Cover Story

An Offer They Can Refuse

by Chris Cumo

Chuck Whitten never expected to be in the eye of a hurricane. A 25-year broadcast journalist, he had come to the College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, California as an adjunct to share his passion for journalism. He enjoyed the teaching, but had neither the time nor the interest to become politically active on campus. Union activism held no appeal; Whitten had always been a conservative, anti-union man. All this changed in October 2001 when he learned that the College of the Canyons Faculty Association (COCFA), the union representing full-time faculty at the college, had enrolled him along with 380 other part-time faculty in the union. He was stunned; the COCFA had acted by fiat.

Whitten wasn’t alone in his astonishment. Michael Ward, who teaches history part-time at the college, never thought the union had any interest in adjuncts. More than at the other community colleges where he teaches, Ward is aware of class divisions between full- and part-time faculty, a divide that the college has institutionalized by issuing different color parking permits to each group, a practice that doesn’t exist at the others colleges where he teaches.

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Going The Distance

How to Ace a Virtual Interview

by Evelyn Beck

First off, to nab an on-line teaching job, you had better know your way around the Internet.

“The main thing I look for is somebody who’s got a degree of comfort on-line, who has navigated Web sites, set up e-mail,” says Catherine Flynn, Director of Faculty for the School of Arts & Sciences for Kaplan College Online. “I had an instructor once who applied to teach on-line who cut and pasted her résumé into an e-mail message instead of sending it as an attachment; that didn’t bode well for teaching on-line. Another asked about the possibility of doing face-to-face instead of on-line training; somebody who wants hands-on training isn’t a good candidate, either.”

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Lesko Blog

Community Colleges Score a $12 Billion Dollar Bribe

Posted: August 25th, 2009

If you are an adjunct at a community college, you teach in a system that has come to rely increasingly on faculty off the tenure-track. At the moment, nationally, about 70 percent of faculty employed at community colleges teach off the tenure-track. You also teach in a system with one of the most abysmal rates of student graduation. In some state community college systems, less than 20 percent of students graduate within three years. It's enough to give heartburn to anyone concerned about post-secondary education in the United States. However, I'm not sure there are enough community college administrators losing sleep over the low graduation rates at their institutions. If there were, we would have long ago had some very frank discussions about reforms of the community college system in our country.

Now, President Obama's plan to funnel 12 billion dollars to the nation's community colleges to foster their "mission," is making headlines. He's calling it the "American Graduation Initiative." In a move that is no surprise on August 14th, the New York Times reported that Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he would allocate $50 million dollars to New York's community colleges if elected to a third term. Is this just throwing money into a hole and setting it on fire? David Brooks, in a July 2009 op-ed piece, argues that Obama's plan will tie the billions to necessary reforms. Brooks also writes, "four-year colleges receive three times as much federal money per student as community colleges. According to a Brookings Institution report, federal spending for community colleges fell six percent between 2002 and 2005, while spending on four-year colleges increased."

My Aunt told me a story not too long ago when we were talking about how to best motivate kids to get good grades in school. She told me that one of my cousins had asked how much money she was going to give him if he brought home a reportcard with good grades. Her reply was simple and direct: he was not getting good grades for her, but rather for himself. I think about her as President Obama plans to give 12 billion dollars to the community college system in our country, and tells us that the money won't be wasted because it's tied to "reforms."

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