How many CCCS workers advocate for the 4,600+ adjunct faculty? ZERO!

Mark DuCharme of the FRCC English Department poses with a pie chart showing how less than 12% of CCCS annual revenues go to the 4,600+ adjunct faculty who teach 75% of all the courses the CCCS offers. Half the CCCS workforce is this adjunct faculty, and they are paid poverty-level wages. Consequently, the community colleges are losing the great teachers that have long been the hallmark of the colleges.   

by Caprice Lawless

              

Few Colorado taxpayers, students and hard-working, devoted, adjunct faculty members are aware that there is not one person --- among the hundreds of six-figure-earning administrators in the Colorado Community College System (CCCS) --- charged with advocating for paying adjunct faculty a living wage. In fact, recent, historic events prove that part of the work of CCCS administrators is to

argue against living wages for half the workforce in the CCCS; its army of 4,600+ adjunct faculty who teach the lion’s share of the 29,000+ courses this system offers. (The CCCS pays its adjunct faculty, on average, $18,340 per year. )

                Let’s start at the top. Who advocates for higher wages for CCCS top executives? As of May, 2016, CCCS President Nancy McCallin earns almost four times ($375K) the salary of Gov. John Hickenlooper ($98K).  Each of the CCCS presidents ($135K-$209K) earns far more than does the state’s governor. In addition, each CCCS president may receive a 15% annual salary bonus. The dozens of CCCS vice presidents($72K-$181K+) earn far more than does the state’s governor. Each of the scores of CCCS Deans ($80-90K)  earn nearly the same salary as Gov. Hickenlooper. Advocating on their behalf is the state Department of Higher Education, headed by Colorado’s Lt. Governor. (The state’s Lt. Governor, with a salary of $68K, earns less than the average CCCS program director ($80K).  

Furthermore, the state pays the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) annual membership dues of $60K per year. Part of the AACC mission is to coach college executives on how to negotiate higher salaries for themselves. The AACC is a national lobbying juggernaut. The CCCS is paying AACC dues partly to make sure Colorado taxpayers are paying higher wages for all CCCS executives.

                Next in line, we have the full-time faculty minority of approximately 1,200 full-time faculty. They average fewer than 100 full-time faculty at work in each of the 13 CCCS colleges. They are paid, on average, two-thirds more per class than the adjunct faculty member who teaches the same class, with the same academic credentials and teaching experience. As of May, 2016, the average full-time faculty member in the CCCS, is paid $69K including benefits. Most of them are granted “release time” from teaching to serve as supervisors to the ocean of adjuncts who keep the lights on by teaching classes at all hours, even weekends, year-round. Advocating for higher wages and benefits for them are the scores of CCCS HR department personnel. Their go-to (and usually only) source of information is the other national, administration-focused organization, the gigantic and well-funded CUPA-HR (College and University Professional Association for Human Resources). CCCS HR also taps the CCCS budget, if needed, to hire consultants such as Sibson Consulting  to conduct surveys to help them press for higher wages for full-time faculty, as they did a few years ago. The stats and surveys Sibson supplied the CCCS HR provided the numbers that justified the CCCS giving the full-time faculty a recent 20.3% pay raise. 

                What about the CCCS HR? Don’t they advocate for adjunct faculty? Sadly, no. In fact, in the first hearing for the equal-pay-for-equal-work bill (HB 14-1154), the CCCS HR, represented by Aurora CC HR executive Cynthia Hesse, advocated fiercely against equal-pay-for-equal-work for adjunct faculty. She argued that to do so would require hiring more HR staff to keep track of all the paperwork. The CCCS HR administrators are the first ones to argue for the status quo, because they act as the right hand of CCCS administration. It’s a sad comment that, were the CCCS to have fewer adjunct faculty, each earning a higher wage and teaching more classes, the ostensibly sophisticated and software-savvy CCCS HR department would consider keeping track of them daunting. Sadder still is that the CCCS pays an HR professional to argue to that effect before legislative bodies. Since that time, the CCCS has hired approximately 1,000 more adjuncts, each of whom earns peanuts for their work, and no one hears any complaints from CCCS HR.

                What about the classified staff at work in the CCCS? Who advocates for their wages and benefits? That would be Colorado WINS, a special SEIU-related union blessed by the Colorado governor. Through WINS, the state gives raises to the workers keeping the lawns mowed, the copiers running, and the trash emptied. They also get those workers drastically reduced health-care benefits, such as a recent reduction of 66%. Colorado WINS is barred from advocating for adjunct faculty in the CCCS, by legislative design.

