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Mercury, January/February 1998 Table of Contents

(c) 1998 Astronomical Society of the Pacific

Please don't print my name, the astronomy instructor implored me. He is one of the many community-college instructors who must cobble together a succession of temporary teaching jobs at different institutions. Each semester they wait for those phone calls, never knowing whether enough places will hire them. Being so dependent on the whim of college administrators, it is not surprising that the instructor watches whom he tells what.

"I drift with the seasons," he said. "The phone rings, the dean says, 'I've got a slot, can you fill it?'" For such instructors, academic freedom is no longer a concept. They have no right to a hearing over arbitrary hiring or firing. At one school, the rule was that if part-timers taught every consecutive semester for five years, they had to be given semi-permanent status. Strangely enough, whenever the fifth year rolled around, the college just couldn't find the money to rehire them.

Although research universities are pulling similar tricks [see "The Withering of Academic Freedom," p. 24], the deterioration of academic working conditions is most advanced in community colleges. Yet it has been neglected by the astronomical community. As physicist Phil Kaldon wrote in the Young Scientists' Network mailing list, "Community colleges are big business in this country, but they are often invisible to the academic research community."

Two-fifths of all college instructors are now part-timers - twice the fraction in 1970. It is no secret why. They are cheaper and, for the accountants, risk-free. Part-timers usually get about $2,000 per course per semester - two-fifths of what full-timers get for the same work, according to the American Federation of Teachers. Full-timers also involve all sorts of bothersome commitments. You have to give them a steady salary, offices, health and retirement benefits, some measure of job security, and opportunities to interact with other faculty and improve their teaching. In short, you have to treat full-time faculty like professionals, rather than like migrant workers.

For part-timers who have day jobs and teach for fun or pocket money, none of this much matters. But for those who temp for a living, it is hell. And as colleges shift their payrolls to part-timers, ever more instructors are falling into that category. In a survey of part-timers by the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges three years ago, 47 percent of respondents said they had jobs at more than one college. Eighty percent said they would prefer a full-time position - indicating they take part-time jobs only out of necessity.

"Colleges prefer to hire part-timers because it's cheaper for them," explained Darryl Stanford, a part-timer and chair of the astronomy department at City College of San Francisco. "As such, to make a decent living, part-timers have to teach at many different places."

Stanford himself is one of these "freeway flyers." In his '88 Chevy Nova hatchback - filled with Sky & Telescope back issues, unopened McDonald's ketchups, and, for those precious free moments, bongo drums - he shuttles among City College, San Francisco State University, and Cañada College in Redwood City to the south. He teaches a total of eight classes and 420 students. It's his easiest schedule in years.

With that sort of workload - two and a half times the maximum recommended by the American Association of University Professors - freeway flyers must cut corners. Homework assignments and essay exams are out. So are individual attention, curricular innovation, professional development, and broader contributions to campus life.

But even our anonymous source hesitated to blame administrators for all this. Administrators may lack vision, but what they ultimately need is money. With community colleges on drip-feed from state legislators, administrators are in perpetual crisis management, simply trying to keep the EKG beeping for another fiscal year. "They're all just clinging for survival," he said. "Anything there's no money in, they don't do."

The amazing thing is that astronomers are still fighting for the few open slots at community colleges. It is a tribute to their dedication to teaching. But you have to wonder how instructors will maintain their standards, let alone take advantage of advances in technology and pedagogy, if expectations and resources remain so mismatched.

Good Bye, Mercury

With this issue, I must say good-bye to Mercury. I've enjoyed my 3 1/2 years at the ASP and the intellectual, not to say logistical, challenge of putting out an entire magazine single-handedly. The best part has been my interaction with Mercury's authors and readers - dedicated, thoughtful people whom I never cease to learn from. But it is time for new challenges at Scientific American. Jay White, our "Guest Observer" columnist and an accomplished astronomer and writer, will take over as interim Mercury editor. I could not be leaving the magazine in more capable hands.