jobsmission and the of higher ed - aft · back into the economy. food stamps: the upplemental s...

A hand up is not a handout 1

The jobs forecast 4

Colleges are starving their faculty 11

The paradox of adjunct teaching 13

Research university faculty strike 16

Acing the first years Innovative CUNY program gets at heart of student success PAGE 6

Occupy Higher Ed!Contingent faculty live higher ed’s job crisis PAGE 9

Revving the economyA well-educated workforce is key to prosperity PAGE 2

Gainful employmentProtecting students from ‘debt-end’ lives PAGE 14

VOL. 33, NO. 3 | SPRING 2014

and the Mission of Higher Ed

Jobs

EDITOR’S NOTE

Our MissiOnThe American Federation of Teachers is a union of professionals that champions fairness; democracy; economic opportunity; and high-quality public education, healthcare and public services for our students, their families and our communities. We are committed to advancing these principles through community engagement, organizing, collective bargaining and political activism, and especially through the work our members do.

RANDI WEINGARTENPresident

LORRETTA JOHNSONSecretary-Treasurer

FRANCINE LAWRENCEExecutive Vice President

MARCuS MROWkAActing Communications Director

ROGER S. GLASSEditor

bARbARA MckENNA Managing Editor

ADRIENNE COLESDANIEL GuRSkyANNETTE LICITRA MIkE ROSEContributing Editors

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SHARON WRIGHTProduction Specialist

SHAWNITRA HAWkINSALICIA NICkProduction Staff

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© 2014 AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEAChERS, AFL-CIO

Cover illustration: MIChAEL GLENWOOD

What is higher education’s obligation to society as the economy slowly recovers from the great recession? What do we owe to millions of workers who remain suspend-ed, the rug pulled out from under them, won-dering where they will land as they replace their jobs, homes and savings, and rebuild their lives?

how do we keep the doors of opportunity open to the millions of young people for whom higher education is the launching pad to pro-ductive adulthood—a means to learn who they are, what they can do, and how they will pay their bills despite an economic future more uncertain than what their parents knew?

What do colleges and universities owe to businesses and legislatures? these entities have expectations for building a workforce, but they lack the will or resources to contribute to the cost.

Finally, what is the obligation of institu-tions of higher education—from community colleges to research universities—to provide sustainable jobs to their own frontline work-ers, the faculty and academic staff who have the most direct impact on student success?

This issue of AFT On Campus tackles some of these questions. in “Fueling economic growth” on page 2, economists noah Berger and Peter Fisher show that an educated work-force has the greatest impact on a state’s eco-nomic prosperity over time. depriving state coffers of revenues that are necessary to sus-tain public education undermines long-term goals for productivity.

Making sure students are able to complete college successfully and continue to the next step—more school or a job—is another area that has an impact on individuals and the economy. The accelerated study in associate Programs, or asaP, at the city university of new York’s two-year colleges is resulting in remarkable graduation rates for nontradi-tional students, as is described in “acing community college,” on page 6, written by ann hulbert of The Atlantic. it shows the power of targeted interventions—such as small financial grants, and emotional and academic guidance—to keep adult students on their chosen paths.

another major help for nontraditional stu-dents in career education would be protection from the abusive practices of some for-profit colleges. on page 14, policy analyst Ben Miller,

of the new america Foundation, explains why the federal government must craft and enforce strong gainful employment regulations to rein in predatory for-profit programs.

speaking of questionable practices, we cannot discuss employment in the united states without talking about higher educa-tion’s reliance on contingent faculty—and the havoc it wreaks on academics’ lives. in “oc-cupy higher education!” on page 9, cunY’s Michael Fabricant issues a call to arms that will resonate for those who believe in the strength of unions to give voice to the disem-powered. on page 10, we tell you more about what the aFt is doing to move in new direc-tions on adjunct organizing.

it is a travesty that higher education insti-tutions are crucial to feeding a full-employ-ment economy, yet they are among the big-gest exploiters of contingent workers, as henry Ford community college’s John Mc-donald points out in “dirty secrets,” on page 13. such policies not only rob students, they undermine and dehumanize the instructors. You can read some of their stories on pages 10, 12 and 13.

The aFt believes that we must reject poli-cies of austerity that lead to disinvesting in higher education and shifting the funding burden from the public sphere to the backs of students and contingent faculty. it’s time to reclaim the promise of affordable, high-qual-ity higher education for the country.

—BARBARA McKENNA

Jobs and the mission of higher education

TALk TO uS!

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WHERE WE STAND

aMericans love the notion that we can all pull ourselves up by the bootstraps. Yet in this time when millions of jobs have vanished in the united states, supports for struggling americans are crumbling, and edu-cation budgets have been squeezed and slashed, we need to focus on another enduring american ideal—strengthening the rungs on the lad-der of opportunity.

rather than helping the millions of individuals and families who have been affected by the economic earth-quakes that have reshaped the amer-ican economy, many goP lawmakers are employing an alarming blend of spin and psychology to justify unrav-eling the social safety net. Their ratio-nale? extending unemployment benefits would be a “disservice” to jobless individu-als, and the food stamp program encourages “dependency” and “discourages people from working.” such logic ignores the mil-lions of people who rely on assistance not because they are shirking work, but because they’re unable to find it. The troubling mes-sage is that aid for people in poverty or in crisis is a handout, not a hand up.

let’s do a mini-lesson in critical thinking. here’s a glossary of programs that many law-makers love to hate. let’s examine whether they are a drain on or a benefit to individuals, their families and our communities.

Unemployment insurance: there are currently more out-of-work job seekers than jobs being created, and many new jobs re-quire new skills. unemployment insurance is a lifeline for americans looking for work as well as for their families. and it’s good for the economy. unemployment insurance lifted an estimated 2.5 million people out of poverty in 2012 alone. one dollar of extend-ed unemployment insurance pumps $1.49 back into the economy.

Food stamps: The supplemental nutri-tion assistance Program helped 4 million people climb out of poverty in 2012 and kept millions from going hungry. and every $5 billion of food stamps generates up to $9

billion in economic activity. Medicaid: The affordable care act allows

states to expand Medicaid coverage to many more low-income people, with the federal government picking up almost all of the costs. not surprisingly, expanding Medicaid to cover low-income adults reduces mortal-ity and improves access to care, particularly preventive care, which lowers healthcare costs. Yet 25 states, cheered on by the tea Party, have refused to expand coverage.

Pre-K: high-quality early learning pro-grams help close the school readiness gap for disadvantaged children and lead to greater literacy, decreased need for special educa-tion services and increased high school graduation rates. at-risk children who attend high-quality early learning programs have been shown to have increased employment as adults and higher lifetime earnings, as well as reduced incarceration and less need for social welfare programs. every dollar spent on high-quality programs produces long-term savings of at least $7.

Minimum wage: raising the fed-eral minimum wage to $10.10 by 2016 would restore it to roughly the same inflation-adjusted value it had in the late 1960s, according to the economic Policy institute. such an increase would raise the wages of 27.8 million workers, and grow gross domestic product by about $22 bil-lion, resulting in the creation of roughly 85,000 net new jobs.

Paid sick leave: Paid sick leave offers economic benefits by reduc-ing workforce turnover, increasing

productivity and lowering healthcare costs. and the health and societal benefits are priceless. Paid leave is a lifeline for female workers in particular, 42 million of whom are in poverty or on the brink, and for the 28 million children who depend on them.

Retirement: half of american house-holds have less than $3,000 in retirement savings, and those near retirement have less than $12,000. Many have none. social secu-rity provides more than 90 percent of retire-ment income for a quarter of married cou-ples and almost half of unmarried people. Yet rather than confront our retirement in-security problem, states are making it worse by cutting public sector pensions.

