Credit: Allan Hancock College / Flickr
The overreliance on undersupported part-time faculty in the nation’s community colleges dates back to the 1970s during the era of neoliberal reform — the defunding of public education and the beginning of the corporatization of higher education in the United States. Decades of research show that the systemic overreliance on part-time faculty correlates closely with declining rates of student success.
Furthermore, when faculty are equitably compensated and thus able to provide high-quality student-faculty engagement in and out of the classroom, students succeed at significantly higher rates.
Over the past 40 years, only 30% of the California Community Colleges faculty have been hired as full-time employees, while the remaining 70% have been hired as part-time (adjunct) employees who teach the majority of the system’s courses. Part-time and full-time faculty have the…
