Adjunct positions have more than doubled over last 10 years
The Portland State University Faculty Association (PSUFA) represents approximately 1,200 part-time instructors; each term, close to 700 members teach at PSU. Last fall term, there were 676 adjunct instructors at PSU—a 103.6 percent increase over the number of adjunct faculty in fall 2000.
The number of part-time faculty positions varies from department to department. Schools that heavily utilize adjunct instructors are education, art, business, community health and physical education, according to Brooke Jacobson, president of PSUFA and an adjunct instructor in the communication studies department. More academically oriented departments are not as reliant on part-time instructors, Jacobson said.
Union members come from many backgrounds. Some are retired teachers or professionals, some are recent graduates and some are teachers who are part- or full-time faculty members at other schools and universities.
In the last 10 years, PSU student enrollment has increased by 48.6 percent and full-time faculty positions have increased by 50.5 percent, while adjunct positions have more than doubled, according to the Office of Institutional Research and Planning (OIRP).
According to the OIRP, last year 43.3 percent of PSU instructional staff was classified as part-time. At PSU, “part-time” is the classification for all faculty members with a full-time equivalent (FTE) of .49 or less.
FTE is essentially a metric for measuring task workloads in a way that can equate to hours worked, since the terms full-time and part-time originate from a measure of hours worked and are not necessarily related to workload. “In many industries this is often based on hours per week, but for university faculty it is based on the workload expectations for a specific faculty position,” said Kathi Ketcheson, the director of the OIRP.
Full-time faculty FTE is based on the university’s expectation that they will teach, research and serve on committees; part-time FTE is based on the expectation of teaching only.
PSU is not the only university in the Oregon University System (OUS) that is relying on part-time faculty to meet the academic needs of its growing student body, but it does maintain the highest ratio of part- to full-time faculty. According to the OUS’s 2010 Fact Book, which classifies “part-time” as less than .90 FTE and includes graduate teaching assistants in its figures, 64.5 percent of the teaching staff at PSU was part-time, compared to 63.7 percent at the University of Oregon and 56.1 percent at Oregon State.
Excluding graduate teaching assistants, the 2010 Fact Book determined that 51 percent of PSU’s teaching staff was part-time, compared to 26.9 percent at UO and 20.5 percent at OSU.
What does this mean for students? As with most things in life, there are pros and cons to utilizing part-time instructors at a large university like PSU.
Many adjunct instructors are professionals working in a field relevant to their teaching subject, allowing them to “breathe life into the theory and make it three-dimensional,” said Cammie Hering, chief negotiator for PSUFA and adjunct instructor in the department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. “The subject is not just academic to me,” Hering said. “I have names and faces with me.”
Adjunct instructors also face undeniable disadvantages. According to Jacobson, adjuncts may not be working with the faculty to coordinate curriculum, and they may not be in touch with discussions that take place about standards and policies. She pointed out that they may not be able to adequately advise students about credit requirements and campus resources, either.
“Because adjuncts have to have another job or two, they can’t always be there for their students to talk face-to-face,” Jacobson said. “This can be a serious problem.”
