Local adjunct professors scrape by

On the college campuses around Rochester, adjunct professor Kristi Krumrine is what's known as a "freeway flier." She drives from one campus to another during the semester as a part-time teacher.

"The craziest was fall 2010 when I taught five classes at five different colleges — one each at Geneseo, Fisher, MCC, GCC and RIT," said Krumrine, who is based at Geneseo. Her Jeep Patriot, bought new in 2009, broke down in less than four years and after more than 93,000 miles.

Krumrine, who is 43, is paid a bit under $3,000 a class teaching at St. John Fisher College and slightly less than that at State University College at Geneseo for the anthropology courses that she teaches as an adjunct. That's in the range of the national norm for such salaries.

Adjuncts, who have been characterized as a white-collar version of migrant workers, are making up a growing percentage of the higher education faculty, but getting little in return, even though colleges have become major players in the economy. And parents shelling out thousands of dollars for their children's college tuition might be surprised that — at some schools — the teachers of many classes get poverty-level wages.

"It is part of the corporate mindset that has moved into higher education," said Adrianna Kezar, who as professor of higher education at the University of Southern California has written extensively on the changes at America's colleges.

Part-time faculty, which is how adjuncts are classified by the U.S. Department of Education, accounted for 44 percent of the about 6,000 teaching positions at 11 local colleges for the 2011-12 school year, according to statistics compiled by the American Association of University Professors.

Many adjuncts, such as Krumrine, show up on faculty listings of multiple colleges. And full-time faculty members tend to teach more courses than part-time teachers.

But as a variety of studies have shown, adjuncts — especially at colleges facing financial difficulties — are in much greater use, now filling about half of college faculty positions nationwide compared with almost 20 percent in 1970.

Adjuncts used to come largely from outside academia, bringing with them a certain expertise or special set of skills. And some adjuncts still fit this profile, such as Kathleen Connor, who teaches as an adjunct at St. John Fisher while holding down her job as curator at the George Eastman House.

But that's not the profile of the 64 adjuncts listed as teaching English or philosophy at Monroe Community College. Their starting salary can be as little as $2,901 per three-credit course — far less than the $45,378 that a full-time starting instructor would get.

"It's not a high number in terms of the landscape of higher education," said MCC Provost Michael McDonough, who noted that almost every student must take English, and that while adjuncts outnumber full-time faculty, more classes are taught by the latter.

But one thing almost all adjuncts share is a low salary — and that troubles Connor.

"I feel higher education is being managed on the backs of adjuncts," she said.

And Connor can understand why so many adjuncts are reluctant to discuss publicly their plight; few agreed to be interviewed for this story. "No one wants to go on record being nasty to the people who pay them," she said.

'Unstable' life

Billy Bonneau, 22, who graduated from Fisher this month with a degree in communications and legal studies, has plenty of good things to say about adjuncts.

"You just trust their information is correct," said Bonneau. "They are just as worthy of earning the same pay as regular professors."

Julie Crowell, a local resident whose daughter, Hannah, just graduated from Fisher, prefers adjuncts to full-time faculty because of the practical experience they bring to the job.

But stringing together low-paying teaching jobs and living in a world of uncertainty is not why many adjuncts invested tens of thousands of dollars — sometimes going deep into debt — to earn master's and doctoral degrees.

And paying those debts on an adjunct's salary isn't easy.

"Adjuncts commonly have classes canceled weeks before they meet because of low enrollment," said adjunct Jonathan Rich about the uncertainty that comes with the job.

Rich, 58, who has a master's in journalism from the University of Missouri and a master's in business administration from New York University, teaches as an adjunct in business at MCC and English at Fisher.

"Unstable" is how he describes life as an adjunct.

One of the themes that adjuncts are organizing around is that treating them as expendable can affect the quality of their teaching.

"We really believe that faculty working conditions will affect the quality for students. Faculty working conditions are student learning conditions," said Marie Maisto, an Akron-based adjunct who is president of the national network, the New Faculty Majority.

