Sociology Faculty Members Employed Part-time in Community Colleges

Abstract

The large majority of faculty members teaching in community colleges are employed on a part-time basis, yet little is known about their working conditions and professional engagement. This article uses data from a recent national survey of faculty members teaching sociology in community colleges to provide this information, with particular attention to the different situations of those teaching full-time, part-time by choice, and part-time involuntarily. Contrary to previous analyses that assume homogeneous motivation and working conditions for part-time faculty members, our analysis finds differences between two categories in both structural aspects of their employment and perceptions of cultural devaluation expressed interpersonally. Both aspects serve as constraints on developing faculty-student relationships, a proven factor in student learning and success. We conclude that administrators and full-time colleagues must provide stronger support for the individuals introducing students to the discipline of sociology in the community college.

Keywords

work and occupations inequalities

Among all faculty members teaching in colleges and universities in the United States today, the proportion employed part-time has been increasing steadily and represents the fastest growing segment of the postsecondary faculty (Anderson 2002; Coalition on the Academic Workforce 2012). In 1975–1976, 31 percent of all faculty members were employed part-time; by 2011, they represented 51 percent (Curtis 2014). Looking within the part-time faculty, the distribution across institution types is far from even. In 2011, about 33 percent of faculty members in doctoral and research universities were employed part-time. At master’s degree universities, that proportion was 55 percent. But in public colleges granting associate’s degrees (community colleges), fully 70 percent of the faculty was employed part-time in 2011 (Curtis 2014).

Community colleges enrolled some 45 percent of all undergraduates in 2014 (American Association of Community Colleges 2016), so given that the majority of faculty members teaching in community colleges are employed on a part-time basis, understanding the characteristics and needs of this group is essential. Nonetheless, there has been little research on the situation of part-time faculty members in community colleges (Eagan 2007). Even less information is available on part-time faculty members teaching in specific disciplines (but see Vitullo and Spalter-Roth 2013; White and Chu 2013). Using data from a recent national survey, this article provides insights regarding the characteristics, working conditions, professional identity, and challenges faced by the faculty members who teach sociology in community colleges in the United States. We focus on the working conditions of part-time faculty members that could affect the amount and quality of faculty-student interactions given the proven link between high-quality faculty-student interaction and multiple measures of student success, including increased persistence and completion rates, better course grades and standardized test scores, stronger critical thinking and leadership skills, a more solid sense of self-worth and self-confidence, and ambitious career and graduate school aspirations (Chambliss and Takacs 2014; Cox et al. 2010; Kezar and Maxey 2014; Kuh et al. 2006).

Literature Review

Much of the literature on the part-time faculty is based on national data that include faculty members from both two- and four-year institutions (Antony and Valadez 2002; Curtis and Jacobe 2006; Street et al. 2012). Frequently, part-time faculty members teach the same courses as their full-time peers but do not enjoy equitable salary levels, benefits, or professional development opportunities (Akroyd and Engle 2014). In fact, studies find that part-time faculty members not only receive very low compensation per course across all institution types, they also do not see wage increases over time or differential compensation based on higher academic credentials (Coalition on the Academic Workforce 2012). Contrary to the frequent assumption that these faculty members are young professionals who are temporarily in part-time positions, most part-time faculty members are midcareer and have worked on a course-by-course basis for six or more years (Lundquist and Misra 2015).

Among studies that specifically examine the part-time faculty in community colleges, Rifkin (1998) found that part-time community college instructors tended to spend less time than their full-time counterparts on scholarship and teaching but had higher expectations for students. Eagan (2007) conducted an analysis of four waves of data from the National Study of Postsecondary Faculty and found few differences between full-time and part-time faculty members in community colleges in terms of gender, race, or ethnic identification. He also found that although the proportion of part-time faculty members holding a terminal degree increased slightly across the four waves of the study, in 2004, part-time community college faculty members were less than half as likely as full-timers to have a terminal degree, which has important implications for quality of instruction and the likelihood of these individuals identifying with a disciplinary profession (Levinson and Rowell 2013).

One key finding from studies of the part-time faculty is that they are not a homogeneous group. Important differences exist between faculty members who prefer part-time work and those who would rather be employed full-time (Antony and Hayden 2011; Maynard and Joseph 2008). This helps explain the divergent descriptions of part-time faculty found across the literature as either desperate “freeway fliers” trying to piece together a living at multiple institutions (McConnel 1993) or content professionals who see their community college position as a satisfying supplement to their other, primary employment (Akroyd and Engle 2014). In their chapter on part-time faculty members in community colleges, Levin, Kater, and Wagoner (2006) argue that it is those teaching academic transfer courses who are exploited and dissatisfied while those teaching vocational courses derive economic benefit and their primary identity from their other employment. In their 2015 study based on four-year institution data from the Higher Education Research Institute and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), Eagan and his colleagues found that part-time faculty members overall had lower levels of satisfaction when compared to their full-time peers and, moreover, that involuntary part-time faculty members had significantly lower levels of workplace satisfaction when compared to those working part-time by choice (Eagan, Jaeger, and Grantham 2015). Importantly, the underlying cause of that lower level of satisfaction was not simply the desire for full-time work; instead, it was linked to the perception of lack of respect from full-time peers and frustration with administrators.

Research has also shown that working conditions for part-time faculty members differ from those of full-timers in ways that may be less conducive to meaningful faculty-student interaction. Part-time faculty members often do not have institutional e-mail addresses or office space, may not be paid for keeping office hours or advising individual students or campus clubs, and may not be included in campus activities or departmental decision making (American Federation of Teachers 2002; Kezar and Maxey 2014). Moreover, part-time faculty members are more likely to be working at multiple institutions, which may leave them with less time to talk with students seeking help after class as they rush to drive to another class on another campus (Kezar and Maxey 2014). All of these factors may create structural conditions that could work against the formation of strong faculty-student relationships. Yet personal relationships in general, and with faculty members in particular, have been shown to be pivotal in the life of college students. Chambliss and Takacs (2014) studied nearly 100 undergraduates over an eight-year period and found that meaningful personal relationships with faculty members were a key factor in student motivation for learning, persistence, and success.

