Youngstown P/T Faculty Salaries Stuck In Time

In 20 years much has changed. Tuition escalated from $2,700 a year to $6,956, stamps increased from 25 cents to 43 and gasoline jumped from $1.19 a gallon to $2.66. One thing, though, has stayed the same: Youngstown State University’s part-time faculty’s salary.

The Ohio legislature is considering a bill to remove the exemption of part-time instructors, part-time lecturers, previously exempted public-employed students and adjunct faculty from the current Public Employee Collective Bargaining Act. This change would allow those employees to collectively bargain and gain greater compensation benefits.

"If they can unionize, it would regulate how much they get paid and offer job stability," said Dr. Scott Leonard, a YSU English professor. "Right now it’s term to term for these people; they can be pulled right before a semester starts."

YSU’s pay ratio for part-time faculty is based on per semester hour workload and degree held. Faculty members with bachelor’s degrees receive $650 per credit hour, those with master’s degrees earn $800 per semester hour and those holding doctorates get $1,050 a semester hour. This means that a professor with a master’s degree and a three-hour semester class, whether in 1996 or today, would earn $2,400.

Even with the modest inflation that has occurred over the years, Dr. Tod Porter, chairman of the economics department, said, "If their pay were to keep up with inflation, and they were making $2,400 in 1996, they should be making $3,260 today to have the same spending power."

Harry Meshel, member of the YSU Board of Trustees and champion of public employees’ right to collectively bargain in Ohio, said the part-time faculty do a good job for the university. He said they fill in when there is a limited amount of time to be covered in certain courses at a lower cost than full-time employees.

"In the earlier years when I taught, it was a good benefit for the university because it was acquiring the level of teacher or instructions at relatively bargain basement prices," Meshel said. "I know our pay wasn’t very grandiose at $3 an hour."

Marilyn Ward, assistant to the provost, said YSU has 448 full-time faculty, including chairpersons, and more than 550 part-time faculty, including advisers, student teachers and faculty teaching one or fewer classes.

Meshel said he would like to see a study on why the university has so many part-time faculty members to determine why it is occurring. He said that if part-time employees have the power to collectively bargain, they could gain higher benefits of all kinds.

"Changing that today may or may not be easy to do because there may not be a strong enough support to do it, particularly in the Senate," Meshel said.

Meshel said passage of the proposed law will open the gate for discussion of part-time employees of all kinds to unionize or collectively bargain at this point, and that universities will immediately be confronted with additional expectations of a need to raise revenue.

"If the state has trouble providing those additional revenues, then [universities] will turn to tuition increases," Meshel said.