Capital Times Coverage

The Campus Connection Blog at The Capital Times has a lengthy article regarding the past few months of negotiations that link back to this blog.  The author, Todd Finkelmeyer, brings up some items of interest for the public at large:

If you are an area homeowner wondering how this deal might impact the amount of taxes you'll be sending to MATC, Roger Price, the school's vice president of infrastructure services, said he expects it'll have a "minimal effect."
Kent notes that over the next two years, the part-time teachers' new deal is expected to increase the college's operating budget by just 0.3 percent.

He also added a bit of perspective for anyone in doubt of the unfair treatment we've experienced over the years:

The college employs roughly 1,200 part-time teachers and about 450 full-timers.


Although these raises are significant, especially during the current economic crisis, part-timers argue they are long overdue as the gap between what they make and what the full-time faculty earn had widened too far.

The average part-time teacher at MATC, who receives no benefits, will earn about $2,600 per three-credit course during the 2009-10 school year. A full-time faculty member, meanwhile, gets an average of nearly $13,400 in total compensation (pay plus benefits).

To add perspective, Kent notes full-time faculty members at MATC are required to teach the equivalent of 10 three-credit courses per year -- which comes to an average of $133,972 in total compensation. If part-timers were allowed to teach the same amount, their pay would be $25,825.

This pay discrepancy so infuriated the part-time union that its members voted in September to allocate $100,000 to fund a "public education" campaign about its plight. Among other things, the union produced print ads, purchased air time and put up yard signs in an effort to make people aware of what it viewed as an unfair situation.

This is great press and a fair view of our efforts.

Part-time Faculty Shares Her Story

MATC p/t faculty member Sue Faber shares her story with the Capital Times.

Dear Editor: I teach an ESL (English as a second language) course offered by Madison Area Technical College twice a week at the Lussier Community Education Center. Students in ESL levels one through five may enroll at any time, with more than 25 students enrolled this semester.

Normally, between 15 and 20 attend, ranging from those who cannot read any language to those who test at level four. Students are not required to purchase a text. Instead, the instructor develops curriculum materials for each student performance level from a range of resources.

For example, for last Tuesday’s class, I assembled a grocery bag of food items for teaching food vocabulary to the pre-literate/level one group, wrote three pages of dialogs for the level twos, and prepared two reading/writing projects for the level threes/fours. Luckily, I kept the class on schedule (no new students showed up to register) and we got everything done.

Does this sound like a challenging course to teach? It is. And yet Madison College entrusts this class to me, a member of the part-time faculty, someone who earns far less than half the pay of a full-time faculty member for a course of equal length.

Unlike many others, I do not have to support myself on a part-time instructor’s pay. Still, I feel exploited and undervalued as I follow the contentious negotiations between Madison College and the Part-Time Teachers Union. College President Barhorst has said I’m “not serious” about my work. And the college board wants to make an already-huge salary discrepancy between full-time and part-time faculty even bigger.

Perhaps college board members are simply out of touch with what part-time teachers deal with, gladly and professionally, every day. Maybe that’s why they persist in a business strategy that demoralizes and causes financial hardship to so many.

Sue Fieber

Madison

Sue made clear what all part-timers feel - that the administration has little respect for the work that we do.  More letters like this sharing personal stories will be the key to ensuring that the public understands what part-time instructors do for our community.

Fearless Leader Mike Kent's Op-ed

Part-time Teachers' Union President Mike Kent's op-ed piece appeared in The Capital Times today. Holding his own question and answer session, he laid out the repurcussions of MATC continuing with the status quo in regard to p/t compensation.

"If part-time faculty are really being exploited, they should quit," you might say. They do. Over 30 percent of the 1,200 part-time faculty leave the school every year. More than 60 percent of the part-time faculty have less than three years of seniority with the school. Good, extremely well-qualified teachers leave the school every semester.

"Well, even if they are quitting, they are easily replaceable in this area." Not really. The dystopian ethic of treating skilled, conscientious professionals as human commodities notwithstanding, it takes more than an advanced degree to teach academic classes in the technical colleges. Instructors must obtain Wisconsin Technical College System certification, which requires the completion of more than 300 uncompensated hours of coursework, and the fulfillment of certain industry
experience and expertise requirements.

The big picture here is that taking car of teachers is best for students and best for our region.

The status quo must change. A 40 percent graduation rate is not healthy for the region. A 30 percent annual turnover rate for part-time faculty is toxic to the quality of education. MATC's administration needs to spend less time and energy on changing the name of the college or planning building acquisitions and more time dealing with the real crisis affecting the institution right now. You can't build on a rotting foundation, and the deliberate disregard of these issues is like fiddling while Rome burns.

Well said, Mike.

Making Our Case

We have our first proper media coverage in this Capital Times Article:

According to the union's figures, the average part-time teacher at MATC, who receives no benefits, will earn about $2,600 per three-credit course during the 2009-10 school year. A full-time faculty member, meanwhile, gets an average of nearly $13,400 in total compensation (pay plus benefits).

This level of disparity will only increase as raises continue to be given on a percentage basis.

MATC generally employs about 450 full-time faculty and some 1,200 part-timers in a given year, with more than a third of all classes being taught by part-time teachers.

"Part-time and full-time teachers need the same education requirements, the same certification requirements, the same in-the-field requirements to be able to teach," says Kent, who has taught everything from employment and business law to labor relations, ethics and college success. "So everything is the same between the groups -- except the pay."

It is obvious from the above statement that the MATC administration is balancing its budget through the part-time faculty.

*if you comment on the cap. times website, we can keep this story at the top of their news feed, so get on it*