The highly beneficial consequences of faculty-student interaction are noticeably strong for students of color and first-generation college students. Citing research with Latino/a students and those attending historically black colleges and universities, Kezar and Maxey (2014:32) conclude “no other factor plays as strong a role for students of color—making this a particularly important finding for our increasingly diverse institutions. Students note that faculty interactions encourage them to engage more with learning, try harder, and meet high academic expectations.” They add that first-generation students who have positive interactions with faculty members also are more likely to achieve their academic goals. Since a majority of part-time faculty members routinely teach introductory courses, an opportunity to interact more with these students in their first year of college could have striking positive effects in student academic performance, persistence, and overall college experiences.

The quality of part-time faculty members’ relationships with students has rarely if ever been directly examined. Some studies have examined the connection between faculty employment status and student success, but these studies have been limited by two major factors: the lack of data, particularly at the national level, that link faculty employment and work variables with measures of student success and differences in definitions of those very outcome measures. Two recent studies find neutral or positive effects from contingent employment of instructors on student outcomes, but it is important to consider the limitations of each. Bettinger and Long (2010:599) “find that adjunct instructors tend to have positive or no impact on student interest, with the largest [positive] impact . . . on subsequent credit hours taken in the subject . . . in education, engineering, and the sciences.” Figlio, Schapiro, and Soter (2015:719) conclude “on average, first-term freshmen learn more from contingent faculty members than they do from tenure track/tenured faculty.” Both studies use data on first-time full-time freshmen at four-year institutions and examine whether students take a subsequent course or choose to major in the subject. This student population differs considerably from that found in most community colleges, where the opportunities for persistence in additional courses are limited and students do not choose to major in a particular discipline in the same way they might in a baccalaureate setting.

Like these studies, most analysis has been at the baccalaureate level, but Audrey Jaeger and Kevin Eagan (2009) utilized data from the California community college system to examine two different outcomes for students there. They found that “students experienced a significant yet modest negative effect from exposure to part-time faculty members on the probability of completing an associate’s degree” (Jaeger and Eagan 2009:167). They also examined the process of transferring from a community college to a four-year institution and found “a significant and negative association between students’ transfer likelihood and their exposure to part-time faculty instruction” (Eagan and Jaeger 2009:180).

Based on their comprehensive review of research on the connection between faculty-student interaction, student success, and faculty employment status, Kezar and Maxey (2014:35) state their conclusion unequivocally: “Although [part-time faculty members] may be excellent teachers in the classroom, their working conditions make it nearly impossible for them to be as involved as their full-time peers in the lives of students and to provide those students with similar support outside of class.”

This review of the literature demonstrates the marked stratification in the characteristics of full-time and part-time faculty members overall as well as in community colleges. It also suggests these differences may have negative ramifications for the quality of faculty-student interactions, which in turn can have a negative impact on student success as measured in grades, test scores, persistence and completion, and career and graduate school aspirations. However, key questions remain regarding the extent to which these national and institutional findings on the heterogeneity of part-time faculty members and the relationship between contingent employment, faculty-student interaction, and student success are reflected among community college faculty members teaching sociology.

Data

The data used in this analysis come from a survey carried out in spring 2014 by the American Sociological Association (ASA) Task Force on Community College Faculty in Sociology. The survey objective was to reach a nationally representative sample of faculty members teaching sociology in community colleges. Because there is no comprehensive national list of these faculty members, the task force drew a sample of 300 institutions from the 948 public two-year colleges with IPEDS data for size and locale. The sample of community colleges was stratified to represent the combination of three categories related to institution size (large, midsize, small) and four categories related to institutional location (rural, suburb, town, city). Task Force members then attempted to identify and contact all of the faculty members teaching sociology in those institutions during spring 2014. The names and e-mail addresses of faculty members teaching sociology at the sampled colleges were collected by contacting college administrators and reviewing college websites and course listings. In addition, ASA members who reported a community college employer as of early 2014 were included in the final sample of 1,730 individuals.¹

Potential respondents were contacted via e-mail and invited to complete an online questionnaire of 68 closed- and open-ended questions with logical skip patterns based on employment status and other variables. A total of 712 respondents completed the questionnaire, resulting in a net response rate of 43 percent. Responses were weighted for analysis according to the 12 sample strata identified previously, and analysis was completed using SPSS version 23. The data set, while not technically representative because no full population list exists from which to draw a sample, provides a solid cross-section for our descriptive analysis of community college faculty members teaching sociology.

Demographics by Employment Status

A key variable in the analysis is respondent’s employment status. Among the 712 faculty members who completed the questionnaire, the majority (58 percent) are employed full-time. For the remaining 42 percent of respondents employed part-time, the questionnaire included a further item that proved to be crucial to our analysis of the importance of employment status in faculty respondents’ attitudes and perceptions. That item asked simply “Do you work part-time by choice?” Part-time faculty members split evenly on their responses to that question, with 50 percent identifying part-time teaching as their choice and 50 percent saying their part-time status is not by choice.² The remainder of this analysis will thus follow Eagan et al. (2015) in comparing the situations and perceptions of community college sociology faculty members divided into three employment statuses: full-time, voluntary part-time (“by choice”), and involuntary part-time (“not by choice”). Table 1 provides an overview of the characteristics of the community college faculty members in the sample.

Table 1.

Demographic Characteristics of Community College Faculty Members in Sociology, by Employment Status, 2014 (Percentage).

