Lecturers Make Up The Majority Of CSU Faculty. Will They Take The University’s Deal?

The California Faculty Association reached a tentative agreement with college leaders Monday night. But some instructors with the lowest pay and least job security say the agreement falls short.

“We got something, but we're still, like, really, really drowning and struggling,” said Cal State San Bernardino lecturer Laura Quinn.

Neither the union, nor CSU leadership, have released details of the deal. While the summary includes raises for the lowest-paid faculty, it does not guarantee wages that faculty say would be sufficient nor stability that researchers say would improve student outcomes long term.

In a statement announcing the deal, CSU Chancellor Mildred García said the agreement "enables the CSU to fairly compensate its valued, world-class faculty while protecting the university system's long-term financial sustainability."

LAist reached out to CSU to verify deal terms and ask about further comment; a spokesperson said there will be "more details later."

Just over half of faculty work part-time and more than half of CSU faculty do not have long-term job security— they may teach a class from one quarter to multiple years. Researchers say the shift from full-time, stable employment in higher education to low-paid, semester-by semester jobs has been underway for decades.

“There's nothing different in terms of the qualifications or the background of the people who are in these roles,” said USC professor Adrianna Kezar, who studies higher education employment. “It's just simply that the job market changed.”

CSU lecturers can teach full time, but are contracted for just a few classes. Lecturers told LAist they have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, struggle to afford health care and housing, and do not have a clear path to promotions or raises.

“It takes away from my ability to be the best lecturer that I can be,” said Cal State L.A. lecturer Michelle Vanegas. “I can't focus all of my attention on my classes, on my students, on grading, on the things that I need to do, because I'm busy worrying about how am I going to make enough money.”

Where did all the good education jobs go?

Part-time and short-term instructors have always had a role in higher education. For example, the arrangement allows working professionals to bring their experience into the classroom and provides flexibility for parents who do not want or need to work full-time.

But in the last 40 years the proportion of faculty not eligible for the stability — and higher compensation — of a tenured position has increased to nearly 50% of U.S. college teaching positions.

“Institutions are relying on contingent appointments more and more, in many ways, to balance the books,” said Glenn Colby, a senior researcher at the American Association of University Professors, which tracks higher education employment trends.

In the 1980s, California lawmakers cut state funding to higher education and increased the cost to students, despite a 1960 master plan that said the state’s colleges should be tuition free. At the same time, federal funding for universities declined.

This financial constraint was the start of substantial changes. Today, the CSU system relies on lecturers more heavily than other institutions. Colby’s most recent analysis found close to 60% of CSU’s nearly 27,800 faculty were temporary appointments in fall 2022, compared with about 50% in fall 2009.

Debito Beamer lives in San Bernardino and commutes to teach in Long Beach and Los Angeles— sometimes in the same day. “I realized if I'm going to ever retire I have to build up my retirement funds,” Beamer said. “Since I can't get tenure, I have to take as many jobs as I can to earn as much money as I can for my retirement."

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USC’s Kezar co-wrote The Gig Academy, which details this shift in higher education employment.

She’s said the way universities compensate employees on short-term contracts is an outlier compared to part-time workers in other sectors.

“In other professions, contingent [workers] get paid more because of the job insecurity that they experience and the lack of benefits,” Kezar said. “We got the worst of all conditions. So instead of higher pay, we got lower pay, and no benefits, and no job security.”

CSU faculty hardships

Leyenda Jacobson was a young mother who experienced housing insecurity and homelessness when she started taking community college classes. She went on to earn a sociology bachelor and master’s degree at Cal State San Marcos.

“I heard and believed in the promise that a college education could make a better future,” Jacobson said. “So I stuck with it.”

When her mother’s cancer diagnosis derailed her plan to pursue a PhD, Leyenda turned to teaching in 2011. Today, one of her primary jobs is to help students develop foundational research skills.

“I think what happens in the classroom is what I live for in terms of my career,” Jacobson said. “Unfortunately, you can't pay bills with the magic that happens in the classroom.”

Jacobson said she brought home $52,000 last year before taxes. She commutes 150 miles every day; she teaches at Cal State Long Beach from her home in San Diego County and racked up $10,000 in credit card debt covering gas and other expenses.

Laura Quinn is in her ninth year as a lecturer at Cal State San Bernardino and teaches in both the English and College of Arts and Letters departments.

This base salary of around $55,000 has not been enough for Quinn to care for her 12-year-old son and afford a 1-bedroom apartment — among other things, like saving for his college education and paying off student debt.