Union membership: the decline in unionization is directly related to the de-cline of the middle class, stagnant wages and rising income inequality in america. Workers’ pay is higher when they’re in a union, and they have greater access to health insurance and retirement benefits.

The shifts in our economy have shown how easy it is to fall into poverty and how hard it is to climb out. But this decline is not inevitable and it is not irreversible. The poli-cies described above, including a strong labor movement, are rungs on america’s ladder of opportunity. they should be strengthened, not destroyed.

A hand up is not a handoutRANDI WEINGARTEN, President, American Federation of Teachers

AFT ON CAMPUS | SPRING 2014 1

let’s strengthen the rungs on america’s ladder of opportunity.

:

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During a National Day of Action on Dec. 9, 2013, Los Angeles students and activists rallied in support of public services.

2 AFT ON CAMPUS | SPRING 2014

BY NOAh BERGER AND PETER FIShER

historicallY, u.s. econoMic growth and prosperity have been achieved through an implicit partnership of federal, state and local governments, a partnership that worked astonishingly well for a period after World War ii.

The federal government provided overall economic stability and sought to ensure that the economy never veered too far from full employment. state and local governments assumed primary responsibility for the educa-tion system, which produced a more skilled and productive workforce. Federal and state governments invested both in infrastructure, and in basic research that provided enormous

a well-educated workforce is key to state prosperity

long-term benefits for the private sector. The end result was a long period of postwar pro-ductivity growth, the prerequisite for growth in the standard of living.

during the 1970s and 1980s, state and local governments across the country be-came convinced that they should play a more aggressive and expansive role in eco-nomic policy. economic development be-came accepted as a major function of state and local government, and came to mean the direct promotion of private investment within the borders of a state or city. This led to escalating competition for a limited sup-ply of private capital investment through increasingly generous incentive packages.

State economic development wars squander resources

While cutting costs to business has become the principal focus of economic develop-ment policy in many states, more and more states are cutting programs across the spec-trum to lower state taxes. in many cases, these ideas are promoted as a way to attract employers from other states—to steal jobs by offering incentives to business leaders.

But evidence has shown that, in the long run, these strategies are inefficient and inef-fective.1 state and local taxes on business are simply too small a share of total business costs to play a significant role in location decisions; other factors—labor skills, wages,

________ Noah Berger is president of the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center. Peter Fisher is the research director at the Iowa Policy Project and professor emeritus of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Iowa, where he is a retired member of the Cedar Rapids Teachers’ Federation. This piece is adapted from a report, “A Well-Educated Workforce Is Key to State Prosperity,” published Aug. 22, 2013, by the Economic Policy Institute. Go to http://bit.ly/1jTeiyf.

Fueling Economic Growth

as public resources are squandered on unproductive state efforts to capture private investment at the expense of other states, it becomes more difficult to fund the kind of education system innovations needed to raise u.S. educational performance up to the levels of other advanced industrial societies.

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a well-educated workforce is key to state prosperity

access to inputs and markets—are much more important. Yet business tax breaks are expensive, and they take money from in-vestments in education and infrastructure that increase productivity and support growth.

as public resources are squandered on unproductive state efforts to capture private investment at the expense of other states, it becomes more difficult to fund the kind of education system innovations needed to raise u.s. educational performance to the levels of other advanced industrial societies. Furthermore, investments in public re-search universities are important to enhanc-ing the nation’s rate of innovation as the products of basic research are spun off in new private ventures, and to maintaining or recapturing our leadership role in new tech-nologies. inadequate investments in educa-tion weaken the ability of a state to develop, grow and attract businesses that offer high-skill, high-wage jobs.

strong state education systems are not just good for the national economy; they are good for the citizens of the state. ultimately, state economic policies seek to improve the lives of the people in the state, which means creating conditions in which people can get jobs that pay enough to support a family and provide economic security. This leads to a virtuous cycle, as working people who can afford to buy goods and services support local businesses and the local economy.

More education vs. low taxes: What the research shows

What can state governments do to boost the economic well-being of their people? That is the central question of state economic policy. We believe—and our research shows—that education investment, not low taxes, is key to state prosperity.

When we look at data from across the country, two clear conclusions emerge:■ There is no correlation between the overall level of taxation in a state and the ability of the economy to support high-wage jobs; and■ There is a very strong correlation between how well-educated a state workforce is and the ability of the economy to support high-wage jobs.

looking at Figure 1’s graph of overall tax levels and median earnings (a measure of wages that includes both hourly and salaried employees), one might suspect that there are just too many differences among states to see a clear correlation on any one variable.

FIGuRE 1

There is no significant correlation between overall tax levels and high-wage economies

Median hourly wage, and state and local taxes as a share of state personal income, by state, 2010

$23

$22

$21

$20

$19

$18

$17

$16

$15

$14

$137% 8% 9% 10% 11% 12% 13% 14% 15%

Med

ian

hour

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age

(201

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State and local taxes as a share of state personal income

FIGuRE 2

Median wages are substantially higher in states with better-educated workers

Relationship between state median hourly wage and share of state’s workforce with a bachelor’s degree

or more education, 2012

$21

$20

$19

$18

$17

$16

$15

$14

$1320% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45%

Med

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(201

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Share of workforce with bachelor’s degree or more education

TN

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it turns out, however, that when we look at how well-educated a state workforce is, Figure 2, we see an extremely strong correlation with economic strength: states with a well-educat-ed workforce have higher median wages than states with a less educated workforce.

overwhelmingly, high-wage states are states that have a well-educated workforce. There are virtually no outliers: There are no states with a well-educated workforce that don’t have relatively high median wages, and

Wages are higher for better-educated workersMedian annual earnings of U.S. workers, age 25+, by education, 2011

SOURCE: “Recovery: Job Growth and Education Requirements through 2020,” Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (2013), cew.georgetown.edu/recovery2020.

there are no states, with the exception of alaska and Wyoming (which have resource-based economies very different from the rest of america), that have high wages and a poorly educated workforce.

to some degree, this finding is simply stat-ing the obvious. We know that individuals with higher levels of education will generally earn higher wages (see Figure 3), and it makes sense that what is true for each worker would be true for the workforce overall.

in our modern economy, employers who pay good wages generally need well-trained and better-educated workers. By improving the overall level of education of its work-force, a state can increase the productivity of firms in its economy. That allows firms to increase both profits and wages. as econo-mist timothy Bartik has shown,2 an increase in labor supply increases labor demand, because additional labor attracts employers, and additional higher-skilled labor attracts

by EDuCATIONAL ATTAINMENT:

35 percent of the job openings will require at least a bachelor’s degree.

30 percent of the job openings will require some college or an associate degree.

36 percent of the job openings will not require education beyond high school.

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The United States will fall short by 5 million workers with postsecondary education, at the current production rate, by 2020.

In 70 percent of all occupations, math knowledge is either very important or extremely important to success.

There will be 55 million job openings in the economy through 2020: 24 million openings from newly created jobs and 31 million openings due to baby boomer retirements.

THE JOBS FORECAST: TROUBLE AHEADJob growth and education requirements through 2020


with good jobs for many workers regardless of their level of education. But in today’s world, states that want to build strong, high-wage economies cannot ignore the impor-tance of providing all their people with the opportunity to receive a high-quality educa-tion (and the related supports all children need to reach their full potential).

at the national level, there are a number of policies that can raise wages across the board: appropriate fiscal policies during

periods of underemployment, equitable labor laws that allow workers to organize, trade policies that aim to raise living stan-dards in the united states and abroad, and regulatory policies that protect our econo-my. But very few of these tools are available to state governments. states can enforce labor standards, like minimum wage laws and sick leave provisions, that make life sig-nificantly better for lower-wage workers and have a modest positive effect on the overall economy. But along with those steps that can improve the lives of working people im-mediately, states can build long-term eco-nomic strength by investing in strategies that improve the education, skills and pro-ductivity of all of their people.