	Full-time	All Part-time	Difference FT/PT	Voluntary Part-time	Involuntary Part-time	Difference VPT/IPT
Median age (years)	49.0	49.0	n.s.	53.9	42.0	*
Race/ethnicity			n.s.			*
Asian	2.3	2.4		2.5	2.3
Black or African American	7.3	6.0		9.8	3.1
Hispanic or Latino	2.3	5.6		8.2	3.1
Native American	0.5	1.6		3.3	0.0
White	78.6	72.4		70.5	73.4
Two or more	5.5	7.6		2.5	12.5
Other	3.4	4.4		3.3	5.5
Highest degree			*			*
Master’s in sociology	36.6	43.1		35.7	50.0
Master’s in other discipline	15.1	25.9		35.7	16.2
PhD in sociology	39.1	15.3		12.7	18.5
PhD in other discipline	9.2	15.7		15.9	15.4
Annual income			*			*
Under $30,000	0.5	38.0		20.2	54.8
$30,000–$39,999	3.1	15.7		12.6	18.5
$40,000–$54,999	27.8	17.8		19.3	16.1
$55,000–$69,999	27.3	9.9		16.8	3.2
$70,000–$84,999	16.6	7.4		12.6	2.4
$85,000–$99,999	13.0	3.3		4.2	3.2
$100,000 and over	11.7	7.8		14.3	1.6
Current position is primary employment	99.0	54.9	*	33.6	74.1	*
Respondents by employment status	399	265		131	134

Source: ASA Taskforce on Community College Faculty in Sociology survey.

Note: Percentages may not total 100 due to rounding. FT = full-time; PT = part-time; VPT = voluntary part-time; IPT = involuntary part-time; n.s. = not significant.

p < .05.

There are clear differences in age among the respondents by employment status category. Involuntary part-time faculty members are younger than their colleagues, with a median age of 42.³ The median age of full-time respondents is 49, while the median among the voluntary part-time is just under 54.

Women are the majority (64 percent) of community college faculty members teaching sociology, with no significant differences in gender distribution across the three employment categories. Sociology thus differs from the community college faculty as a whole, which is evenly divided between men and women (Curtis 2014; Eagan 2007).

Table 1 shows a difference between the two part-time categories of respondents in terms of race and ethnicity. Notable proportions of involuntary part-timers identify themselves with two or more racial groups or choose a response option other than the categories provided in the questionnaire. By contrast, the representation of both African Americans and Latinos among voluntary part-time faculty members is greater than that of their involuntary part-time and full-time colleagues. By comparison with all community college faculty members, those teaching sociology are more diverse (Curtis 2014; Eagan 2007).

In terms of educational attainment, the majority of survey respondents hold a master’s degree, but the proportion having completed doctoral degrees is a substantial 41 percent and the proportions vary by employment status. Forty-eight percent of full-time respondents hold a PhD. Among the part-time faculty members, those who would prefer a full-time position are more likely to have a PhD than those teaching part-time by choice. However, not all of these PhDs are in sociology. Among full-time faculty members, 39 percent have the terminal qualification for the discipline, while the proportion is much lower among those teaching part-time by choice (13 percent) and part-time involuntarily (19 percent).

Reported income across the three employment categories also shows significant variation—between full-time and part-time categories but most tellingly between the two groups of part-timers.⁴ The majority of involuntary part-time respondents report an annual income of less than $30,000, while only 20 percent of voluntary part-timers and less than 1 percent of full-time faculty respondents report such a low income level. Most of the full-timers (69 percent) report incomes of $55,000 and above, as do 48 percent of the voluntary part-time respondents. In addition to annual income, the questionnaire also asked “Do you consider the position you hold at this college to be your primary employment?” Essentially all of the full-time faculty members answered in the affirmative. Among voluntary part-timers, that proportion is only 34 percent. Yet among the involuntary part-time faculty members, whose reported income is the lowest, 74 percent say their part-time teaching at their current institution is their primary source of income.

These findings begin to point to distinct patterns among the three groups examined here. Community college faculty members teaching sociology full-time are somewhat older in our sample and more likely to have a PhD in sociology. The large majority report a middle-class annual income of $55,000 year or more. These faculty members may have planned a career in academia, their higher level of education is in keeping with that goal, and their income reflective of that achieved status (Eagan 2007). Their colleagues teaching part-time by choice have the highest median age and are more likely to have a master’s degree. Some researchers have speculated that voluntarily part-time faculty members may have established full-time positions elsewhere and see teaching at a community college as a personally satisfying or prestigious supplemental activity (Akroyd and Engle 2014). The fact that 66 percent of the voluntary part-time sociology faculty members do not view community college teaching as their primary employment tends to support this characterization for the individuals in that situation. The sociologists who are teaching part-time at community colleges but would prefer a full-time position may be more heavily invested in the discipline of sociology, as evidenced by a higher proportion holding a terminal degree in the field compared to those voluntarily part-time. Even so, on average these individuals are younger and have lower incomes.

In the next section, we examine working conditions for these three groups, considering how their experiences differ. In particular, we consider how the structural context in which full-time, voluntarily part-time, and involuntarily part-time faculty members teach sociology in community colleges may create conditions likely to foster or limit the kinds of substantive and ongoing faculty-student interactions that have been shown to be supportive of positive student outcomes.

Working Conditions

Although sociology faculty members in community colleges share a common employer and teaching as the focal point of their professional responsibilities, our data indicate significant differences between full-time and part-time respondents across a variety of working conditions. Previous explanations of these differences have tended toward one of two opposing views of part-time faculty members. One view characterizes them as “freeway fliers” or the “migrant workers of the academy,” teaching at multiple institutions with divergent student needs and course expectations (McConnel 1993). Other analysts have emphasized that faculty members teach part-time to gain a measure of prestige or to remain connected with teaching after retirement but that they have other sources of income (Gappa, Austin, and Trice 2007). Our data on community college faculty members teaching sociology further complicate this picture and document the need to acknowledge the existence of the two very different categories within the part-time faculty. Table 2 summarizes four measures of working conditions and begins to reveal a pattern of deterioration in the conditions likely to foster high-quality faculty-student interactions when moving from full-time to part-time by choice and on to involuntary part-time employment for faculty members.