Not a living wage

Michelle Towner, 29, who has earned a master's in accounting from The College at Brockport, works at a local accounting firm and, likewise, hopes to teach full time someday. Teaching at SUNY Geneseo — for $2,300 a class — is a way she can get experience.

But few adjuncts can depend on teaching to make a living.

"What you are making pays for day care," said Ammie Mitchell who has been making about $9,600 — $2,400 a course — a year for the anthropology courses she teaches at Brockport.

While Mitchell, 32, finds teaching rewarding, the low pay is not. "It's horrible and wonderful all at the same time," said Mitchell, whose husband, Christopher, is a paramedic with the Tonawanda Police Department in Erie County.

Changes in the makeup of college faculty across the nation were documented by the Coalition on the Academic Workforce, which represents various higher education and faculty associations concerned about workforce conditions.

Their 2010 report, based on 25,212 responses to a survey, found the median pay for adjuncts was $2,700 for a three-credit course.

Cornell University higher education professor Suzanne Mettler puts the increased use of adjuncts in the context of decreased public dollars going to colleges.

"If the period between 1960 and 1980 saw public education flourishing, the years since then see it languishing," writes Mettler in her new book, Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream.

Spending per student by states dropped by 26 percent over the past two decades, according to Mettler.

In this dynamic, part-time faculty grew by 300 percent between 1975 and 2011, while full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty increased by only 26 percent, according to the Association of American University Professors.

Many of these trends are summed up in a recently released report, "The Just-in-Time Professor," by the Democratic staff of the House Committee on Education and Workforce.

The report tells how "the post-secondary workforce has undergone a remarkable change over the last several decades."

Maisto of the New Faculty Majority said that colleges are turning increasingly to adjuncts as a cost-saver — but at a cost of not providing them with the support they need.

"What we need to do is reconnect with the core mission of higher education — teaching and learning," she said.

High frustration

Local colleges often justify the low pay to adjuncts on the grounds that their responsibilities are fewer.

"The workload for the two groups is significantly different. Full-time faculty have many additional duties related to scholarship and research, curriculum design and development, advising and service," said Rochester Institute of Technology Provost Jeremy Haefner.

But with many colleges cutting back on tenure-track positions, a part-time teaching job is all that is now available for many with graduate degrees wanting to teach at the college level.

The decline in public funding for colleges has many schools in a bind, without enough money for the faculty they need.

"Employing part-time instructors is necessary to meet the demands of the college's open-access policy in the face of declining real public support," said Finger Lakes Community College spokeswoman Lenore Friend.

The $2,497 that FLCC will receive from the state for each student is about $439 less than it would have been had the state reimbursement rate kept pace with inflation over the past five years.

To make matters worse, some colleges have taken steps to avoid providing health care to adjuncts under the Affordable Care Act.

Starting last year, FLCC limited the number of hours an adjunct can teach to 12 hours a week.

This change, said Friend, is based on an Internal Revenue Service ruling that says one reasonable way to determine whether an adjunct reaches the 30-hour trigger is to consider that for every hour an adjunct spends in the classroom, another 1.25 hours is spent in preparation for that class and related activities.

By this math, a 12-hour limit for being in the classroom comes out to 27 hours a week in teaching and work outside the classroom — meaning health care would not have to be provided by the college. If the adjunct faculty member was required to attend a meeting or hold office hours, that time would be added to the weekly total.

The 12-hour limit is bad news for FLCC adjunct Holger Stave, who had been teaching eight courses in advanced first aid and CPR a semester at FLCC but saw his course load — and income — drop dramatically by the college's change of rules.

"To put it nicely, it is a difficult struggle. It's constant uncertainty about how many courses you will actually teach," said Stave, 67, who is president of the Greater Rochester Adjuncts Dedicated to Education, which is the union representing FLCC adjuncts.

Stave also works part-time — on a seasonal basis — as a captain of the Canandaigua Lady tourist boat. But teaching was the staple of his income.

"Levels of frustration are very high," he said.

Jeffrey Baker, who is adjunct director for the Faculty Council at Monroe Community College, compared current adjunct pay at MCC with what adjuncts were paid in the late '60s by the school. He found that salaries are about 60 percent of what they should be had their salary kept pace with inflation.

