Part-Time Thoughts

Dear Editor:
Thanks for your interview with Dr. Dan Jacoby. His study on part-time teaching and graduation rates should be the source of a lot of consideration. Thanks especially for making clear that lower graduation rates may have nothing to do with the part-time faculty, but with systemic problems caused by their adjunct labor conditions.

 

Still, having read the Jacoby study, I must point out that I think there is a major flaw in it. It accounts for every sort of confounding variable except for the most important and most obvious: part-time teachers tend to teach many more evening classes, whereas full-time teachers tend to teach mostly day classes. Because there is widespread anecdotal evidence that day students and evening students differ in motivations and study habits, I think this oversight in Jacoby’s study could very well be a fatal flaw.

In my own state, Washington, part-time faculty in the colleges taught 68% of all evening classes but only 39 percent of all daytime classes, according to a state study from Fall 2006. When on-campus classes are considered alone, the gap is substantially greater.

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