Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Spanish for Professions, et al.
Given the thread on the last post, I thought I would bring up the following. I had a conversation with a colleague who teaches at a couple of community colleges. She said that the structure seems very flexible: when there is more demand for classes, they simply hire more people and open more sections. That way they take advantage of all the people who want to go back to school during an economic downturn. Of course this assumes a pool of part-time lecturers. I know the way my university system functions that would not be possible. Is such flexibility desireable? Are there downsides?
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4 comments:
If we had a pool of part timers who had no expectations of building up entitlement, it might be desireable. I would love to take advantage of all the Phd students and ABDs in our area who might want a part time gig, with you expectation of a future at State.
Central Washington is not awash in Spanish MAs and PhDs. So our lecturer pool is non-existent. It would be nice to have that flexibility, short of hiring tenure-track folks.
I think there are definite downsides to hiring part-time faculty. We have no such pool here, but I think there's issues with faculty and curriculum development that come into play. How can a department build if faculty are coming and going? How is this fair to students when faculty seem to be coming and going? How can they plan a major if they are not sure courses will be offered? How can a division devise majors in the first place not knowing if they can hire people or need to lay people off? Part-time faculty are often left out of decision making and treated as second class citizens within departments which obviously should not be done especially when they do play an important role. Second, they are always underpaid and usually have a large workload, lots of students to teach.
At least in the CSU system part-time faculty have a great many rights, including union representation and health benefits. I do not like the idea of the whole system resting on part-time faculty, but I am thankful for those part-time jobs, because they got me through until I could get a TT job.
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