Adjuncts can get health insurance from MCC, but unlike full-time faculty, they must pay the full tab, benefiting only from having the amount owed taken out of their paycheck on a pre-tax basis, said Baker.

Salary limitations

Adjuncts may be just as talented as full-time professors, but can find themselves vying for the small number of tenure-track positions available.

Many adjuncts, such as Krumrine, have another means of support: Her husband is now a full-time professor at the State University College at Geneseo. And while adjuncts typically have a master's or doctorate degree, some scrape by on income from professions that don't require any college degree, such as house painting.

Krumrine, who is completing her Ph.D. in anthropology, also teaches an online course at RIT, which cuts down on travel time, a plus especially since she is helping raise two children.

She hopes to get a tenure-track position once she earns her doctoral degree. And while being an adjunct should help put her on that track, the pay has not made much of a dent in repaying the loans she took out to pay for her college education.

Fionnuala Regan has also been performing the adjunct balancing act — teaching English at MCC and Fisher, while raising four children with her husband, Sean, who is a research scientist at UR.

She said that her experience with full-time faculty has been very positive. "They are supportive, respectful and encouraging," she said.

But an adjunct's salary has its limitations.

"So despite the flexibility that adjuncting offers, you cannot support a family with it, even when teaching five classes a semester like I normally do," she said.

Regan, who has a master's in English from City University of New York, started her career in the mid-1980s, working as an associate producer for NBC Radio Network, and is hoping to line up full-time work.

"As our kids are going to college, we need the money more," Regan said.

JGOODMAN@DemocratandChronicle.com

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More from the colleges

• Roberts Wesleyan College: Has a small number of adjuncts because about 20 percent of full-time faculty members do "overload," getting extra pay for teaching beyond 12 credits to undergraduates or nine credits to graduate students. Starting pay for three-credit undergraduate course is $2,151.

• MCC: Although the college employs more part-time faculty by head count, adjuncts teach 38 percent of the courses. An adjunct can't teach more than 9 credits per semester. Adjuncts enable flexibility in staffing and allow more courses to be offered. Starting pay for three-credit course ranges from $2,901 to $3,558.

• UR: Uses part-time faculty to augment full-time faculty."Adjuncts" are a special category of faculty who are often affiliated with an institution that has a cooperative relationship with UR. Normally, UR does not pay these adjuncts. Part-time faculty members are typically compensated in proportion to the amount of time they have given in service to the college.

• RIT: Most adjuncts have specific professional experience. Average pay for a three-credit course is $3,500. Can't teach more than 50 percent of full-time load. Adjuncts are brought in to provide special expertise.

• The College at Brockport: Cites expertise adjuncts bring to classroom that academics might not have and allows bringing in faculty where there is not a need for full-time position. Standard starting salary is $2,400 for three-credit course. To save money, the college reduced spending on adjuncts by 5 percent to 10 percent this past school year.

• Nazareth College: Tells of unique expertise adjuncts bring to its professional programs, such as music studio classes, and says adjuncts are also a cost-saving measure. They can teach up to six credit hours per semester.

• SUNY Geneseo: Adjuncts teach about 17 percent of classes. Although there can be exceptions, standard starting salary for an adjunct teaching a three-credit course was $2,100, which will be raised to $2,400 in the fall. Stresses use of adjuncts to fill temporary needs and meet shifting student interests.

• St. John Fisher College: Adjuncts bring certain expertise to classroom, such as current business practices. Starting pay ranges from $2,645 to $3,235 for a three-credit course. Adjuncts generally teach three to six hours a week.

• FLCC: Greatest use of adjuncts for physical education, while 67 percent of science/technology and business sections are taught by full-time faculty. Starting pay for adjuncts ranges from $2,595 to $2,670 for a three-credit course.

• Genesee Community College: Adjuncts can teach a maximum of nine hours a week. Starting pay for adjuncts is $1,956 to $2,190 for a three-credit course.

College Name

Source: American Association of University Professors