Table 2.

Working Conditions of Community College Faculty Members in Sociology, by Employment Status, 2014 (Percentage).

	Full-time	All Part-time	Difference FT/PT	Voluntary Part-time	Involuntary Part-time	Difference VPT/IPT
Teaching at more than one institution	15.9	44.2	*	34.5	54.1	*
Spends 5 hours or more per week in advising/office hours	69.3	18.3	*	12.7	23.1	*
Teaching load, current college (sections)			*			*
One	2.2	20.6		30.7	10.6
Two	2.5	28.5		26.3	30.5
Three	6.7	32.5		31.4	33.3
Four	12.6	8.3		4.4	12.8
Five	34.8	4.0		3.6	4.3
Six or more	41.2	6.1		3.6	8.4
Specific courses taught in the last three years
Introductory Sociology	96.8	91.2	*	86.7	94.9	*
Social Problems	60.1	36.8	*	29.9	43.5	*
Sociology of Family/Marriage and Family	49.5	25.4	*	23.1	27.0	n.s.
Race and Ethnicity	33.4	21.0	*	14.2	27.0	*
Gender/Women’s Studies/ Sexuality	22.3	14.3	*	7.5	20.3	*
Criminology/Deviance/Justice	16.3	9.6	*	9.7	9.4	n.s.
Respondents by employment status	412	296		148	148

Source: ASA Taskforce on Community College Faculty in Sociology survey.

Note: Percentages may not total 100 due to rounding. FT = full-time; PT = part-time; VPT = voluntary part-time; IPT = involuntary part-time; n.s. = not significant.

p < .05.

We asked survey respondents whether they were teaching at more than one institution in the current term. More than a quarter of respondents are in fact teaching at multiple institutions, but the difference in prevalence forms a major distinction among our three employment status categories. The proportion of full-time faculty respondents teaching at more than one institution, 16 percent, is not insubstantial; of those, most teach at only one other institution, with a handful teaching at more than two in total. Many more of their part-time colleagues are teaching at multiple institutions, and this serves as a defining feature of their work situation. If the part-time sociology faculty members in the survey were teaching primarily for the prestige or self-fulfillment of doing so, we would expect that most of them would be teaching one course at one institution. That is not the case for a large proportion of our respondents teaching part-time. Most of the involuntarily part-time respondents are teaching at multiple institutions, and even among those teaching part-time by choice, a third are teaching at more than one institution. A further distinction between the part-time categories is not shown in the table. Among those teaching part-time by choice, only a handful are teaching at three or more institutions, but among those part-time not by choice, about 27 percent are. Teaching at multiple colleges may be an indication that most of the part-time faculty members in the survey, whether in that employment status by choice or not, view their teaching as more than an avocation or source of prestige. Moreover, the need to travel between multiple institutions during the course of a week creates structural conditions that will inevitably tend to limit faculty interaction with students, regardless of their individual motivation to be accessible, available, and approachable (Chambliss and Takacs 2014).

Table 2 includes a further measure of faculty availability to students, the number of hours spent in advising or holding office hours. Our questionnaire collected responses as the actual number of hours; five hours per week would correspond to one hour per section in a typical full-time community college teaching load and reveals a clear distinction among our respondents by employment status. Two-thirds of full-time faculty members reported five hours or more of advising or office hours per week, while only 18 percent of part-time respondents met that threshold. There is a further distinction between the two categories of part-timers corresponding to the somewhat larger teaching loads of involuntary part-timers.⁵ An additional item asked how many office hours were required by the respondent’s primary college. Significantly, most of the part-time respondents (56 percent) selected “office hours are not required.” Part-time respondents who said office hours were required were further asked whether they are compensated for them. Of the relatively small number in this situation who responded, a large majority are not compensated. Several also explained that compensation is limited, even if they might like to do more. In sum, the majority of part-time faculty members say they are not required to hold office hours, and most of those who do are not compensated for it.

Student success in courses has been shown to be positively correlated with their level of comfort in making use of office hours (Micari and Pazos 2012). Thus, our finding that part-time faculty members teaching sociology are often not required to hold office hours, may do so for a shorter period of time when they do, and that the time they spend meeting with students is often uncompensated are all structural factors that would tend to reduce the kind of meaningful faculty-student interaction shown to increase student outcomes even in highly challenging courses (Micari and Pazos 2012).

Because the primary work of faculty members in community colleges is teaching, their employment status correlates strongly with the number of courses they teach. Even so, differences in course load emerge among our three employment status categories that go beyond the full-time/part-time divide. We first asked respondents how many course sections they are teaching in the present term at their “reference” college (where they received the survey invitation). Although this provides us with only a snapshot at a single point in time of workloads that can vary, readers familiar with teaching loads in community colleges will not be surprised to learn that a majority of the full-time faculty respondents are teaching five or six sections. Among the part-time respondents, the teaching load forms another important aspect of the difference in work situations between the two categories—although there is variation within each category as well. Respondents teaching part-time by choice are nearly evenly divided among those teaching one, two, and three sections. The proportion teaching four or more sections is not insubstantial, however, at 12 percent. By contrast, just 11 percent of those teaching part-time not by choice are teaching a single section, and 26 percent are teaching four or more.⁶

It should be noted that if a typical full-time teaching load for a community college faculty member is defined as five sections in a term, 10 percent of the “part-time” survey respondents are actually teaching a full-time load at their reference college. If full-time is defined as four courses, as might be common in a teaching-focused baccalaureate college, then 18 percent of the “part-time” faculty members are teaching a full-time load (26 percent of involuntary part-timers and 12 percent of those part-time by choice). Given that 44 percent of part-time faculty members reported teaching at more than one institution, their chances of having time to interact with students outside of class once again appear to be greatly limited by the structural constraints of their working conditions.

