Just caught this over at Inside Higher Ed. Outrageous!
For many adjuncts, an extra course assignment can make all the difference in the world. More money, of course, but also the chance to do more teaching at a single institution. And for some, that extra course may result in a total teaching load that moves them up a pay scale or entitles them to health insurance or other benefits. At San Antonio College, some of those extra courses are coming with an unusual stipulation. Adjuncts are being encouraged to take on extra courses, as the institution can’t afford to hire as many full timers as it would like. But San Antonio also has rules — providing benefits and higher base pay — to those who teach 12 credits or more. What to do? The college is asking some part timers to take on the extra courses that bring their total to 12 or beyond, but then to agree in writing to pretend that they aren’t teaching 12 credits.
Concerned faculty members provided Inside Higher Ed with copies of signed waivers and memos that are used in such situations. A department chair writes a dean a memo saying that a given adjunct will be teaching just over 12 credits this fall, but then adds that the adjunct is willing to sign a form so that he doesn’t get the benefits to which he would otherwise be entitled. Then the corresponding waiver, which is notarized, has the same adjunct certify that he is waiving 1 semester credit of pay, so that he will be paid for less than 12 credits, even though he has committed to teaching just over 12 credits. The faculty members who provided the documentation did so on the condition that the adjuncts who agreed to these terms not be identified.
Gwendolyn Bradley, who works on adjunct issues for the American Association of University Professors, said that the practice “seems to mark a new low in the exploitation of adjunct faculty.”
Read the full article here.
Perverse Egalitarianism 