by Jennifer Berkshire

ADD UP THE hours that Cynthia Duda spends teaching English in the Massachusetts state college system, and you get a number just under forty hours a week. Since state employees who work half-time or more for the Commonwealth are eligible for health-care benefits, Duda should be covered too, right? Wrong. Due to a loophole that many of the state's adjunct faculty slip right through, the state doesn't recognize the total number of hours spent teaching, if the work is done at different schools in the system.

"What happens is that you have adjuncts teaching in three or four schools, and they're being told 'no, that doesn't count,'" says Duda. "We just want our insurance."

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