Because community college course offerings in a transfer discipline such as sociology are generally limited to those taught during the first two years of a traditional four-year bachelor’s degree program, a common concern is the lack of variety in courses faculty members are able to offer. This lack of variety is not entirely supported by the survey findings, but there are differences among the employment status categories in the opportunity for respondents to teach different courses.

Respondents were asked to select from a list of courses frequently offered at the community college level those they had taught in the last three years at their current college (Kain et al. 2007; Rowell and This 2013).⁷ As might be expected, nearly all have taught the introductory course, with only slight (albeit statistically significant) variation by employment status. The second most frequent course is Social Problems, which also begins to show meaningful differences among the employment status categories: A majority of full-time respondents have taught Social Problems recently compared with less than half of involuntary part-timers and less than a third of part-time by choice respondents. More than a third of all respondents have taught a course in family or marriage and family, about half of the full-timers and a quarter of the part-timers. Race and ethnicity is the fourth most common course topic, and gender, women’s studies, or sexuality the fifth. The distribution by employment status for those two course groupings follows the pattern shown for Social Problems. The smallest category includes crime, criminology, deviance, and justice courses, taught more frequently by full-time respondents with no difference between part-time categories.

The fact that part-time faculty members are only slightly less likely to be teaching introduction to sociology than their full-time colleagues is worth highlighting. Introductory courses generally have the largest enrollment and are the site of students’ first exposure to a discipline. According to Chambliss and Takacs (2014), introductory courses are an essential gateway to college learning. One bad experience can delegitimize an entire discipline or area of study for students. They caution that the practice of using overworked “adjunct” faculty members in introductory courses is not in the best interests of students or institutions—and we would add, of the disciplines.

Together, these results point to the challenging working conditions community college faculty members confront but also suggest important differences by employment status. For part-time faculty members teaching sociology in community colleges, regardless of their excellence in teaching and motivation to create meaningful connections to their students, the structural conditions of their employment appear to create an environment that is not conducive to substantive ongoing faculty-student interaction. In the next section, we examine whether these differing working conditions are correlated with differences in respondents’ professional identity and preference for working at a community college.

Professional Identity

Faculty members play many roles, including that of teacher, coach, friend, adjudicator, subject-matter specialist, and scholar. Among these many roles, where do community college faculty members locate their primary professional identity? This topic is of particular interest since sociologists are well aware of the nuances of situational identity and multiple roles, key concepts in our discipline and also in teachers’ daily interaction with students. Table 3 provides a summary of some measures of professional identity.

Table 3.

Professional Identity of Community College Faculty Members in Sociology, by Employment Status, 2014 (Percentage).

	Full-time	All Part-time	Difference FT/PT	Voluntary Part-time	Involuntary Part-time	Difference VPT/IPT
Primary professional identity			*			n.s.
Community college professor	44.6	32.3		33.8	31.1
College professor	24.8	21.2		20.3	21.5
Sociologist	18.3	23.4		21.8	25.2
Teacher	8.0	13.4		9.8	17.0
Other	4.3	9.7		14.3	5.2
Would rather teach at four-year institution	21.4	29.2	*	19.2	38.6	*
Would like a full-time position				37.6	91.7	*
Respondents by employment status	399	268		133	135

Source: ASA Taskforce on Community College Faculty in Sociology survey.

Note: Percentages may not total 100 due to rounding. FT = full-time; PT = part-time; VPT = voluntary part-time; IPT = involuntary part-time; n.s. = not significant.

p < .05.

Our analysis begins with one questionnaire item that put the question directly: “Which of the following best describes your own view of your primary professional identity?” Survey participants were given five response options: community college professor, college professor, sociologist, teacher, and other. All three categories of respondents choose community college professor most frequently, but the proportions vary significantly: 45 percent of those employed full-time choose this as their primary identity, while only 32 percent of those employed part-time do. The second most commonly chosen primary identity for full-time faculty members is college professor, but among part-time respondents, sociologist is the second most commonly selected option. Eight percent of full-timers choose teacher as their primary professional identity, as do 10 percent of the voluntarily part-time respondents. More of the involuntarily part-time (17 percent) select teacher as their primary professional identity, eschewing what in some contexts might be viewed as the higher status terms of professor or sociologist. It may be that the extremely challenging working conditions faculty members employed part-time confront negatively affect their self-image and professional identity.

Respondents also were asked whether they would prefer to be teaching at a four-year institution rather than a community college. They were asked how strongly they agreed or disagreed with the statement “I would rather be teaching at a four-year institution.” Nearly twice as many of the involuntarily part-time faculty members (39 percent) indicate a preference for a four-year position (somewhat agree or strongly agree) compared with either the full-time (21 percent) or part-time by choice respondents (19 percent).

In a separate question we ask, “If there were no obstacles, in which of the following professional activities would you like to participate?” with one item being “Secure a full-time teaching position in sociology.” The responses from survey participants employed part-time indicate a stark difference between the two categories: 92 percent of the involuntarily part-time respondents would like a full-time faculty position, while only 38 percent of those teaching part-time by choice would.

Are the differences in working conditions noted in the previous section correlated with differences in professional identity and preferred working environment? There do indeed seem to be some differences, with more of the part-time faculty members choosing sociologist as their primary professional identity and respondents teaching part-time involuntarily indicating an unfulfilled preference for a full-time position, perhaps especially at a four-year institution. We are particularly struck by the emerging identity expressed by this latter group of respondents: By contrast with their full-time and voluntary part-time colleagues, they are actively seeking to make a change in their status. The barriers to achieving such a change are illustrated in an open-ended comment from one respondent involuntarily teaching part-time, whose remarkable efforts are probably beyond what the typical part-time faculty member could undertake:

In order to make myself a competitive candidate for full-time positions, I’ve attended many campus events/staff development days, completed department administrative work . . . , been part of [the] campus pilot program for [a] new online course management system, helped to form and served as faculty adviser to [the] campus sociology club, and was even [named distinguished adjunct faculty of the year]. All this with no job security, very little compensation for number of hours worked, and no benefits. This has been quite a sacrifice for myself and my family with little hope that all of it will culminate in a full-time permanent position.

