Editor’s note: This commentary is by Jennifer Elizabeth Brunton, Ph.D., who taught at CCV Brattleboro for eight years.
[T]o the People in the Administration of the Community College of Vermont:
I’d like to introduce myself, although you might perhaps know me after eight years at your institution. In most particulars, I am your ideal faculty member. After a fully-funded course of study, I received a doctorate from one of our country’s most-esteemed institutions, Columbia University. I am a passionate, engaging, committed, caring, knowledgable, extremely hardworking teacher. I bring many years of teaching experience at Columbia and Barnard to my teaching at CCV, and I offer CCV students the exact same high-quality learning experience that I offered students at those expensive, exclusive schools. In fact, because teaching at a community college was always my dream job, and because I believe community college students deserve every advantage their more-privileged peers receive, I have tried even harder at CCV than in my prior work.
In other ways, I am not your ideal faculty member. I do not have a trust fund. I do not have family money. I do not have a spouse who is able to fully financially support my family. I have children for whom I am the primary caregiver, so when I have exhausted all of the time they are in school preparing to teach (and, during my single mom years, hired sitters to watch them during evening classes), I do not then have other time in which to work another full-time job to support my family.
As I’ve mentioned, I was a highly promising student at Columbia. As a Lazarsfeld Fellow, a President’s Fellow, and a major grantee of the Social Science Research Council, my academic training had been full of significant honors and awards; most Ph.D. candidates in my position would have likely continued to follow a very prestigious career path. It was perhaps because of this potential that when I told faculty at Columbia that teaching at a community college was my dream job they looked at me like they thought I was crazy. When I told the CCV coordinator who originally hired me, Karen Clark, that CCV was my dream job, she also seemed rather shocked.
I initially thought these people perhaps lacked respect for community college students and teachers; now I realize that they probably knew something I did not know: that by teaching at a community college I would be dooming myself and my family to a life of poverty.
I would receive no benefits (no retirement funds or contributions, no health insurance [even if I chose to pay the full cost of a group plan], no paid vacation, holidays, or sick days…).
I would have no job security from semester to semester … ever.
Perhaps they also suspected that a job to which I would give my absolute best efforts, yet in which I would have literally no hope of advancement nor any real recognition for excellence, would become debilitating over time.
Yes, despite always doing my utmost as a teacher, despite amazing student reviews for years on end, despite representing the Brattleboro branch through the accreditation process, despite serving on any and all possible committees, despite being one of only a handful of faculty with a doctorate, I’ve had NO opportunity for advancement as a faculty member.
The only possible way for me to increase my pay at CCV would have been for me to become part of the administration … even at the very lowest level.
I began at CCV with enormous enthusiasm and hope and I thank you for that chance to live my dream. I wanted to teach students who were diverse in age, experience, income, etc., students who were in college by choice, and making sacrifices to be there, rather than the entitled students I’d sometimes encountered at the Ivy League schools I’d attended. And I really loved my first few years of teaching at CCV. First, I knew I was making a huge difference in students’ lives. I relished introducing students to new ideas, and I always told them — from my own experience — that they were just as worthy as students at fancier colleges (several of my students indeed continued on to places like Smith and Marlboro colleges). Second, I greatly enjoyed teaching what I myself found to be fascinating courses in Ethics, Bioethics, Intro Philosophy, and Comparative Religion. I was a single mother, but I had some savings, and the reality of my earnings for the job I labored so hard for took awhile to sink in. For a few years, I puttered along, doing my best — and seeing my savings disappear. I began to worry about such matters as heating my house and clothing my children. But I continued to do my best at CCV.
As we proudly watch some of our students lift themselves out of poverty through the education we provide — we become via our CCV positions further entrenched in poverty, debt, and sincere questions about the core values of CCV.
What does it mean to “do one’s best” as a faculty member? In order to actually do a good job, worthy of the needs of our students, each three-hour class takes a bare minimum of 10 to 12 hours of prep time. That’s not counting additional research to stay up-to-date in our fields, or the barrage of emails, texts, notes, and calls we faculty must answer — daily, and ideally, “within 24 hours” — from students every week. These 10-12 prep hours don’t necessarily include office hours — or meetings, such as the many I’ve had with students when reporting plagiarism, or with coordinators to discuss academic and behavioral issues … Also, they don’t include the additional five to 10 hours — weekly! — of preparation needed the first time one teaches a class. To do a really great job of teaching, as students deserve, requires so much more than is recognized or recompensed at CCV.