Providing expanded access to high-quality education and related supports, particularly for those young people who today lack such access, will not only expand economic opportunity for those individuals, but will also likely do more to strengthen the overall state economy than anything else a state government can do.

References1. Peter Fisher, “Corporate Taxes and State Economic Growth” (Iowa City, Iowa: The Iowa Policy Project, 2013), www.iowafiscal.org/2011docs/110209-IFP-corptaxes.pdf; Robert G. Lynch, Enriching Children, Enriching the Nation: Public Investment in High-Quality Prekindergarten (Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute, 2007), www.epi.org/publication/book_enriching/; and Michael Mazerov, “Academic Research Lacks Consensus on the Impact of State Tax Cuts on Economic Growth: A Reply to the Tax Foundation” (Washington, D.C.: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2013), www.cbpp.org/files/6-17-13sfp.pdf.

2. Timothy J. Bartik, “What Works in State Economic Development?,” in Growing the State Economy: Evidence-Based Policy Options, 1st ed., ed. Stephanie Eddy and Karen Bogenschneider (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin, 2009), 1529, research.upjohn.org/bookchapters/18/.

FIGuRE 3

Wages are higher for better-educated workersMedian annual earnings of U.S. workers, age 25+, by education, 2011

$80,000

70,000

60,000

50,000

40,000

30,000

20,000

10,000

0

High schooldropout

High schoolgraduate

Associate degree

Bachelor’s degree

Master’s degree

$20,329

$28,659

$36,853

$49,648

$60,709

employers with more skilled jobs.ultimately, the wealth of a society can

increase only if the economy becomes more productive. a more productive economy can support both higher wages and higher profits, as well as shorter work weeks and a better quality of life. so the question of how to increase productivity needs to be at the center of any debate about state economic development.

Why are states shortsighted?

as obvious as this fact is, education often receives less attention in state economic policy discussions than do taxes, regula-tions and business incentives. Why? in part, it could be that states seek quick fixes, and building a well-educated workforce can re-quire a long-term commitment. But there’s another reason why education may not be receiving the attention in state economic development debates that the data suggests it should: The pattern we see today, where there is an extremely strong correlation be-tween the level of education of a workforce and the wages of the people in that state, is relatively new. as recently as the late 1970s, many of our highest-wage states had very few workers with college degrees.

in the 70s, states with heavy industry and strong unions had high-wage economies

The question of how to increase productivity needs to be at the center of any debate about state economic development.


BY ANN hULBERT

When daquan Mcgee got accepted to the Borough of Manhattan community college in the spring of 2010, he was 19 and still find-ing his footing after a two-year prison sen-tence for attempted robbery. he signed up for the standard battery of placement tests in reading, writing and math; took them cold; and failed two—writing and math. steered into summer developmental education (oth-erwise known as remediation), he enrolled

in an immersion writing course, which he passed while working full time at a top to-mato super store. Then Mcgee learned of a program for which a low-income student like him might qualify, designed to maximize his chances of earning a degree. at a late-sum-mer meeting, he got the rundown on the demands he would face.

Mcgee would have to enroll full time in the fall, he was told; part-time attendance was not permitted. every other week, he would be required to meet with his adviser, who would help arrange his schedule and track his progress. in addition to his full course load, Mcgee would have to complete his remaining remedial class, in math, im-mediately. if he slipped up, his adviser would hear about it from his instructor—and man-datory tutoring sessions would follow. if he

failed, he would have to retake the class right away. also on Mcgee’s schedule was a non-optional, noncredit weekly college success seminar, featuring time-management strate-gies, tips on study habits and goal setting, exercises in effective communication, and counsel on other life skills. the instructor would be taking attendance. if Mcgee com-plied with all that was asked of him, he would be eligible for a monthly drill: lining up in one of the hallways in the main campus building to receive a free, unlimited Metrocard good for the following month. More important, as long as he stayed on track, the portion of his tuition not already covered by financial aid would be waived.

in a hurry to make up for his wasted pris-on years, Mcgee signed up. The pace, as he’d been warned, was fast from the start, and did not ease up after the fall. Mcgee, a guy with a stocky, boxer’s build, doesn’t gush—he conveys low-key composure —but when i met him in october 2012, early in his third year, he had only praise for the unremitting pushiness, and for the array of financial ben-efits that came along with it. The package was courtesy of a promising experimental initia-tive that goes by the snappy acronym asaP, short for accelerated study in associate Pro-grams. last winter, Mcgee graduated with an associate degree in multimedia studies. it had taken him 2½ years.

________Ann Hulbert is books-and-culture editor of The atlantic magazine. She reported this piece while on a Spencer Fellowship at the Columbia Journalism School. This article is abridged from “How to Escape the Community-College Trap,” which appeared in the January/February 2014 issue of The atlantic.

An experimental program in New York is tripling the odds of student success

community college

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SAcademic adviser Gregory Bryant, left, is a lifeline for students like Daquan McGee.


Committing to completion

in the community college world, Mcgee’s achievement is a shockingly rare feat, and the program that so intently encouraged him to accomplish it is a striking anomaly. the country’s low-cost sub-baccalaureate sys-tem—created a century ago to provide an open and affordable entry into higher educa-tion to an ever more diverse group of ameri-cans—now enrolls 45 percent of all u.s. un-dergraduates, many of them part-time students. But only a fraction ever earn a de-gree, and hardly anyone does it quickly.

The associate degree is nominally a two-year credential, and the system is proud of its transfer function, sending students on-ward to four-year schools, as juniors, to pursue a bachelor’s degree—the goal that 80 percent of entrants say they aspire to. real-ity, however, typically confounds that tidy timeline. in urban community colleges like the Borough of Manhattan community col-lege, the national three-year graduation rate is 16 percent. nationwide, barely more than a third of community college enrollees emerge with a certificate or degree within six years. Behind these dismal numbers lie the best of intentions. community colleges have made it their mission to offer easy ac-cess, flexibility and lots of options to a com-muter population now dominated by “non-traditional” students.

if anything, with enthusiasm rising for massive open online courses, or Moocs, the higher education pendulum is now swinging further in this direction. The cur-rent interest in “competency-based learn-ing”—liberating students to earn degrees not by amassing credit hours but by prepar-ing for assessments of particular skills at whatever pace and by whichever route they choose—is part of the same trend. some reformers see the seeds of a revolution in college education, promising ultraconve-nient, self-guided, low-cost courses of study for everyone. The “beginning of the unbun-dling of the american university” is how one observer has described the transformation. all it will take for students to avail them-selves of this emerging opportunity is a clear sense of where they’re headed, lots of self-motivation, and good access to information about what mix of skills is likely to lead to a promising career.

and therein, of course, lies the problem.if you stop and think about it, the existing

postsecondary educational hierarchy could hardly be more perverse. students at the

bottom, whose life histories and social dis-advantages make them the most likely to need clear guidance and structure, receive astonishingly little of either. Meanwhile, students at the super-selective top, prodded toward high ambitions and disciplined hab-its by attentive parents and teachers ever since preschool, encounter solicitous over-sight every step of the way.

in 2009, President obama announced his american graduation initiative, calling on community colleges in particular to boost their completion rates. Yet a burgeon-ing array of efforts to help struggling stu-dents over this or that hump has, for the most part, delivered disappointing answers. despite lots of pilot programs that have pro-duced small, short-term boosts (marginally more students passing remedial courses or persisting for another semester), graduation rates so far have barely budged.

asaP has proved to be a remarkable ex-ception. launched in 2007 with funding from new York city Mayor Michael Bloom-berg’s center for economic opportunity, it is an unusually ambitious effort to propel low-income students through six of the city university of new York’s seven community colleges. asaP’s architects set a goal that the program’s top administrator described to me as “insane”—a three-year graduation rate of 50 percent—and according to the university’s own data, the program has ex-ceeded it. The social-policy research orga-nization Mdrc (formerly the Manpower demonstration research corporation), which began an independent study of the program in 2010, calls asaP’s record “un-paralleled.” researchers randomly assigned the study participants to either asaP or the regular community college track, and while three-year results won’t be ready until this

summer, preliminary outcomes, just re-leased, show the asaP students to be dra-matically outstripping the control group on every count—persistence, credits earned and graduation rates. a third of the students who enrolled in asaP in the spring of 2010 finished in 2½ years (compared with 18 per-cent of the control group). nationwide, that’s the proportion of all community col-lege students who emerge with a credential in six years.