Professional Engagement

Survey respondents were asked to indicate how many times in the past two years they had engaged in a range of professional activities that are often associated with the professoriate, such as attending and presenting at professional conferences, publishing, and applying for and receiving grants. For this analysis, summarized in Table 4, we have looked at items that relate to teaching and interaction with students, and we have tabulated whether respondents engaged in each activity at all rather than the frequency of engagements.

Table 4.

Respondents Engaging in Various Activities During the Last Two Years, by Employment Status, 2014 (Percentage).

Activity	Full-time	All Part-time	Difference FT/PT	Voluntary Part-time	Involuntary Part-time	Difference VPT/IPT
Attended a sociology professional conference	55.8	36.3	*	31.0	42.0	n.s.
Presented and/or presided over a session at a sociology conference	28.8	21.2	*	16.3	26.0	n.s.
Attended a community college–specific conference	48.3	37.2	*	45.2	29.5	*
Presented and/or presided over a session at a community college–specific conference	22.5	11.9	*	11.0	12.1	n.s.
Attended a professional development workshop at own college	89.2	74.7	*	69.8	78.9	n.s.
Presented and/or presided over a session at a workshop at own college	56.2	19.3	*	19.0	19.1	n.s.
Attended a minicourse, webinar, or workshop for sociology educators	27.9	24.4	n.s.	27.6	21.4	n.s.
Conducted a minicourse, webinar, or workshop for sociology educators	6.7	5.4	n.s.	7.9	2.3	*
Attended a general teaching- related conference (not specific to sociology)	53.5	42.7	*	51.6	34.1	*
Respondents by employment status	382	260		129	131

Source: ASA Taskforce on Community College Faculty in Sociology survey.

Note: FT = full-time; PT = part-time; VPT = voluntary part-time; IPT = involuntary part-time; n.s. = not significant.

p < .05.

Significant differences between the professional engagement activities of full- and part-time faculty members are seen in seven of the nine activities shown in the table. In each case, more full-time community college faculty members have participated in each specific form of professional engagement than have their part-time colleagues. When comparing faculty members who are teaching part-time by choice with those who would prefer a full-time position, significant differences emerge for three of the examined activities, all of them instances where more of the respondents teaching part-time by choice participated.

Examining which activities are most frequently mentioned by each of the three groups provides another set of insights on their priorities and opportunities for professional engagement. The activities engaged in by the largest proportion of full-time respondents are those related to their roles at their own college or in teaching more generally; fewer engage in leading activities outside their colleges. Among part-time respondents, the contrast is between just attending professional activities and having a visible presence by presenting and/or presiding.

This is illustrated by looking at the two activities reported most commonly by full-time respondents. The single most frequently mentioned professional activity for all three categories is attending a workshop at the respondent’s own college, but a majority of full-timers (56 percent) further report presenting in or presiding over a session at their own college, something only 19 percent of part-timers do.⁸ The next three most commonly indicated activities on the full-timers’ list are attending conferences of different types: a sociology conference, a general teaching conference, and a community college conference. All three of these are also next on the list for respondents from the two part-time categories, although the proportions reporting each vary. In terms of a visible presenting or presiding role, 29 percent of full-time faculty members have done so at a sociology conference, and 23 percent have done so at a community college conference, while the part-time proportions are mostly lower. The notable exception is that 26 percent of involuntary part-timers have presented or presided at a sociology conference.

Especially for faculty members teaching part-time involuntarily, these barriers to professional engagement represent accumulated sources of dissatisfaction. One such respondent to the survey characterized this accumulated frustration as “having to work as an adjunct; not having the support or appreciation for what I do; [low] pay and no benefits; lack of job security; lack of opportunities to attend conferences, or do research or write.”

Identification of Serious Challenges

Respondents were asked to identify serious problems they face, and the tabulated differences by employment status help to clarify our view of the interaction of employment status with career aspirations.⁹ As shown in Table 5, the challenges selected most frequently by full-time sociology faculty respondents have to do with students and faculty working conditions. Their most frequent selection, by far, is “underprepared students,” which is high on the list for all three categories. Even so, there are differences between full-time and part-time respondents in the emphasis on this issue. The second selection on the full-time list is “inadequate compensation for part-time and adjunct faculty,” another problem identified frequently by all three categories of respondents and yet highlighting the differences in perceptions to which we will return in a moment. The next two items selected frequently by full-time respondents, “teaching load too heavy” and “too many non-teaching responsibilities,” are specific to their situation and are not identified as serious by a large proportion of the part-timers. Looking at the items not frequently identified as serious by full-time respondents, the low response level on three of them—“need to work at more than one institution to make ends meet,” “lack of job security (at-will employment),” and “lack of medical insurance benefits”—indicates they do not have major concerns with their own compensation or job security. Two kinds of “lack of support,” from faculty and from administrators in the same department or division, are low on the full-time list.

Table 5.

Serious Problems and Statements about Respect, by Employment Status, 2014 (Percentage).