                What about the role of the Vice President for Executive Leadership Training and Development,  Linda Bowman, someone among top CCCS leadership for the entire state? Wouldn’t part of that job description include advocating that the CCCS needs a stable faculty who is earning at least a living wage? Again, no. CCCS VP Linda Bowman testified against equal-pay-for-equal work for adjunct faculty in the Senate hearing for SB 15-094 last year. She repeated the tired meme of how the CCCS needs flexibility, and how seniority must not play a role in faculty decisions. Seniority plays a powerful role, however, in administration salary decisions and full-time faculty decisions, as evidenced by the numerous CCCS surveys and salary comparisons listed above. For adjuncts across the state who have been putting their hearts and souls into teaching community college students for years, whenever they hear six-figure-earning administrators whose own careers have profited mightily by seniority invoke the need for “flexibility,” it is widely recognized as code for protected practices of wage theft and age discrimination visited upon adjunct faculty.

                What about the CCCS governing board, the State Board of Community Colleges and Occupational Education? We strike out with this group, as well. The SBCCOE has determined that the faculty majority is so inconsequential that its members are considered part of the “public” and thus are allowed only five minutes per month to say anything at all during the SBCCOE monthly meetings. The SBCCOE only meets ten months out of the year, leaving half the CCCS workforce less than one hour total, annually, to be heard. Knowing that is the case, even so, during the first hearing for HB 14-1154, SBCCOE Chair Russ Meyer told lawmakers that any issues involving adjunct faculty could be handled by the system through its shared governance procedures. Most CCCS adjuncts have never even heard of shared governance, and those that do report that it seems to be something for full-time faculty only. The SBCCOE itself models for Colorado its definition of shared governance: very little sharing and an abundance of governance.

                What about CCCS lobbyists at work in the state Capitol? Don’t they routinely argue for higher wages for CCCS adjunct faculty? Again, sadly, they do not. In fact, in the past two years, the CCCS has paid its lobbyists, the Capstone Group and JLH Public Affairs $132K to make sure both of equal-pay-for-equal-work bills (HB 14-1154 and SB 15-094) were defeated. 

                There is NOT ONE person in the CCCS or in the Colorado state government whose job it is to advocate for a living wage and better working conditions for adjunct faculty. In fact, as the details above describe, there are literally hundreds of people in the CCCS and under contract to CCCS administration who are paid to argue against paying any CCCS adjuncts a living wage. This design needs to change. Student success depends on a stable faculty able to focus on how best to teach and inspire learners.

                It is the prestigious American Association of University Professors (AAUP) that has taken up the charge of advocating for CCCS adjunct faculty. With the help of the AAUP, we have also formed relationships with numerous members of the Colorado House and Senate who are willing to champion paying Colorado’s community college teachers a living wage. The alarming situation in Colorado has the attention of the executives within this august body and among far more in the Colorado legislature than ever before. The AAUP has led the charge for more than a century for faculty rights, academic freedom and shared governance, and thus AAUP membership within CCCS is growing.

                               

# # #

Club Ed: CCCS Execs salaries soar while admins toss their 4,600+ adjuncts $4.80/week raise

Step 1. Read it.
Step 2. Weep.
Step 3. Join your local AAUP chapter of the CCCS or start a chapter.


Comparison of CCCS salaries at the top, 2012-2016

CCCS president salaries, 2012; 
CCCS president and vice president salaries, 2016.

Put out the word, across and down

“Bizspeak” as Newspeak: George Orwell and the Language of Higher Education

by Mark DuCharme

A colleague recently called my attention to certain problematically vague phrases from the Colorado Community College System (CCCS)’s 2015-2025 Strategic Plan.  The phrases listed below reminded us both of George Orwell, for reasons which shall be explained if they are not indeed already evident to those familiar with his work.