The secret of asaP’s success lies outside the classroom. the program enlists extra tutors and caps some classes at 25 students, but otherwise doesn’t touch pedagogy. in-stead it aims to counter the community col-lege culture of early exits and erratic stops and starts. asaP is designed to instill, and make it possible to fulfill, the expectation that college will be a continuous, full-time commitment, just as it is for traditional,

four-year students on leafy quads. timing matters: Miss out on getting a postsecond-ary credential by 26, and your odds of ever earning one drop.

asaP offers lots of guidance, a dose of goading and a variety of well-timed incen-tives to its participants (average age at ad-mission: 21), who must sign on to the goal of graduating within three years. The pro-gram is intended primarily for low-income students with moderate remedial needs, and it accepts applicants on a first-come, first-served basis. By next fall, asaP expects to enroll more than 4,000 students. [editor’s note: The Professional staff congress, the union representing faculty and staff at cunY, has gone to the state capital to argue for resources to expand the asaP approach across the system.]

The implicit philosophy behind the pro-gram is simple: students, especially the least

The implicit philosophy behind the program is simple: Students, especially the least prepared ones, don’t just need to learn math or science; they need to learn how to navigate academic and institutional challenges more broadly, and how to plot a course—daily, weekly, monthly—toward long-term success.


prepared ones, don’t just need to learn math or science; they need to learn how to navigate academic and institutional chal-lenges more broadly, and how to plot a course—daily, weekly, monthly—toward long-term success. Pushy parents, an asset many of them don’t have, could tell you what it takes to make that happen: a mix of

The social-policy research organization MDRC, which began an independent study of the program in 2010, calls ASAP’s record “unparalleled.”

enabling and persistent nudging.lesley leppert-McKeever, who has di-

rected the Borough of Manhattan commu-nity colleges asaP program from the start, summed up the message to students this way: “look, if you do your part, we’ll do our part, and together we’ll be able to meet your target.”

asaP advisers presume that building habits of engagement takes concerted ef-fort. it’s not just that students are stretched thin by family and work demands. Many also lack college-savvy guidance at home, or past school experience to draw on.

asaP’s structure and no-nonsense style invite accusations of paternalism—pre-cisely what community colleges have been eager to avoid in the college-for-all era. Yet the prevailing model, a chinese-menu-style panoply of options without any real guidance, has not empowered academi-cally insecure students; it has failed them. good information, well-structured expec-tations, timely counsel, confidence-instill-ing directives—these are essential ingredi-ents of education, and they are all the more important for marginal students and for those blazing a trail to college for the first time in their family’s history. asaP sets out to take students’ college goals seriously, and to help equip its participants to take those goals seriously as well. The program’s ethos of persistence is contagious. “There’s definitely a shift, different for every stu-dent,” leppert-McKeever told me, “when suddenly an immature, unfocused student gets more serious.”

asaP isn’t cheap—the program spends roughly $3,900 annually per student, on top of the $9,800 that the cunY community college system spends on each of its full-time students every year—yet if you calcu-late expenditures per student who actually graduates, it saves money. the program isn’t cutting-edge either, except in deliver-ing unprecedented completion rates. scal-ing up such a comprehensive effort would be a challenge, and full-time college, of course, is never going to be for everyone. Yet at a moment when proponents of “dis-ruptive” technology are promising a trans-formation of higher education, asaP offers a different path, based on the premise that disruptions on the way to degrees are ex-actly what students at lower-tier schools need to avoid. if america is serious about being an opportunity society, daquan Mc-gee and students like him deserve the ad-vantages of the old, steady way of going to college and starting on their careers.

Reclaim the Promise at AFT’s Higher Ed Conference April 11-13 | Baltimore

PLAN TO JOIN uS FOR THE AFT NATIONAL HIGHER EDuCATION ISSuES CONFERENCE. Speakers include AFT President Randi Weingarten and University of Wisconsin professor and activist Sara Goldrick-Rab. Recharge your batteries, renew your commitment, and reclaim the promise of affordable, high-quality higher education in the year ahead!

To register or learn more, go to www.aft.org/yourwork/highered/conference2014.cfm.

ASAP director Lesley Leppert-McKeever, shown with Bryant and McGee, makes sure everyone does his or her part to make ASAP a success.


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over the Past tWo decades, scorch-and-burn policy directed at higher educa-tion, K-12 schooling and healthcare has intensified.

Policymakers have promulgated a series of initiatives intended not only to starve but to monetize public services. What this means, in part, is that market-faith-based polit ical ideology dominates polic y decision-making.

in the present fiscal and political mo-ment, public services are ever more likely to become centers of profit-making. From char-ter schools to profit-making hospitals to Phoenix university, the evidence is clear. as historic rates of profit are more difficult to achieve outside of ever-riskier speculative bubbles, the gaze of private entrepreneurs

Occupy higher education!Building contingent faculty power

searching for new zones of opportunity has increasingly focused on the public purse—and specifically on public education, which in the united states alone represents $600 billion of potential revenue.

The labor force left behind in these starved public institutions is expected to shoulder more and more responsibility for less and less pay, professional development and hope of making a difference. it is within this context that the role of part-time faculty in public higher education must be understood. Part-timers are the very cheap labor force neces-sary to sustain starved public higher educa-tion institutions.

A brief history of part-time faculty labor

The experience of the city university of new York, situated within a global city, is repre-sentative of trends within public higher education both nationally and internation-ally. Before the fiscal crisis in new York city, the number of part-time faculty at cunY was relatively small. These instructors large-ly filled niche positions, either teaching courses that required a very specialized expertise not otherwise available, or provid-

ing, as a distinguished writer, artist or prac-titioner, a perspective critical to disciplinary discourse. individually and collectively, these faculty often were not eligible for per-manent positions because they lacked aca-demic credentials.

clearly, the needs they filled continue to exist and drive a share of the demand for part-time faculty labor. however, the rapid expansion of part-time faculty labor during the past 40 years cannot be ascribed to this rather narrow set of needs and demands.

The second stage in the evolution of the part-time faculty labor force has coincided with the growing fiscal crisis of public univer-sities. recent accommodation to the starva-tion of public education has resulted in an intensified exploitation of instructional labor through lower hourly pay, few (if any) ben-efits and little job security, as contrasted with full-time faculty. For cunY—an urban sys-tem of two- and four-year colleges, profes-sional and graduate schools, and research institutes—this intensified exploitation has resulted in a 60 percent increase in part-time faculty during the past 13 years. Presently, these contingent workers are teaching more than 50 percent of the courses at cunY.

