ACADEMICS

Part-time professor has big-time concerns

By Noah Bruce

Briggs Seekins is a part-time English instructor at the University of Southern Maine, and he has some issues with the use of part-time professors at the school. Originally, he had the same gripes that striking UPS part-timers had in August of 1997: lower wages than full-timers and no benefits — in his case despite teaching three classes per semester, the same amount as a full-time instructor.

After thinking about his situation, however, Briggs began to see the glass as half-full. “Compared to other workers in my income bracket, I’ve got a sweet gig: I mean, look, no hairnet,” he writes in a press release sent to the media; president of USM, Richard Pattenaude; chancellor of the Maine University system, Terrence MacTaggart; the trustees; the commissioner of education J. Duke Albanese; even Governor King. Briggs began to see that though part-timers like himself receive “roughly what a fast food worker is paid,” it was really the university as a whole that was suffering from the profusion of part-time professors. “They’re being used as a cheaper substitute for hiring full-time faculty, which is odious if you’re someone who values education above market realities,” said Briggs when the Phoenix called to make sure he was on the level.

The way he sees it, if the university wants to pay him and his part-time peers 67 to 75 percent less than full-time professors, fine, but some of these savings should be passed on to the students who currently pay the same fee no matter who teaches the class. “Asking students to pay the same for a part-timer as they do for a full-timer is like asking them to pay as much for off-brand Wal-Mart sneakers as they would pay for Air Jordan’s,” he writes.

Briggs believes that education at USM is compromised in several ways by the proliferation of part-time teachers. First, he says “it’s possible that a specific part-time professor is just as a good as a full-timer, but if you take 100 half-timers and 100 full-timers, the half-timers won’t be as qualified.”

Further, Briggs feels that some part-time professors are not as available to interact with students outside of class because they devote much of their time to another job, or because they are paid so poorly they simply do not want to do more than the bare minimum required of them. Finally, Briggs says the college lacks long-term community because part-time professors generally do not stay with the college for very long.

“The other problem with part-time faculty is a huge amount of turnover,” he says. “When you don’t have consistency it leaves students in a bad position. A student might want to look up a professor for a letter of recommendation or something and chances are they’re gone.”

So far the only response Briggs has received is a note from Governor King stating that he had forwarded the letter to the chancellor of the universities, who, Briggs says, has already received the letter. President of USM, Richard Pattenaude told the Phoenix “I think it’s an irresponsible letter and I prefer not to comment.”

USM is not the only university dealing with this issue. The University of Vermont, a school comparable in size to USM that also has funding issues, is experiencing similar problems. According to Lia Cravedi-Cheng, the woman responsible for hiring undergraduate education professors at UVM, the school is “trying to move people off [part-time compensation] but it’s pretty difficult to do because it’s cheap.” UVM might pay a full-time professor $60,000, but part-timers make only $3800 per class, she notes. “That’s a bargain. That’s a good deal.” says Cravedi-Cheng.

Briggs says it’s not a good deal for part-time professors or students. In addition to his letter he is currently collecting signatures for a petition calling for cheaper rates for classes taught by part-timers, and says he plans to organize a public forum on the matter in the coming weeks.