Several faculty unions and associations statewide, including Eastern’s chapter of the University Professionals of Illinois, have designated this week Campus Equity Week to promote higher pay and better working conditions for part-time college instructors.

Campus Equity Week will feature rallies, forums and other events around the state intended to draw attention to what teachers’ unions say is a growing trend of exploiting part-time faculty at the cost of full-time professors and students’ education on Illinois campuses.

These part-time faculty, sometimes called adjunct faculty or annually-contracted faculty, are often paid significantly lower wages and are denied health benefits and pension plans that full-time teachers enjoy, said Barbara Stott, the assistant to the president of UPI Local 4100 in Chicago.

“They are being paid peanuts – far, far under what regular faculty are being paid,” she said.

Stott said that although she had no hard numbers, salaries for part-time teachers are sometimes tens of thousands of dollars less than their full-time counterparts.

In addition, she said, part-time teachers can only expect a small increase in their wages over the years, leaving them with “nowhere to go.”

“The only way for them to move up the ladder is to become a full-time faculty member,” Stott said.

However, universities are increasingly replacing full-time professors with their part-time colleagues, she said.

“We’re coming to the point where the ratios (between full-time and part-time teachers) are out of hand,” Stott said.

These part-time teachers do the same amount of work as a full-time teacher, she said, without the benefits of a full-time position.

“We understand the need for some positions to be given to part-time or temporary positions,” Stott said. “What we want to assure is that people who are filling these positions aren’t taken advantage of financially.”

The problem is most prevalent at schools with non-unionized faculty, such as the University of Illinois, said David Radavich, president of Eastern’s UPI chapter.

In the end, the real losers of employing part-time teachers in full-time positions are the students they teach, Radavich said.

The practice of over-relying on part-time teachers is detrimental to students’ education, he said, because it is impossible for students to confer very easily with those teachers.

“Ultimately, it harms students, because they don’t get the full attention of the professor,” he said. “Part-time teachers do not have offices, so it’s very difficult for students to confer with them the way they would a normal faculty member.”

Thursday, the state’s Senate Education Committee will hear public testimony on a bill that would give increased benefits to part-time faculty in Illinois community colleges.

The IBHE will also hold public hearings on part-time faculty tomorrow in the Thompson Center in Chicago.

An IBHE committee appointed in April to study the issue is expected to release its report in December.

UPI and other groups will hold a protest rally outside the Thompson Center today, Stott said.

Stott said the scheduling of Campus Equity Week during these hearings was not coincidental.

“What we’re trying to do is raise public awareness so legislators have a mandate to force the IBHE, and through the IBHE the universities, to give part-time teachers better wages, and at the same time, find positions for part-time teachers and make them full-time,” she said.

Several teachers’ unions and groups are sponsoring the events, including UPI, the Illinois Federation of Teachers, the Illinois Education Association, and various graduate student organizations.

No Protests At Eastern

Eastern’s UPI chapter is not planning any protests, mainly because so few part-time teachers are hired here, Radavich said.

“Eastern does not have a lot of part-time teachers,” he said. “Most of our annually-contracted faculty are full-time.”

Around three-fourths of classes are taught by full-time professors, Radavich said.

“Compared to many universities, that’s unusually high,” he said. “Eastern is way ahead of the universities in this area.”

The reason for this success is because Eastern faculty unionized in the 1980s, Radavich said.

The chapter will instead devote the week to celebrating Eastern’s annually-contracted faculty, Radavich said.

A luncheon will be held on Wednesday to recognize and honor these faculty members, he said. “We want to celebrate what we have.”