For the past six years, she has taken on additional work as a lecturer at the University of Redlands. This past fall she taught eight classes across both campuses.

“My schedule was so packed,” Quinn said. “When you're so exhausted, you're not hungry anymore and you just, like, want to go to bed. And then rinse and repeat.”

She said last semester she lost 15 pounds.

Quinn offers to meet with the nearly 300 students she teaches a semester on nights and weekends and shares her personal number so they can reach out for help. “Whenever they are available, I will make sure that I'm there for them,” Quinn said.

Part-time faculty, worse student outcomes

Years of research shows when there’s an increase in part-time faculty, students have lower GPAs, are less likely to continue their studies, and graduate when compared to peers taught by full-time, tenured educators.

Kezar said the research points to a lack of resources, not a lack of qualifications or skills, that hinder faculty like CSU’s lecturers.

“The way they teach it isn't connected to the rest of the learning that the student's gonna have,” Kezar said.

For example, Kezar said, fewer opportunities to interact with their teachers is associated with worse student outcomes. CSU lecturers are paid for the hours they spend teaching, not for meeting with students outside of class.

Debito Beamer commutes from his home in San Bernardino to Cal State campuses in Long Beach and Los Angeles and is teaching at a third online.

The political science lecturer tells students, “I can't see you outside of office hours. Here's an hour and a half that I'm waiting here in my office. I'm not on campus these other days, so you're just going to have to catch me at that time, or make a Zoom appointment with me. But I've got classes and class prep and all of that. Here's the window for those.”

“All of those things impact my ability to teach at a relaxed pace,” Beamer added. “By the time it's week 10 or 11, I'm already burned out and we have 15 weeks to a semester.”

Lecturers also sometimes lack time to prepare and plan for their classes each semester.

Beamer said after the pandemic Cal State Long Beach asked him if he would teach a class 48 hours before it began.

“I had to learn my students’ [names], create attendance sheets, create a syllabus, choose my textbooks, and create my first lecture— in 48 hours I was meeting my students,” he said.

As much as lecturers try to meet their students’ needs, when they’re responsible for many students, they can lose some efficacy. Leda Ramos is a lecturer in Chicana(o) and Latina(o) Studies at Cal State LA. She teaches an average of 200 students a semester.

“I do my best, but anybody who has studied any kind of pedagogy knows that the higher number of students means that you have less ability to reach each student.” Ramos said. “We do our best.”

What’s next for CSU faculty?

The union’s 29,000 professors, lecturers, coaches, librarians, and counselors must vote to approve the tentative agreement before any raises or other benefits can go into effect.

Online and in interviews with LAist, some part-time faculty were disheartened by the deal.

“I'm afraid to look my students in the eye because many of them have been rooting for us,” said Cal State San Marcos and Long Beach lecturer Leyenda Jacobson. “It's our job to show them that people power can work.”

Jacobson said among the biggest omissions are mental health support for students and substantial increases for lecturers and a path to more stable employment.

"We were going for something so much bigger," said Quinn, the lecturer in San Bernardino. "I don't understand‚ is this caving in early? Like, why not strike for a second day? Why not, like, keep the pressure on?"

Universities have not rushed to offer indefinite appointments to legions of part-time and temporary faculty, even as those faculty members’ circumstances become more pronounced.

But researchers like Kezar say there are other ways to improve the working conditions for lecturers, like longer term contracts.

“What the biggest difference becomes [is] just the longevity of the appointment,” Kezar said. “Instead of a guarantee for, you know, essentially a lifetime, 30 or 40 years, at least you're getting now five or seven years, which, it's still pretty good.”

The practice is fairly new, but one study from Northwestern University found that well-supported faculty on long-term contracts were tied to student outcomes in line with — and in some cases, better — than tenured faculty.

“Nobody gets into this profession because they want to like make a lot of money," said Cal State L.A. lecturer Michelle Vanegas. But, if you hire people to do this job who don't love it with their whole heart, you're not going to get a good outcome."

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Brian Feinzimer

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LAist

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Colleges nationwide laid off faculty during the pandemic, but American Association of University Professors’s Colby said CSU has rehired more faculty when compared to other systems.

“I believe that the multi-year contracts have insulated those faculty members from the effects of the COVID 19 pandemic more than other institutions,” Colby said.

However, the American Association of University Professors maintains that anything short of tenure is a threat to educators and students.

“If these faculty members are faced with the possibility of not being rehired when their contract ends, they might be less likely to explore controversial topics [in] either researching or teaching," Colby said.