If we work 15 hours a week (12 hours of preparation, three of teaching) for 15 weeks at the going pay rate, we make about $16/hour. Remember, this estimate is a minimum one for a class one has taught before — and the hourly wage is calculated BEFORE taxes and Social Security are taken out, with no other benefits included WHATSOEVER. If pre-semester course prep (crafting syllabi, handouts, and grading rubrics; building online platforms in Moodle and Blackboard) and the required midterm and final narrative grades are added into this equation (a minimum of 20-30 hours), which seems reasonable, the hourly wage descends still more, to 14 or 15 pre-deduction/gross dollars per hour for our most highly educated population.
No wonder faculty are known by students and each other to sometimes skimp on innovation, preparation for class, assigning work that takes time to read/grade, and so on … I think we can agree that being a faculty member shouldn’t be something for which one minimizes the amount of work one does in order to make more than the low hourly wage doing a good job necessitates!
On top of the hard work for low pay, along with the lack of job security, potential for advancement, and benefits, the stress of dealing essentially on our own with students who cheat, plagiarize, cannot do the work as assigned, and/or face extraordinary challenges can be grueling. I myself have taught violent, mentally ill students (not to stigmatize mental illness — it’s the violence that has no place in any classroom … and if someone has their fists in my face [twice!], if their classmates are afraid … they should not be at CCV!), suicidal students, and students with learning and emotional differences I was not qualified to address — and that were not adequately addressed by CCV. Such situations are an all-too-common cause for burnout. Speaking only from the perspective of a faculty member who saw clearly that students did not have the necessary support for mental health and learning differences, I suspect the support staff at CCV are more overloaded than the faculty — if better paid. We community college teachers thus take on challenges that faculty at other institutions either rarely encounter or navigate through extensive institutional support, yet we earn much, much less.
Lest you think I am a lone malcontent, I assure you: Almost all faculty at CCV are unhappy with their wages and the rest of the above — and feel strongly that they are being treated unfairly. There are many worthy reasons to teach at CCV for those who can afford to do so. We stay because we desperately want to use the professional credentials we’ve sacrificed so much to obtain, and to serve our students, because we believe in community education, and some, the lucky ones, stay because they have other sources of income. Most of us, however, feed ourselves and our families by the grace of the SNAP program (food stamps) and rely on Medicaid for health insurance. Despite the honor and hard work represented by some of the highest degrees available on the planet — and as we proudly watch some of our students lift themselves out of poverty through the education we provide — we become via our CCV positions further entrenched in poverty, debt, and sincere questions about the core values of CCV.
In other words, while we teach our hearts out, we are treated unjustly … And so I ask you: How can we tell our students that education is the key to success if we ourselves are living below the federal poverty line … even if we teach two to three classes a semester (which is considered full time at most respected institutions)? How can I tell students how to “get ahead” when my years of almost-unilaterally “exceptional” and “outstanding” reviews from students lead simply to more of the same for me?
How is it possible that those of us who are on the front line with students on a daily basis, actually teaching them — which I at least think is the purpose of CCV — are “rewarded” in this way?
Like most institutions, CCV has become top heavy. It has ignored the ethical and financial injustices upon which its success is built. The vast administration of this community college is made possible only by your policy of hiring exclusively “part-time” “faculty” — and paying this faculty a mere fraction of what full-time or fairly-paid faculty would earn (again, with no benefits). I do understand that using (and I use this word advisedly) adjunct faculty is a national trend, but I know Vermont — the first state to legalize civil unions (and an early-embracer of same sex marriage), the first state to grant women partial voting rights and abolish slavery, the state known as the most progressive and fair in this nation, the state of BERNIE — can do better.
I am sure you are aware that CCV faculty are trying to unionize. I applaud my colleagues’ intentions and actions, and have been involved in this effort, but cannot sacrifice my family to poverty any longer while hoping against hope for change. I am not sure what is next for me in this semi-rural state. But I am not too worried: according to my calculations, it would be almost impossible to make less money. It would be impossible to have less job security. It would be impossible to have less benefits. It might be possible to have more stress — but it is unlikely …
So why am I writing to you? Most of the people in the administration at CCV seem to be kind and idealistic people — some, exceptionally so. Is it possible you are unaware of the plight of your faculty? I am writing to voice what my fellow faculty and I have been discussing for years. I do not presume to speak for every faculty member, but you should know my experience is similar to that of many, many faculty at CCV who believe that being a good teacher should be more valued and better-recompensed by your administration.
I also write to let you know that you, and, unfortunately, your students, have lost this ideal faculty member through your unfair faculty pay-scale and unjust employment policies.