	Full-time	All Part-time	Difference FT/PT	Voluntary Part-time	Involuntary Part-time	Difference VPT/IPT
Issues identified as serious
Lack of support from my department or division administration	13.7	18.2	n.s.	12.0	23.6	*
Lack of support from other faculty in my department or division	6.0	17.1	*	12.0	22.0	*
Lack of job security (at-will employment)	9.2	59.5	*	36.0	82.7	*
Inadequate compensation for part-time and adjunct faculty	36.3	64.4	*	45.6	82.8	*
Lack of medical insurance benefits	3.1	47.4	*	30.4	64.1	*
Need to work at more than one institution to make ends meet	9.6	54.4	*	34.1	74.2	*
Lack of resources for doing research	23.7	33.6	*	17.4	49.2	*
Teaching load too heavy	32.4	5.6	*	4.8	6.3	n.s.
Classes too large	15.1	7.9	*	8.8	7.0	n.s.
Underprepared students	70.2	47.8	*	49.2	46.9	n.s.
Students’ lack of interest in sociology	18.7	18.5	n.s.	19.0	18.1	n.s.
Agreement with statements about respect
Part-time faculty are undervalued in my department.	48.7	58.6	*	45.6	71.4	*
Community college sociology faculty are well respected by the rest of the academic sociology community.	13.5	19.2	n.s.	29.0	9.5	*
Respondents by employment status	386	252		125	127

Source: ASA Taskforce on Community College Faculty in Sociology survey.

Note: FT = full-time; PT = part-time; VPT = voluntary part-time; IPT = involuntary part-time; n.s. = not significant.

p < .05.

The responses from the involuntary part-time faculty members show a very different pattern. The four items they choose most frequently all relate to compensation and job security. Inadequate part-time faculty compensation was chosen by 83 percent, more than twice the full-time proportion. So even though low part-time faculty pay was a top selection for full-timers as well, there is an important difference: For the involuntary part-time respondents, this issue concerns their own compensation, while for the full-time respondents this is an expression of solidarity rather than a personal concern. The proportion of part-time not by choice respondents selecting this as a serious problem is also more than twice that among the full-timers.

A lack of job security was also selected by 83 percent of involuntary part-timers, but this is not viewed as a serious problem by a large number of full-timers. The perceived lack of job security may damage interaction between part-time faculty members and students in at least three ways: Students may hesitate to seek help from and confide in a faculty member who may very well not be around the following term. Conversely, faculty members may be hesitant to invest the time to develop a relationship with a student for the same reason. Finally, a constant search for the next—hopefully more secure—teaching position is very time-consuming and works against spending time with students outside of class. The next item on the involuntary part-timer list, “need to work at more than one institution,” reinforces our aforementioned finding on that indicator. It is followed in frequency by the “lack of medical insurance.” Not providing health insurance for such a large category of employees sends a powerful message about how little they are valued. This cultural devaluation has consequences for faculty members and may also affect their students, as we explore below.

The identification of serious problems also highlights the intermediate position of respondents teaching part-time by choice. Their two most frequently selected responses to this questionnaire item are the same as those chosen by full-timers, and yet the differences in proportion reinforce their distinct employment position. Nearly half of voluntary part-timers identify underprepared students as a serious problem. In putting this at the top of their list, they resemble full-time respondents, and yet the significantly lower proportion compared with full-timers is in line with the response of their involuntary part-time colleagues. The second item on the part-time by choice list, inadequate part-time compensation, is also second on the full-time list—and yet, the proportion selecting this response among voluntary part-timers is simultaneously significantly higher than among the full-timers and much lower than among involuntary part-timers. Although this item refers to their own pay and benefits, given their apparently voluntary choice to teach part-time, it seems more a statement of solidarity with others who do so by necessity. (Even though a third of these voluntary part-timers identify teaching part-time as their primary occupation and half view themselves as professors.) The next three items on the part-time by choice list place them solidly between the two other categories of community college sociology faculty members. All three relate to compensation or job security: the lack of job security, the need to work at more than one institution, and the lack of medical benefits. In focusing on economic conditions, the voluntary part-timers resemble their involuntary colleagues. And yet the proportions represent a significant difference between the part-timers, with much higher response levels from the not-by-choice category.

Another problem identified by part-time faculty members in the survey is the perceived lack of respect from full-time colleagues. Two involuntary part-time respondents describe this perception pointedly in response to an open-ended prompt about sources of dissatisfaction:

The utter disrespect and disdain of tenured and tenure-track faculty—inclusive of sociology—towards me and other part-time faculty. . . . I have noticed the same kind of condescension on the part of sociology (and other) faculty members from four-year institutions towards community college faculty. This disrespect, disdain and condescension—as well as the active resistance of tenured/tenure-track faculty for improvement of wages and other basic benefits for part-time faculty—reflect a clear caste-like stratification system with part-time faculty members in the stigmatized “untouchable” caste, a pariah majority group often labeled “adjuncts” as in “add-ons.”

. . . like not being permitted a key to get into the office to make copies or get my mail when teaching a course on Saturdays when the office is closed—I was told “adjuncts cannot have keys.” Very disrespectful for a professional employee who has worked there several years. Things like that make it clear that we really are temporary and undervalued.

Two additional items illustrate both aspects of this perceived lack of respect, as summarized in Table 5. Although nearly half of the full-time respondents agree with the statement “Part-time faculty are undervalued in my department,” this is an expression of solidarity on their part and not a reflection of their own situation. The proportion of involuntary part-time respondents agreeing that they themselves are “undervalued” is much higher. (This response pattern is similar to the identification of part-time faculty compensation as a serious problem noted previously.) The second statement addresses the perceived lack of respect for community college faculty members shown by their four-year institution colleagues. None of the respondent categories sees a high level of respect for community college teachers, but the lowest level is among the involuntary part-time respondents. The two survey responses combined reinforce the forceful perception articulated by the respondent quoted previously: Community college faculty members are not respected by their four-year colleagues, but part-time faculty members feel that full-timers show them a further lack of respect. This is consistent with similar findings reported by Eagan et al. (2015) in a four-year institution setting.

