So you make $1,800 for teaching a university level course. Let's even say you teach three of those courses bringing your salary up to $5,400 for about four months of work. With earnings like that, you could surely wait seven weeks until you receive your first paycheck - after all, you must have quite a savings stored up, right? That appears to be what the case will be at Missouri Southern State University starting next semester. 

Why? Well, according to the VP of Academic Affairs, it is really hard to manage a payroll system that pays employee five times a term. Yes. It makes one wonder how any organization completes the task of paying employees every other week beginning with the second week after they start!

But seriously . . .

The student paper at Capital University in Ohio is reporting that the institution has "had to increase the number of adjunct faculty teaching general education courses 20 percent for this year." While that is a significant statistic, it is not one that is all that surprising in the current economic climate and given current attitudes toward academic staffing in higher education. However, what is different is the rationale:

Dr. Richard Ashbrook, Interim Dean of the College, has hope for what the next year will hold. . . . Ashbrook went on to explain that President Dr. Denvy Bowman announced months ago the university was not only committed to replacing faculty, but also to increasing the number of tenure track faculty positions. [snip]

The next few semesters may be frustrating for both faculty and students, but the goal of the university is to bring better learning and working environments on campus.

In other words, the increased use of contingent faculty is a short-term strategy in a longer-term plan. Well, we have heard that before, and each time the short-term strategy seems to have the long-term effect of more faculty in lower-paid contingent positions overall and a decline in tenure-track positions. 

So let's hope this really is a strategic plan and the Capital is looking at long-term investment, stability and improving learning and working conditions. That would be a fresh change.

We hope that you have taken the time to check out the various resources on our site related to academic staffing issues including:

• relevant legislation from around the country;
• academic research staffing issues; and, 
• collective bargaining gains in key areas related to staffing.

Now we are adding another resource: FACE Issue Briefs. These briefs will be focused on particular topics relevant to academic staffing and our FACE campaign. The idea behind these briefs is to bring together AFT policies and resources on a particular issue and look at its connection with the FACE campaign.

The first of these briefs was circulated at the recent COCAL meeting and is focused on Job Security, which has clearly become one of the most prominent issues for contingent faculty around the country alongside pay and benefits.

Check out the first FACE Issue Brief: Job Security for Contingent Faculty.

Hope everyone is enjoying the last days of summer, had a great Labor Day (by celebrating Labor!), and is ready for the new academic year. We took a few weeks off to regroup, but we are back. We have a good number of things lined up for this upcoming year that we are excited about, but first let's clear the decks of a few items of interest that happened during our short break.

• Contingent activists including a good number of AFT members got together in San Diego for the eighth meeting of COCAL (Coalition on Contingent Academic Labor). I wasn't able to make it, but everyone reports that it was a great success.
• A former University of Phoenix administrator started quite a stir by suggesting that contingent faculty ought to get themselves certified.
• The AAUP just added a great guy at the helm. There are a few articles out there on this, but to really get a sense of Gary Rhoades, listen to the podcast over at IHE.

Okay that is enough old news, now we can start focusing on the current goings-on.

As Lila just noted, the dog days of August have arrived and with them a summer break for many on campus. We here at FACE Talk are going to take our own summer break of sorts and will return in a couple of weeks ready for another academic year and ready to get back into the fight for a better academic staffing structure in higher education. Until then, be safe and stay cool everyone!