________ Michael Fabricant is a professor of social welfare at Hunter College of the City University of New York and treasurer of the Professional Staff Congress. This article is adapted from “The 21st Century Gold Rush: The Plunder of Public Assets and a Radically Restructured Teaching Labor Force,” from the September 2013 issue of Working usa.


desPite decades of agitation, action and organizing, the problems of a higher educa-tion workforce that is now predominantly contingent outstrip union advocates’ ability to keep up with organizing demands. The aFt represents the largest number of adjunct, part-time and nontenure-track faculty—more than 100,000—and is charting a plan that will lead organizing efforts in new directions.

at the January meeting of the aFt’s higher education program and policy council in Washington, d.c., the stories of disillusioned yet still passionately committed adjuncts in-formed every aspect of the discussion. nation-ally, the higher education division is analyzing the results of a hart research associates sur-vey of part-time/adjunct faculty priorities and needs. in Philadelphia, it is organizing a corps of 15,000 adjuncts who teach in a 30-mile area that includes 43 colleges and universities.

The time is now for organizing contingent facultyheartening developments on capitol hill and in the nation

there have been other recent develop-ments that are heartening. on Jan. 24, the house committee on education and the Workforce released “The Just-in-time Profes-sor,” a report compiled by the committee’s senior democrat from california, rep. george Miller. he held an online e-forum to collect information and adjunct experiences, and heard from more than 800 people. The report is the first official acknowledgement by a congressional committee that the aca-demic staffing crisis in higher education is severe. adjuncts do not have the time and resources they need for things like adequate class preparation and office hours. “What is especially troubling is the clear link the re-port makes between the exploitation of ad-juncts and the quality of education that col-lege students receive,” notes aFt President randi Weingarten.

also in January, the new Faculty Major-ity, a coalition of faculty and academic or-ganizations, held a research briefing on capitol hill, which aFt leaders attended. it presented results from the delphi Project on the effect on students of a workforce that is more than 70 percent contingent, when graduate employees are factored in.

aFt leaders are committed to moving in new directions to strengthen the voice and reach of this essential part of our workforce, says PPc co-chair sandra schroeder, who is an aFt vice president and past presi-dent of aFt Washington. this will occur through organizing, advocacy, greater participation on the union’s governance boards, community outreach, and deeper communication about the impact on work-ers and students of failing to invest in the academic workforce.

The exploitation of part-time faculty la-bor has been accompanied by rapid increas-es in tuition, often especially affecting very poor students of color. at cunY, tuition accounted for 5 percent and 22 percent, re-spectively, of the operating budget at four-year and community colleges in 1991—16 years after the fiscal crisis. By 2011, tuition represented 47 percent of the total revenue at four-year colleges and 42 percent at com-munity colleges.

This increased tuition is being extracted from students whose family income is near or below the poverty line. in 2011, for ex-ample, 54 percent of cunY students’ family income was less than $30,000. The toxic in-equality seeping ever deeper into cunY soil is therefore being produced by both the low wages of part-time faculty and the increased tuition charged to relatively poor students.

This experience is not specific to cunY; it is replicated in california, texas, athens, london and Madrid. What we have in high-er education is institutions trying to stay afloat on the backs of poor students and an exploited, increasingly poor, part-time labor force.

The impact of for-profit education

This effort to extract ever-greater value from cheapened forms of academic labor, how-ever, is in the very earliest stages of a third

IN ThE WINTER OF 2006, I was an adjunct English professor at a university in Fairbanks, Alaska, with a baby due at the beginning of the spring semester. If I needed to take maternity leave, it would be unpaid. But the choice that I faced—either care for my newborn and go broke, or keep teaching—was never really a choice. At 27, I was a college professor on food stamps.

In 2003, my husband Alex and I built our own house on land we’d bought for cheap. Three years later, the house was still unfinished, but it was dry and warm, and we had nowhere else to live. Alex was working full time and trying to finish the house. I was teaching and taking care of two kids under 3. After Adelaide was born and I couldn’t work, we ran out of cash for gas and groceries. We decided to apply for food stamps. We relied on them for part of 2006, but as soon as the next semester started, I went back to teaching.

Growing up, I always thought teaching at a university was a “good” job, with security and respect. But in my experience, adjunct professors are underpaid, receive no benefits, have no job security and get very little respect. The majority of college classes nationwide are taught by adjuncts.

Being an adjunct professor means that I’m only ever hired for the length of one college semester, and, after 10 years of teaching, I’m paid $4,000 per course I teach. My potential for promotion is nonexistent. So are my benefits. I work days, nights and weekends—grad-ing, planning, teaching—and Alex and I trade off watching the kids.

Today, I’m still an adjunct professor, but I don’t feel as helpless as I did a few years ago. As for Alex, he received a grant from the Rasmuson Foundation for emerging artists, which enabled him to establish his own design studio, AlexMetalArts. In November, his work was included in an exhibition at a local gallery. For the moment, we can pay our bills. Maybe one day we’ll even get to take a vacation.

Kate Quick is an adjunct professor who lives in Fairbanks, Alaska, and teaches at the University of Alaska, where she is a member of United Academic Adjuncts/APEA/AFT-AAUP. These comments are excerpted from a column published in the huffington Post on Jan. 24, 2014.

KATE QUICK“ I was a professor on food stamps . ”


movement, which will deploy more and more part-time faculty in profit-making sites. The ascent of virtual learning, and the consequent packaging and transmission of courses to growing audiences through Moocs (massive online open courses), represent a next stage of development for higher education. This third movement will likely place an increasing number of part-time faculty outside the formal university, join their work more explicitly to profit-making, and structure their instruction to follow standardized Mooc curricula.

it is within this context that virtual learn-ing in starved public universities will likely produce greater concentrations of part-time faculty laboring under the degraded condi-tions of standardized curricula, increased

class sizes, and diminished time to initiate or sustain contact with students.

The consequent organizing dilemmas

Perhaps the single most important issue fac-ing public higher education is the cheapen-ing of its labor force and the reduced quality of classroom instruction. For unions, chang-ing that reality requires us to address three organizing dilemmas.

1. How can part-time faculty create alli-ances with full-time faculty when their interests appear to be so disparate? Moral invective, exhortation and/or critique will not be effective in either the short or long term. Falling wages and diminished job se-

curity will continue as long as management can exploit vulnerable and cheapened aca-demic labor. relationships have to be built, deepened and extended over the long term based on shared interests. This organizing work requires learning how to engage across experiences, especially for more privileged full-time or tenure-track faculty. conse-quently, a primary task for full-time faculty is to learn how to listen to and engage with part-timers, and anticipate impediments as well as construct a shared agenda for change.

2. How can part-time faculty build collec-tivity given the press of individual survival needs? organizing requires time and space. how does one find the time to build political power in the midst of running from course to

InstItutIons are starving their faculty

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Higher education institutions have grown more reliant on contingent faculty—part-time/adjunct, nontenure- track instructors and graduate employees.

Proportion of contingent faculty

1970

2014

20%

51%

And institutions pay them pauper wages.

Avg. pay per course for a part-time instructor

Avg. pay per course for a part-time instructor working under a union contract

Avg. pay per year for a “part-time” instructor carrying a full-time teaching load

2013 income threshold necessary to qualify for food stamps

$2,700 $3,100 $21,600 $25,392

Average pay for nonacademic professionals with equivalent degrees

A California study recently found that a family of three in California relying solely on the median adjunct salary would qualify for numerous subsidies.