Discussion

The survey data reviewed here corroborate the relationship between structural disadvantage and cultural devaluation in the form of interpersonal disrespect toward faculty colleagues employed part-time. This relationship has been described for non–tenure track faculty members at four-year institutions by Gappa et al. (2007) and Kezar (2012, 2013). Kezar’s (2013) research further connects the cultural devaluation of part-time faculty work with those individuals’ correspondingly reduced “willingness, capacity, and opportunity to perform” and the consequent impact on the quality and quantity of faculty-student interaction and student success. Our analysis extends this connection to community college sociology and leads us to suggest changes in policies and practices to remedy the situation

Professional disrespect is communicated structurally in forms we have described previously on the basis of survey results: poor compensation leading to a need to work at more than one institution to make ends meet, unreliable scheduling and a lack of job security, and obstacles to professional engagement despite high interest. These structural disadvantages are summarized in an anecdote we heard directly from a part-time community college sociology faculty member as we were completing this article. This individual has 18 years of experience in her department and had been assigned to teach two night courses this semester. To offset a significant decline in student enrollment in the college as a whole and in sociology in particular, she launched a successful campaign to increase enrollment in one course that had been under-enrolled and was fully prepared to start teaching both courses. On the very day the second class was to begin, she was abruptly informed by the dean that he had reassigned her course to a full-time instructor who needed another section to make a full load and had indicated his “preference” for this course. This last-minute action cut the instructor’s teaching hours and income by 50 percent, reprising a similar cut she had suffered in the previous semester and duplicating a common experience of part-time faculty colleagues in community colleges nationwide.

An organizational culture that devalues the work of part-time faculty members is also communicated interpersonally, producing perceptions of disrespect as exemplified in the quotes in the previous section and the survey results in Table 5. Kezar’s (2012) chapter on “creating a culture to support and professionalize non–tenure track faculty” uses respect as a central guiding principle and provides an excellent framework for implementing the kind of thorough organizational change needed to support part-time faculty members in providing excellent instruction while simultaneously narrowing structural disadvantages in compensation and workload. (However, we note that her brief description of a community college where “the campus climate is quite favorable between tenure-track and part-time faculty [and] part-time faculty are recognized as making a major contribution to the campus” [Kezar 2012:23] does not match our own experiences or those reported by most survey respondents.) Kezar and her colleagues in the Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success have created an organizational self-assessment tool to assist in identifying practices in need of change (Delphi Project 2015). Such a self-assessment can help a department, division, or college formulate a statement of values along with policies and practices to reduce part-time faculty disadvantage and work toward the goals of equity and respect. This is particularly important in a discipline with a long history of social activism and a strong emphasis on public sociology.

We suggest here a few specific good practices distilled from the sources cited throughout this article and related to our empirical findings for community college sociology:

Compensation and job security issues are key. Part-time faculty pay at many colleges is abysmal and must be increased. Last-minute schedule and workload changes should be avoided whenever possible, and when a change is necessary, the part-time faculty member should be compensated. Part-time colleagues should be invited to (and compensated for attending) orientation and professional development sessions.

Full-time faculty members and administrators should work to create a single faculty across current employment status boundaries by actively promoting community and collegiality. Part-time faculty members should be invited to all academic activities and institutional events, their names should be learned, they should be greeted personally, and they should be considered for all forms of faculty recognition and rewards.

Our finding that there is considerable unfulfilled motivation for scholarly involvement has implications for colleges and for sociology professional associations at the state, regional, and national levels. What resources can be provided to reduce financial barriers to association membership and conference attendance?

Our evidence makes it clear that part-time community college faculty members in sociology are not all the same in terms of their backgrounds, academic preparation, and career objectives. There is a need for further research in the community college setting to compare our findings to the situation in other disciplines. The differences between voluntary and involuntary part-timers have implications for policies and practices that may be formulated at the institutional level but need to account for these variations.

Our study has limitations. There is no comprehensive national framework for reaching a fully representative sample of the population of faculty members teaching sociology part-time in community colleges. We do not have direct evidence of the effect of variations in employment conditions or changes to the culture of academic departments on faculty-student interactions and student success. Yet the evidence presented here represents an ambitious attempt at a national survey of community college sociology instructors, and in the absence of strong evidence to the contrary, it should serve to guide administrators and full-time faculty members in better integrating and supporting all of their colleagues employed part-time, whatever their motivation and career situation. Our review of the literature on the importance of faculty-student interaction in enhancing student success, combined with the reports in our survey and elsewhere of both structural disadvantage through employment practices and cultural devaluation in collegial interactions, make it clear that both aspects of the part-time employment situation must be addressed. Such improvements in the support provided to part-time faculty members are critical in providing community college students—many of whom themselves face myriad challenges—with an increased likelihood of success.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the faculty members who generously participated in the survey and the anonymous reviewers and members of the American Sociological Association Task Force on Community College Faculty in Sociology for invaluable comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

Editor’s Note

Reviewers of this manuscript were, in alphabetical order, Paul Dean, Leslie Elrod, and Judson Everitt.

Notes

Author Biographies

John W. Curtis is director of the Department of Research on the Discipline and Profession for the American Sociological Association. His career in applied sociology has included positions in professional associations and community colleges, where his research has focused on academic labor, including contingent employment and equity across gender, race, and ethnicity. He holds a PhD in the sociology of international development and previously worked at universities in Germany and Kenya.

Cynthia Mahabir is part-time instructor in the Department of Sociology at Laney College. She is the author of Crime and Nation-Building in the Caribbean: The Legacy of Legal Barriers and has published in British Journal of Criminology, Social and Legal Studies, Popular Music, Feminist Studies, and the International Journal of the Sociology of Law. She is currently analyzing fieldwork data on women lawyers in India. In 2015, she was named Part-Time Faculty Member of the Year by the Faculty Association of the California Community Colleges.

Margaret Weigers Vitullo is director of academic and professional affairs at the American Sociological Association, where she works to advance sociologists in their professions and improve department management and leadership, curriculum, teaching, and assessment of learning outcomes. Dr. Vitullo also initially proposed, developed, and continues to administer the ASA’s online Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology (TRAILS), the first discipline-specific peer-reviewed digital library of teaching and learning materials.

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