Key Strategies

Key Performance Measures

Operational Measures

Transform Workplace Experiences

Measurable Outcomes

Hybrid Educational Delivery

Redefine Value Proposition

Culture of Inquiry

Evidentiary Decision-making

Disrupt Old Models

Summative Analytics

Learning Object Repositories

Education without Barriers

Value Proposition

Engagement Strategy

Feedback Solicitations

Orwell (né Eric Arthur Blair, 1903-1950) (“George Orwell”) published, in the last few years of his life, two of his most significant works, in my opinion: his masterpiece, the novel 1984, and an equally provocative essay titled “Politics and the English Language.”  Both works, despite their obvious genre differences, are political in motivation and make the argument (though in the case of the novel, perhaps less overtly) that language use can have political implications insofar as it can affect thought, meaning and understanding.  In other words, shoddy language use ultimately leads to shoddy thinking, and the result of that is that citizens become more likely to think uncritically, accept questionable claims, and so become more pliant.  Orwell was particularly concerned with the political consequences of this phenomenon; while I share his concern, I would extend it to include the consequences to our profession, as such shoddy language use becomes more commonplace, and thus more accepted, even in academic settings.

For most who teach in higher education, it should come as no surprise to learn that certain buzzwords are now the norm, at least in emails and other communication from administrators, department chairs, and the like. In addition to the terms listed in the document, other familiar jargon includes such phrases as “student learning outcomes,” “student success,” “teaching with technology,” ad nauseum.  Not all of these phrases are inherently meaningless, depending on how they are used, of course.  Some, arguably, are unavoidable.  But as Humphrey Bogart’s Sam Spade notes, in John Huston’s classic film The Maltese Falcon, “look at the number of them.”

And indeed, the volume of jargon use is growing, almost exponentially, within higher education.  How can this be?  Aren’t the learned, after all, supposed to be less prone to the use of clichés and buzzwords?  Isn’t the avoidance of such prefabricated usage often part of what we (are supposed to) teach?

To understand why this growing use of jargon is problematic, it is helpful to look more closely at Orwell.  While it is widely known that his 1949 novel 1984 paints a picture of a dystopian, futuristic and totalitarian society, few who have not read the book grasp the subtleties of Orwell’s critique.  While there are other points to consider, the one relevant to our discussion here is his notion of “Newspeak.”  To fully understand this term, some background may be in order.

Orwell introduces his readers, just a few pages into the book’s opening chapter, to the concept of “Newspeak”: “The Ministry of Truth—Minitrue in Newspeak— was startlingly different from any other object in sight” (Orwell, 1984 7).  One of these startling differences is, indeed, the slogans prominently displayed upon the building’s exterior:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. (7)

Since each of these is an oxymoron, Orwell’s irony should be immediately evident.  One soon learns that “Newspeak,” the “language” these slogans exemplify, stands in contrast to “Oldspeak,” the former language of “Oceania,” the country in which the troubled protagonist Winston Smith lives (a fictional nation clearly intended as a reference to England).

Without going too deeply into the subtleties of the plot, its twists and further references to language and its obfuscation, it ought to be clear already, even to those unfamiliar with the book, that the turning of meaning on its head through official jargon (“WAR IS PEACE,” etc.) has something to do with the way that the character known only as “Big Brother” maintains his totalitarian control of Oceania and its citizens, including Smith.

Of course, all regrettable political consequences cannot be characterized as totalitarian.  And certainly few if any academic institutions can be characterized in such a light.  The claim I am making is not such, but rather that, even perhaps among well meaning colleagues, sloppy language use leads to regrettable outcomes.

Orwell makes this claim even more explicitly in his 1946 essay:

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts….  A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better. (emphasis mine)

Aren’t academics, no matter the discipline, supposed to be critical thinkers— or in other words, “people who should and do know better?”  Surely such critical thinkers, such erudite scholars and writers, would not and could not accept such bureaucratese, such vague and often thoughtless and, indeed, uncritical language use.

But yet we have.

I do not claim that there hasn’t been grumbling from colleague to colleague in shared or adjacent offices, at departmental or even social functions, or the like.  I do not claim that things haven’t been whispered, or in some cases private emails exchanged.  But by and large, we have just accepted it.  And the reason— the larger reason, which I will only point to and hint at, but not fully analyze or examine in this missive— is that the professoriate itself is a bit on the defensive these days.  Most professors at most institutions are adjuncts and have little pay and even less job security.  Since many of us work second or even third jobs in order to support our teaching “habit,” or else overcommit to too many classes at too many institutions in the wild hope of making ends meet, we have little if any time to analyze the rhetoric of administrators’ emails we constantly are barraged with but seldom if ever read.  Our more fortunate tenured or tenure-track colleagues, or the equivalent, may also be distracted from such analysis, since at many institutions tenure itself is under at least implicit threat, if not outright attack, and many at institutions at which this is not yet the case are understandably just a little bit concerned.