$56,500 bachelor’s degree

$70,000 master’s degree

$91,000 doctoral degree

Medicaid

earned income tax credit

child tax credit

food stamps

Totaling $13,645 per year in taxpayer aid

SOURCE: “A Portrait of Part-Time Faculty Members,” Coalition on the Academic Workforce (2012); “Education Pays 2013,” College Board; “The Just-in-Time Professor,” house Committee on Education and the Workforce Democratic Staff (2014).


course, trying to scrape together the money to meet housing, food and healthcare needs, without job security? and how does one deal with the depletion of energy often leeching from alliances with authority figures who manage course distribution? organizing re-quires robust relationships. how can those

JENNIE ShANKER“ The wind changed direction.”

relationships be built, given this press of time and the reality of part-time faculty hurtling through the space of multiple course assign-ments in different places? organizing re-quires optimism; however, cynicism about the prospects of collectivity or unions is per-sistent. how might we use new forms of tech-

nology to engage part-time workers, collec-tivize their experience virtually and, in turn, reinvent union organizing? equally impor-tant, how can we build strategically toward selected movement events that will be suc-cessful in creating both the evidence and the hope that collective action will improve the circumstances of part-time faculty?

3. How do we build alliances outside the university at a moment when every other part of the nonprofit and public sector world is burdened with intensifying auster-ity? The occupy Wall street movement point-ed us in the right direction. redressing in-equality and redistributing concentrated private dollars into job creation and livable wages through the commons must be at the heart of our shared political agenda. greater investment in healthcare, education, infra-structure construction and the development of green industries through redistributive tax policies must be at the center of the struggle.

in the absence of such redistribution and investment in the economy, labor in and outside the academy will continue to be mar-ginalized, and the present crisis of dimin-ished demand and expansive debt will only intensify. the organizing work locally, na-tionally and globally must emphasize not only the sense of progressive taxation but also the particular ways in which it can ben-efit the 99 percent.

clearly, this is not an exhaustive listing of our organizing dilemmas. no simple answer exists for how to build part-time faculty power. There must be many organizing con-versations between full- and part-time fac-ulty to build a web of relationships and iden-tify which issues represent the best beginning points for launching a campaign. Full- and part-time academics and sanitation workers, people of color and white folks, public work-ers and those we serve, must cohere into a single fighting force.

our political project must, in large part, involve enlarging informal and formal activ-ist networks, thus bolstering our sectarian union fight, while searching for ways to ex-pand campaigns into a social movement. This can be done by joining with other work-ers—not out of an abstract solidarity, but out of a deeply felt understanding that job inse-curity, declining wages, cannibalization of public services and heightened vulnerability are widely shared experiences. The attack is not simply on the academy or even the public sphere, it is on every worker.

The exploitation of part-time faculty labor has been accompanied by rapid increases in tuition, often especially affecting very poor students of color.

ThERE ARE TWO ThINGS I have pursued relentlessly in my life: the practice of art and teaching. They have taken precedence over my personal life, threatened my financial well-being and challenged my better judgment.

I always had plenty of work before teaching. You learn a lot of skills as a sculptor. I had built a freelance business as a metal fabricator, doing work for architects, retailers, restaurant chains, as well as museums, galleries and various Philadelphia institutions.

But I wanted to teach. I pursued a graduate degree to earn the credential to teach art, and went back a few years later to gain a solid background in education. It took a while to get my foot in the door, but once I started teaching, I knew I’d found my home in the world. It was tough, compelling and consequential.

Soon I was teaching in three places, carrying more than a full-time load, four to seven courses a semester. It was always feast or famine, but there was freelance work when times were lean. Full-time appointments started to come along—first sabbatical replace-ments, then nontenure-track jobs and interim chair posts. I taught full time for more than seven years. I received a lot of encouragement and support along the way. Yet when permanent positions came around, the wind changed direction.

These jobs offered a sense of security, but really, all along I was an adjunct. Since the slide back into that reality, I’ve had only one or two courses per semester.

Colleges have changed radically over my 15 years of experience. I can no longer encourage my students to pursue teaching in good faith, and I worry about the future of higher education. Imagine if the commitment that contingent faculty have shown toward their institutions was reciprocal. All faculty would benefit, as would schools. Most importantly, we’d be capable of an even higher quality of education. Without that commitment, 70 percent of every student’s classes are being taught without a guarantee of academic freedom. This is an alarming threat. We need to recognize the weak condition we are in. There must be a change in the attitudes and culture that have allowed this to happen.

Jennie Shanker is a sculptor and adjunct professor of art who teaches at Philadelphia-area colleges. She is also part of the AFT’s organizing campaign, the United Academics of Philadelphia.


BY JOhN McDONALD

the exPloitation of adjunct faculty has long been higher education’s dirty little secret. less noticed is that it is an appalling irony.

truth be told, the “dirty secret” hasn’t been “little” for some time. at most public institu-tions, adjunct faculty are responsible for 50 to 70 percent of the instruction taking place.

aFt surveys indicate that fully one-third of adjunct faculty rely on several low-wage, no-benefit appointments to survive. This percent-age is certainly much higher for many ad-juncts at many colleges. in fact, the workloads of adjunct/part-time faculty often amount to a full-time position and more, with many teaching multiple sections at two, three, four and, yes, even five institutions.

rep. george Miller (d-calif.) and the house committee on education and the Workforce recently released “The Just-in-time Professor,” a report on the pay and conditions ofadjunct faculty. The story it captures, com-plete with heart-rending testimony from ad-juncts, means the dirty secret is out.

Miller’s report also identifies a “paradox”: The federal government and many states are calling for—and students are seeking—educa-tion that will prepare students for middle-class, secure careers and opportunities for advancement. That ultimate goal is precisely what is denied the adjunct faculty who are expected to provide these students such edu-cation and opportunity.

aside from the immense challenges ad-junct faculty face in providing students a high-quality education, aside from research that shows student persistence and retention is enhanced by faculty who are afforded the time and professional compensation to mentor as well as instruct students, aside from all this—what message is being sent to students about the value and rewards of pursuing higher education?

in particular, what message is being sent to first-generation, underprepared, underprivi-leged immigrant students, as well as to more-advantaged students? What message is being

sent about the value of the hard work that edu-cation entails, about the possibility of eco-nomic advancement and social mobility, and about the liberating value of education?

What message is being sent when the faculty teaching these students have pursued advanced degrees, mastered pedagogy, kept current in their fields, and struggled to conduct research and publish, yet are paid subsistence wages or worse and are denied benefits, job security, true professional standing and any semblance of a career ladder?

Perhaps worst of all, we must acknowledge the appalling fact that the exploitation has put the burden of higher education’s funding defi-cits onto the backs of adjuncts.

Dirty secretsThe appalling irony of adjuncts’ role in higher education

________John McDonald is president of Henry Ford Community College Federation of Teachers and an AFT vice president.

For decades, state funding of higher educa-tion has plummeted. as a consequence, tu-ition and student debt have soared, as have the numbers and misuse of adjunct faculty.

Thanks to aFt efforts over the years—and to rep. Miller—light is being shed on the “dirty big secret” and appalling irony of exploited adjunct faculty. it is in our students’ interest, our profession’s interest and the nation’s inter-est that this light becomes political heat.

MARIO hERNANDEz “ The second I was no longer poor, I had

the strength to see what poverty is.”

WhEN I WAS PROMOTED from part-time to full-time academic work, naturally I was elated. No poor person is going to decline a near doubling of his or her wages. But emotionally, I went into a state of shock that persisted for over a year.

What I was feeling was the moral exhaustion of my poverty washing over me, all of its toxins released into my system at once, to be finally washed out of my bloodstream. All those terrible lies I told myself to sustain myself through years of iniquitous suffering—lies I told so I could face my colleagues and my family, and so I could do the work that was destroying me—all those lies were called out at once, and the second I was no longer poor, I had the strength to see what poverty is.

No college has to be a factory that assembles poor people. No college has to create a class of near-homeless professors, of trembling shadow people, deflated in their self-esteem, and racked by feelings of defeat and worthlessness—men and women who are ashamed of what they are, ashamed to admit to the students who rely on them that they are cut from card-board, ashamed to admit they are village beggars in a charming stage production where they pretend to be the leaders of classrooms. Colleges that pay starvation wages engineer broken families and the spiritual collapse of otherwise productive people.

