Hearing is Believing: Televised hearings shine a bright light on California's 29,000 part-time faculty

by D.J. Brasket
AN HISTORIC EVENT took place in California on January 12, 2000 as a Joint Legislative Audit Committee held a four-hour hearing in at the State Capitol to discuss part-time faculty issues in the California Community College system.
California has the largest Community College system in the nation, with 107 colleges employing 15,700 full-time and 29,900 part-time instructors. While part-time faculty have the same qualifications and are held to the same standards, they earn only 37 cents for every dollar earned by their full-time colleagues. Like other part-time, temporary, and adjunct faculty in colleges and universities across the nation, most California part-time instructors enjoy few health benefits, re-employment rights, or paid office hours.
The Hearing was chaired by Assemblyman Scott Wildman (D-Los Angeles) who observed that equity for part-time instructors is the most important legislative issue facing community colleges today, yet it has been consistently ignored and trivialized by state and local community college administrators. During the four-hour, televised hearing, testimony was heard from a panel of speakers, including representatives from faculty, student, and administrative organizations. Legislators questioned the speakers both during and after the presentations.
Testifying for faculty were four part-time and two full-time instructors, who represented the Academic Senate, the California Federation of Teachers (CFT), the California Part-time Faculty Association (CPFA), the California Teachers Association (CTA), the Communication Workers of America (CWA), and the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges (FACCC.) Each faculty member gave a ten-minute presentation, highlighting specific issues: re-employment rights, pay equity, health benefits, office hours, diversity, and quality of education.
Two representatives from student organizations testified on how students suffer when the majority of classes are taught by faculty who are not required to hold office hours, nor paid to advise students. Testimony was also heard by state and local California Community College administrators, including State Vice-Chancellor Christopher Cabaldon, who testified that the current problems concerning part-time faculty were due to the chronic under-funding community colleges. Cabaldon also stated that improvements for part-time faculty should be bargained at the local level and not mandated by the state, and that funding from the state could be more wisely spent on more pressing needs than part-time faculty equity, which would be prohibitively expensive.
The most interesting part of the hearing, according to several eye witnesses, was the way Wildman relentlessly questioned Cabaldon on the Chancellor’s lack of leadership in addressing part-time faculty equity, and the way he countered Cabaldon’s attempt to white-wash the problem. Wildman noted that the chronic under-funding of colleges had not kept administrators’ salaries from skyrocketing, nor did it explain why the Chancellor has never once asked the legislature for funding specifically to address part-time faculty equity. Even more puzzling was the fact that the Chancellor and Board of Governors had just rejected the faculty’s request to add $50 million to the community college budget to address part-time faculty equity; and last fall they had opposed passage of Wildman’s Assembly Bill 420, which also provided funding for part-time faculty.
Wildman reasoned that nothing was more important in determining student success than the student-faculty relationship, so nothing could be more important than strengthening that relationship by giving all faculty the support and incentive to teach well and meet student needs. This meant that nothing could be more important than giving part-time faculty the kind of wages, benefits, job security and working conditions that would support and encourage quality instruction. He persisted in his reasoning until Cabaldon was forced to agree.
By the end of the hearing, the message was loud and clear: If community college administrators at the state and local level want increased funding from legislators in California, they would have to hitch their wagon to the part-time faculty issue.