Yet, without getting into the host of problems raised by the lack of meaningful shared governance at many institutions, including mine, or the perhaps even greater number of problems which result from vastly unequal pay for equal or comparable professional work, let me get back to the problem with language use in the academy, focusing on the examples from the CCCS’s 2015-2025 Strategic Plan.

As I noted earlier, while some of these problems may be unavoidable, just about all of these examples are vague, and many are outright nonsense.  I seriously doubt that any of them would pass muster for Orwell, were he alive today.  I also doubt that most would pass muster in student papers, at least for the best writing professors.

To clarify what I mean, let’s look more closely at the “bad [writerly] habits” Orwell pointed to in his essay.  Among other things, Orwell cautioned against the use of “dying metaphors,” “pretentious diction” and “meaningless words” (“Politics”).  Where, I would ask, is one or more of these faults not evident in the document in question?  I find very little meaning in any of them (e.g., “Redefine Value Proposition”).  The vast majority are vague to the point that would, I imagine, have made Orwell cringe.  (What, for instance, is the difference between “Key Strategies,” “Key Performance Measures” and “Operational Measures?”  Do these phrases mean anything individually, and if so— which I doubt— in what way do their meanings substantially differ?)  Many of these phrases (e.g., “Disrupt Old Models,” and my personal Owellian favorite, “Learning Object Repositories”) sound like little more than contemporary corporate or business jargon— what might be termed “Bizspeak,” in other words.

Indeed, I would argue (with the exception of “Culture of Inquiry” and perhaps one or two others) that that is essentially what they are.  And I would argue that Bizspeak is our contemporary equivalent to Orwell’s Newspeak.  And Bizspeak has of course taken over the corporate world (as those of us who teach but also hold second or third jobs therein know far too well), but that, I suppose, is to be expected.  But Bizspeak, like a rampant virus or infestation, has now spread to the academy.  (This is of course at least partly the result of the attempted neoliberalization which has been going on since the 1980s, but in fuller force more recently.  However, that is another matter which is beyond the focus of this essay.)

Orwell argued in “Politics and the English Language” that “the decadence of our language is probably curable.”  If he was correct, in that text written about two or three generations ago to a broad if literate audience, then I would argue that now, in our era of incessant and execrable linguistic corruption— if you doubt me, just try grading a stack of undergraduate papers with any eye to good writing, competent rhetoric and clear meaning; or else, just try reading what passes for journalism these days, on much of the Web and at least sometimes print—then I would argue it must largely be up to “people who should and do know better,” in Orwell’s phrase— to set things right for the future of education , writing, scholarship, and especially of the profession.  Those people are academics themselves, as well as writing teachers at all levels; those people are writers, scholars, thinkers and all who recognize the problem Orwell pointed to and its contemporary application.  We are those people, and I think it is largely up to us to do something about all of this.

While it may, of course, be unwise to reply to the college president’s email with a rhetorical analysis critical of his jargon— and while many of us are sadly powerless to otherwise resist the encroachment of “Bizspeak” into the already jargon-heavy vocabulary of our profession— there are at least two things none of us is powerless to do, whether one is a first-semester adjunct or a distinguished emeritus full professor or a scholar or writer currently not teaching.  We can all resist the encroachment of Bizspeak into our own thoughts; this may sound simple, but indeed it is probably the more important and more difficult of the two tasks, given the ubiquity of this new “language” in our world.  Yet if you accomplish this first task, the second should be relatively easy: We can all resist the encroachment of Bizspeak in our own writing and communications.

As people who profess (yes, there is a pun there, and it is intended) to be scholars, teachers, writers and thinkers, isn’t that what we should be already doing?  Isn’t that the least we can expect of ourselves and our students, and, indeed, that our profession can expect of us?

Works Cited

“George Orwell.”  Encyclopædeia Brittanica.  Encyclopædeia Brittanica, Inc., 2016.  Web.  26 Apr. 2016.

Huston, John, dir.  The Maltese Falcon.  1941.  Perf. Humphrey Bogart.  Warner Brothers, 2000.  VHS.

Orwell, George.  1984.  1949.  New York: New American Library-Signet Classics, 1964.  Print.

---.   “Politics and the English Language.”  1946.  Mount Holyoke College.  Trustees of Mount Holyoke College, n.d.  Web.  26 Apr. 2016.

Strategic Plan 2015-2025.  CCCS.edu. Colorado Community College System, Aug. 2012, 1-12. Web. 27 Apr. 2016.