Oppression isn’t economical or efficient. The societal costs of inequality, and inequality of opportunity, are towering, but regrettably there are people in America who believe poverty is a good in itself, worth perpetuating regardless of its price in human lives.

I am very happy now, and grateful to be spared that senseless suffering, but that only means I can see the horror of adjunct life more plainly than I was able to before. Mario Hernandez is a lecturer at the State University of New York at Cortland, a member of the United University Professions/NYSUT/AFT and a former adjunct faculty member who lives in Lansing, N.Y. These comments are an excerpt from a statement read at a New Faculty Majority briefing for congressional staff in Washington, D.C., Jan. 24, 2014.

The exploitation has put the burden of higher education’s funding deficits onto the backs of adjuncts.


BY BEN MILLER

Brandon enrolled in a medical assis-tant program at sanford-Brown college in 2009 in the hopes of becoming a laboratory technician. all it took was a quick internet form, a phone call and an interview, and he was on his way. But the program was not the launching pad he expected. after what he described in public comments as “long nights of work that were, needless to say, not challenging at all,” Brandon eventually com-pleted his program in good standing. But no jobs were forthcoming, and the loans he bor-rowed for school grew to $25,000. discour-aged, Brandon ended up in the distribution center of a shipping service, indebted and without a job in his field of study.

unfortunately, too many career-oriented postsecondary programs are producing thou-sands of students like Brandon, people with significant debt and little in the way of prom-ised career or economic returns. and u.s. taxpayers are helping to foot the bill through the billions of dollars in federal student grants and loans these programs receive each year.

the obama administration and the u.s. department of education are working on regulations that would turn off the federal spigot for career programs that load students up with unaffordable levels of debt. Known informally as “gainful employment,” these

The gainful employment fix

regulations would rely on the actual earnings and debt levels of graduates, as well as the default rate of federal student loan borrowers, to judge whether postsecondary programs should continue participating in the federal student aid programs. They apply to not-for-profit as well as for-profit programs.

the gainful employment regulations would affect bad career training programs throughout higher education, but such pro-grams appear to be disproportionately pres-ent in the for-profit sector. all told, these schools receive almost $26 billion a year in federal grants and loans. in exchange, 1 out of

every 5 borrowers from a for-profit college defaults on his or her loans within three years of entering repayment. These colleges account for nearly half of all loan defaulters during the same time period. over the long term, the department projects that 48 percent of the dollars it lends to two-year for-profits will end up in default. For these students, the promise of a better life through education turns out to be a series of significant financial penalties, ruined credit and a debt that will be nearly impossible to get rid of, even in bankruptcy.

actual earnings and debt information for thousands of programs released by the de-

________ Ben Miller is a senior policy analyst in the Education Policy Program of the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy institute in Washington, D.C.

AT A TOWN hALL MEETING at the State University of New York’s Binghamton University on Aug. 23, 2013, President Obama took questions from the audience. A SUNY graduate student asked about the award of federal dollars to students going to for-profit—or predatory—colleges. The president replied:

“I’m not against for-profit institutions, generally. But, … there have been some schools that are notorious for getting students in, getting a bunch of grant money, having those students take out a lot of loans, making big profits, but having really low graduation rates. Students aren’t getting what they need to be prepared for a particular field. They get out of these for-profit schools loaded down with enormous debt. They can’t find a job. They default. The taxpayer ends up holding the bag. Their credit is ruined, and the for-profit institution is making out like a bandit. That’s a problem. … And the way to solve it is to make sure that we’ve got ways to measure what’s happen-ing and we can weed out some of the folks that are engaging in bad practices.”

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partment illustrate just how big a need there is for greater accountability for career pro-grams. There are more than 2,000 programs where the average graduate had student loan debt but did not earn enough money to keep a family of two out of poverty; 90 percent of these are at for-profit colleges. students who did all that was expected of them and earned a postsecondary creden-tial should not find themselves struggling to cover bare essentials.

Standing up for students

Producing gainful employment regulations that successfully address these problems is not a given. the department tried to issue similar regulations in 2011, releasing a weak rule that made significant concessions to a well-funded and hard-fought opposition ef-

fort financed by the for-profit college industry and employing some of the most expensive lobbying firms in Washington. even that wa-tered-down rule still prompted a lawsuit by the for-profit colleges’ trade association. a federal judge agreed with the industry on technical grounds, but noted that the depart-ment still had the authority to regulate in this space. “concerned about inadequate pro-grams and unscrupulous institutions, the department has gone looking for rats in rat holes—as the statute empowers it to do,” the judge wrote.

so far, the department has used the oppor-tunity to redo the gainful employment rule to craft a smarter regulation. The latest public proposal unveiled in december 2013 would cause programs with the worst results to lose eligibility to offer federal student loans and

grants more quickly than the original rule, and would require those with middling outcomes to improve over time or also become ineligi-ble. it would also have failing programs pro-vide debt relief for students, an idea never included in the first set of regulations.

But there’s a long way to go before the regulations are finalized. and pushback against gainful employment is already starting to ramp up among some members of the house of representatives and in the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal. With future work on the regulation occurring in private within the department, expect both the public and behind-the-scenes pressure to increase over the coming months. how the administra-tion reacts to this pressure will have significant implications for protecting thousands, if not millions, of students across the country.

Debt-enD stuDy

Why stuDents neeD tough protections

from for-profits

For-proFits have a disproportionate share oF loan borrowers and defaulters

Many students who enroll fail to coMplete, leaving the college with taxpayer money and the students with debt

For-proFit college students take on More debt at higher aMounts with less likelihood oF making repayments

the solution: tougher regulations, knoWn as “gainful employment”

For-proFits provide preparation for low-paying jobs, not careers

13% oF students

31% oF loan borrowers

46% oF loan deFaulters

percentage of 2011-2012 undergraduates with any student loan Debt

49%

70%

85%

Public PrivateNonprofit

PrivateFor-Profit

percentage of 2011-2012 undergraduates with any student loan Debt

37%

21%

46%

Public PrivateNonprofit

PrivateFor-Profit

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA “ The for-profit institution is making

out like a bandit.”

SOURCE: New America analysis of U.S. Department of Education data courtesy of Ben Miller; Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS); “2011-12 National Postsecondary Students Aid Study,” NCES; “Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study,” NCES (2009).


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uI-CHICAGO FACuLTy HOLD TWO-DAy CONTRACT STRIkE Its patience worn thin after 18 months of bargaining, the University of Illinois at Chicago United Faculty union held a two-day strike Feb. 18-19. The union, which is jointly affiliated with the AFT, the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the American Association of University Professors, comprises two units—one with 725 full-time tenure-track faculty and the other with 425 nontenure-track faculty. It gained recognition in 2012. The key unresolved issue is wages, says UICUF President Joseph Persky, especially for the 70 nontenure-track faculty who currently earn $30,000 a year. The union has proposed a minimum of $45,000 for those faculty. The union is also fighting to give nontenure-track faculty a greater voice in their departments. “We’re looking to make them real active members of their departments, as opposed to being treated like academic gypsies,” Persky told the Chicago Sun-Times. The strike has drawn national attention because it is the first one in decades at a research institution, and because the faculty have so clearly made the connection between the welfare of nontenure-track faculty and that of tenure-track faculty.

A REPRIEvE IN CALIFORNIA A San Francisco Superior Court judge has granted a preliminary injunction to prevent the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges from withdrawing the accreditation of the City College of San Francisco, which would have been effective

July 31, 2014.On Jan. 2, Judge Curtis E. A.

