faculty Association asked NTTs at ISU about what they thought needed reform:
  
• "Salaries and especially benefits need improvement"
  
• "We need to get our contracts much sooner"
  
• "Longer contracts"
  
• "More job security"
  
• "Health insurance costs at 50% are ridiculous"
  
• "2 or 3 year contracts"
  
• "More respect"
  
• "Compensation should better reflect service and research obligations, not just teaching."
  
• "Merit pay"
  
• "Being able to vote on departmental issues"
  
• "Predictable courseload"
  
• "Not having to share office space with student workers"
  

Knapp notes, "The longer I'm here, the more I work and the less I'm paid." Knapp adds that one semester, "I shared a one-desk office with four other people." Still, that was better than when she had no office at all: "I actually had to use the library."

NTTs do have one factor on their side. Illinois Education Association organizer Ralph Perillo told ISU's NTTs at a meeting in February, "Every strike I've had in Central Illinois, they close the building, because they cannot replace you." Colleges have become so dependent upon NTTs that collectively these teachers have the power to demand change.

With more and more NTT faculty replacing tenure-track lines for economic reasons, there are fewer faculty available to engage in advising and other activities. The university must then hire more professional staff to replace these functions. The money saved in teaching can be overtaken by the increasing sum spent in administrative costs. Because universities often rely upon a "trailing spouse"-typically the wife of a faculty member-for NTTs, their low pay often causes couples to seek better jobs elsewhere and ISU to lose faculty.

The low pay of NTTs is also worrisome because of gender inequity. Women represent only 32% of the tenure-track faculty at Illinois universities, but nearly half of the NTTs. At ISU, women are less than 20% of the full professors but more than 60% of the NTTs. One ISU NTT says a department official "told me I was stuck because I'm a faculty spouse."

Academic Freedom and NTTs
In a book published last year by Johns Hopkins University Press, Teaching Without Tenure, authors Roger Baldwin and Jay Chronister warn that academic freedom can be endangered by the decline in tenure-track positions, because NTTs are vulnerable to firing for any reason at all. A lecturer may be reluctant to experiment with innovative teaching techniques because one bad set of evaluation could lead to dismissal.

Baldwin and Chronister note, "The incentive for the non-tenure-eligible faculty to behave conservatively can pervade the scholarly domain as well." One NTT observed, "I am going to stay away from religion and ethical issues such as the right to die and the role of religion in parental decisionmaking. Scholarship is more apt to be questioned when writing in such areas." Even more often, Baldwin and Chronister report, NTTs who are allowed to participate in shared governance fear putting their job at risk by raising too many questions.

Baldwin and Chronister note, "Some full-time term-appointment faculty in the arts, humanities, and social sciences expressed reluctance to address controversial issues in their teaching and scholarship because it might lead to the termination of their contracts." Baldwin and Chronister write, "full-time non-tenure-track faculty should enjoy the same right to academic freedom as their tenured and tenure-track colleagues. They will never be respected as full-fledged academic professionals if procedures are not in place at their college or university to protect their academic freedom. If the basic rights of some members of the faculty are compromised, the faculty as a whole is compromised. In the process, an institution's integrity and its academic program are diminished."

Rights taken for granted by tenure-track faculty-such as being able to choose the textbooks for the courses they teach-are often denied to NTTs. According to the IBHE, "only 59 percent of public university part-time faculty and 49 percent of community college part-time faculty were expected to choose textbooks for their courses."

The Future of NTTs
The IBHE recommends treating NTTs more like real faculty-with performance evaluations, professional development training, merit pay, access to computers, long-term commitments, meeting space, fair procedures, even a little shared governance-except for how many of them there are, and how much they get paid.

The IBHE report admits that personnel policies for NTTs are "primitive and incomplete," and adds that "The lack of such policies seems unwise given the importance of the nontenure track to all public colleges and universities." The IBHE report adds, "Unfortunately, few public universities or community colleges actively monitor or seek to control the size of their nontenure-track faculty."

Yet overall the IBHE seeks to avoid the issue (which was forced upon them by the General Assembly). Noting "the discrepancy that exists between the public perception of nontenure-track faculty as an exploited class and the positive attitudes of this group," the IBHE considers the problem of NTTs to be primarily a public relations questions, not one that addresses fundamental issues about tenure. Essentially, the IBHE report blames this on a few troublemakers with "strong grievances."

The IBHE report claims that "The division of labor between the nontenure and tenure tracks has served students well" and provided "a more varied faculty." Certainly the faculty is more "varied" financially when some of them are paid half as much (or less).

But it's doubtful that students feel well served by having their classes taught by low-paid faculty without job security who often have no offices, can't plan ahead for classes or choose textbooks, and feel little commitment to an institution that rewards them so little.

Are students served well when 36% of part-time NTTs at universities and 53% at community college report not being expected to hold scheduled office hours for their students? The fact that so many of these NTTs are excellent teachers is a testament to their commitment despite the lack of resources and respect given to them.

Ever since ISU faculty almost unionized in 2000, President Vic Boschini has been careful to call faculty salary increases his top priority, even in the wake of budget cuts. But little is promised about the number of tenure-track positions that will exist to receive these raises. Under outside pressure from accreditation agencies such as NCATE, ISU has converted some NTT lines to tenure-track positions.

ISU is moving toward reforms praised by the IBHE. Provost Alvin Goldfarb notes, "The Faculty Affairs Committee of the Senate is reviewing the use of NTTs on campus. We are hoping to increase the number of tenure-track positions at Illinois State, as indicated in Educating Illinois. We usually use NTTs for specific instructional needs or for one-year replacements." Goldfarb expects the committee to recommend some process for grievance procedures.

In 2000, selected NTTs at ISU who had been teaching five consecutive years at 50% or more received a one-time raise of 3%. For 2001, the minimum salary for full-time nontenure-track faculty was set at $2,750 a month ($3,000 for those having the terminal degree); however, part-time NTTs have no minimum salary. "We have set specific minimum pay rates, as well as made other charges, for NTTs in order to deal with all NTT employees equitably," observes Goldfarb. Goldfarb adds, "We have made progress on minimum salaries, funding for annual pay increases, performance evaluations (for full-time NTTs), multi-year appointments, and accumulation of sick leave."

However, neither ISU nor the IBHE will make any commitment to substantially reduce NTTs in favor of tenure-track positions. If Illinois colleges dramatically increased NTTs during a period of fairly large budget increases during the 1990s, current budget cuts may lead to ever greater reliance on NTTs.

The IBHE report declares, "One reason why institutions hire faculty for nontenure-track positions is because they can." The surplus of Ph.D.s creates a labor pool that makes it possible to employ faculty at low pay and no job security; however, the expected rapid growth in college students over the next decade may make it impossible to continue treating NTTs as disposable teachers. As Lou Perez has noted, "one can't just go to Wal-Mart and get qualified faculty."

Unless ISU and other colleges begin to seriously address the concerns of teachers not on the tenure track, these "invisible" faculty will demand to be seen and heard.