Karnow ruled on several motions in lawsuits brought by the California Federation of Teachers and AFT Local 2121

(which represents faculty at CCSF), and by San Francisco City Attorney Dennis herrera. The judge granted herrera’s motion that the disaccreditation decision be withdrawn while a legal case against ACCJC proceeds through the court—a process likely to extend well beyond July 31. The judge wrote both that the City Attorney’s case had a chance of prevailing and that the harm done to city residents by allowing ACCJC’s ultimate sanction to go forward would be “catastrophic”:

“Without accreditation the College would almost certainly close and about 80,000 students would either lose their educational opportunities or hope to transfer elsewhere; and for many of them, the transfer option is not realistic. The impact on the teachers, faculty, and the City would be incalculable, in both senses of the term: The impact cannot be calculated, and it would be extreme.”

CFT President Joshua Pechthalt, one of the plaintiffs in the suit and an AFT vice president, was jubilant at the decision. “We celebrate this important step in the battle to save City College of San Fran-cisco,” he says. Alisa Messer, AFT Local 2121 president, adds: “Yet another important independent voice has corroborated that the process leading up to the show cause sanction and disaccreditation was unfair and likely illegal.”

On Feb. 11, a member of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors introduced a resolu-tion calling on California Community College Chancellor Brice harris to restore CCSF’s democratically elected board of trustees. The chancellor replaced the board last July and appointed a Special Trustee with Extraordinary Powers—who has the power to hold closed-door meetings and grant raises to administrators while other employees get pay cuts.

HIGHER ED LEADERS TALk RATINGS WITH DuNCAN AFT higher education local leaders, in Washington, D.C., for an AFT program and policy council meeting Jan. 23, sat down with U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and some of his staff to share observations from faculty and academic staff regarding the Obama administration’s latest policy idea—a national rating system that ties federal financial aid distribution to institutional performance. Former AFT Washington President Sandra Schroeder, who is an AFT vice president, expressed the “grave concerns” of her members about the plan, which many fear will reward the affluent and hurt underserved students.

President Obama unveiled his proposal last summer. The U.S. Department of Education would collect data on factors such as graduation rates, graduate earnings, the number of students receiving Pell Grants and average student loan debt. Starting in 2018, the department would use that information to determine how much aid an institution’s students would qualify for. The goal is to increase access, reduce costs and improve outcomes in higher education.

The response from the higher education world—which has been dubious for decades about the findings of the annual U.S. News & World Report college rankings issue—has been underwhelming. A poll conducted by Gallup and Inside Higher Ed in December, for example, showed that 65 percent of college presidents felt the plan was not a good idea. While affirming the validity of the goals of access and afford-ability, educators worry that the plan won’t be an effective way to achieve them. They also worry that the effect of the plan will be to reward the more affluent institutions and students, and cut back on institutions serving lower socio-economic groups and

CFT President Joshua Pechthalt speaks to press after the Dec. 26 Superior Court hearing.

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Students turned out at board meetings and rallies to support the University of Illinois at Chicago faculty.


nontraditional students. This would deprive the very group that needs more resources to ensure students complete college successfully.

These were some of the points AFT leaders underscored, while also describing the great diversity of the institutions in which our members work and of the students they encounter daily in the classroom. The AFT is the only faculty organization that has met with Duncan and his staff on this issue.

MICHIGAN RESEARCH ASSISTANTS HAvE RIGHT TO bARGAIN A United States District Court has ruled that the Legislature and governor of Michigan violated the state’s constitution in 2012 when they passed and signed into law a provision saying graduate research assistants at the University of Michigan are students, not employees, and don’t have the right to vote on the question

of collective bargaining. The provision appeared suddenly in

March 2012, tacked onto an unrelated bill in the Republican-dominated Legislature. It came after the assistants, known as Graduate Student Research Assistants, had organized themselves to join the existing Graduate Employees’ Organization, representing teaching assistants at the university since 1975. The UM Board of Regents had also stated its support for the GSRAs’ right to decide to hold a vote.

After Republican Gov. Rick Snyder signed the bill, the GEO, graduate research assistant Christie Toth and the UM Board of Regents sued. The court held that the manner in which the law was rushed through the Michigan Legislature as an amendment to

P.A. 45 violated the “title-object” clause of the Michigan Constitution, which forbids legislation that includes numerous disparate matters.

“This is yet another example of Gov. Snyder and the Republican-controlled Legislature ignoring the rules to advance their own anti-worker political ideology,” said AFT Vice President and AFT Michigan President David hecker when the ruling was announced.

“We’re gratified the judge ruled that the law targeting GSRAs’ rights to organize is unconstitutional. We still firmly believe that GSRAs are workers entitled to protections under the law, including the right to have a union should they decide to organize,” says Andrea Jokisaari, a GSRA in the Materials Science and Engineering Department and the chair of GEO’s GSRA Organizing Committee.

Toth, who was a GSRA from 2010-2013, is now working on her dissertation and hopes her colleagues will get to exercise their rights. “We call on Attorney General [Bill] Schuette to let the district court’s ruling

stand,” she says.

ILLINOIS uNIONS SuE STATE OvER PENSION LAW CHANGES The Illinois Federation of Teachers and its partners in the We Are One Illinois coalition filed suit Jan. 28 to overturn Senate Bill 1, the bill Gov. Pat Quinn signed into law that slashes retiree pensions and health benefits. The suit argues that the “pension theft” law violates the pension clause of the Illinois Constitution, which unequivocally states that a public employee’s pension is a contract that the state cannot diminish or impair. The coalition is suing the governor, other constitutional officers, the state retirement systems and their boards.

The Illinois Legislature has underfunded

the public employee pension fund for decades, failing to make state payments while employees consistently put in their share. S.B. 1 will reduce the value of the retirees’ pensions by 35 percent over 20 years. The We Are One coalition made alternative proposals, including closing corporate tax loopholes and increasing worker contributions, as part of pension reform discussions in the months leading up to the bill’s passage.

Two days after We Are One filed suit, Illinois house Speaker Michael Madigan, a Democrat representing Chicago, introduced a bill to cut the corporate tax rate on profits from 7 percent to 3.5 percent. It is projected to save businesses $1.5 billion in 2015. Coincidentally, that’s the same amount of “savings” to the state that S.B. 1 is projected to produce in 2015.

STuDENTS WANT HIGHER ED, NOT DEbTLast year, the national level of student loan debt soared over the $1 trillion mark, surpassing credit card debt levels. A college education, which used to be viewed as a ticket into the middle class, is now felt as a sentence of servitude and a brake on important adult milestones such as buying a home or starting a family.

To come up with solutions, the AFT and dozens of labor and student groups, nonprofits, progressive think tanks and grass-roots organizations have formed a coalition and launched a campaign, “higher Ed Not Debt.” The long-term vision of the campaign is to ensure that high-quality higher education is affordable and accessible to all, without the burden of financial hardship.The campaign’s website, higherednotdebt.org, outlines its core principles: ■ Support borrowers currently paying off the existing $1.2 trillion of debt;■ Address the causes of declining affordabil-ity and quality, including changes to state funding and financial aid policies;■ Educate the public about Wall Street’s complicity in the creation of the $1.2 trillion student debt crisis; and ■ Plan actions of civic engagement across all geographic, demographic and political lines.

Already, the AFT and other organizations are coordinating legislative, organizing and communications strategies around student debt and college affordability in California, New York, Ohio, Oregon and Wisconsin. In March, the campaign will release a report on the collusion of Wall Street and colleges to profit off students through predatory or exploitative financial arrangements.

Christie Toth, far right, was a University of Michigan graduate student research assistant who joined the Graduate Employees’ Organization in successfully suing Michigan.

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