Campus Equity Week (CEW), observed annually from October 26-30, draws attention to inequities faced by adjunct and contingent faculty at colleges and universities. Adjuncts now make up 75% of faculty but often earn poverty-level wages with no job security or benefits. CEW aims to improve compensation, working conditions, and protections for contingent faculty through advocacy events and awareness campaigns. While universities have increased reliance on lower-paid adjuncts to save money, critics argue this harms educational quality by limiting resources and support for instructors. Finding the right balance between tenured and contingent positions remains an ongoing challenge.

1. This cold mid-fall week may feel like an average Monday through Friday for some but
for adjunct professors and teacher unions all across the country, including at Willamette, this is a
Campus Equity Week (CEW). In 1999, Campus Equity Week (CEW), was started to draw
attention to the issue of equity and fairness for adjunct faculty at colleges and universities. The
purpose of the movement is to create a national voice for adjunct faculty. From October 26th to
October 30th, unions and activists join together to bring awareness to the injustice being felt by
adjunct teachers at colleges and universities. As stated on the Campus Equity Week website,
“Campus Equity Week is an annual event started by the Coalition of Contingent Academic
Labor, a grassroots coalition of activists in North America working for contingent faculty:
adjunct, part-time, non-tenured, and graduate teaching faculty working to bring greater
awareness to the precarious situation for contingent faculty in higher education, organize for
action, and build solidarity among our colleagues.” The goal of Campus Equity Week is to help
people understand and care about this issue and in the long term, the goal is to improve of
working conditions for contingent faculty.
It used to be that most faculty on colleges campuses were eligible for tenure position.
Tenure means job security and full-time positions for university and college professors.
However, in recent years there has been a growing trend on college campuses throughout the
country to replace tenured faculty with adjunct faculty. In 2009, according to the US Department
of Education, 75.5% of college faculty were not eligible for tenure. This means 1.3 ML out of
1.8 ML total faculty are adjunct. These part-time professors are paid very low wages - on
average by some estimates $24,000 per year. That's not enough to live on so they have to find
other work to supplement. An adjunct professor is a lecturer, instructor, or faculty member in
higher education who is at a lower academic rank than tenured professors. The American
Association of University Professors (AAUP) described them by saying, “Depending on the
institution, they can be known as adjuncts, postdocs, TAs, non-tenure-track faculty, clinical
faculty, part-timers, lecturers, instructors, or non-senate faculty. What they all have in common:
they serve in insecure, unsupported positions with little job security and few protections for
academic freedom. And they are the vast majority of US faculty today.” According to Willamette
itself, full-time instructional faculty are faculty members employed on a full-time basis for
instruction (including those with released time for research). On the other hand, part-time
instructional faculty are adjuncts and other instructors being paid solely for part-time classroom
instruction. This also includes full-time faculty teaching less than two semesters, three quarters,
two trimesters, or two four-month sessions. Employees who are not considered full-time
instructional faculty but who teach one or more non-clinical credit courses may be counted as
part time faculty.
Willamette University, as the motto states, prides itself on working together and supporting
each other, ultimately for the goal of equality. The Willamette website lists the employee
benefits based on academic standing. “Faculty and staff who work at least .50 FTE (20 hours per
week) are eligible for many benefits. On-going, part time faculty and staff who work at least .60
FTE (24 hours/week) are eligible for medical and dental benefits. Full-time faculty and staff who
work .75 FTE (30 hours/week) are eligible to participate in the university's full benefit program.”
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is a teacher union which displayed a poster this
month that provided some information about how the low pay for adjunct professors is affecting
them. "Adjunct professors- smart, dedicated, passionate teachers- often earn less than half of
what full-time faculty make for the same work. And though they teach more than half the classes
at many colleges- and all the classes at some- adjuncts have to pick up second or third jobs to

2. pay the rent and their student loan payments. They do all this while keeping a smiling face on
working and learning conditions that are downright spooky." Although problems with adjunct
professors are even more prevalent at large public schools where it is often TA’s who teach the
classes, this issue is not moot at any university, including at Willamette.
The American Association of University Professors is a cosponsor of Campus Equity week
and does a lot to bring awareness and help lessen this issue. Frann Michel, Chair of FIlm Studies
and a Professor of English here at Willamette described the AAUP by saying, “The AAUP is a
professional organization that serves as a resource for both tenured/tenure-track and contingent
faculty interested in advancing academic freedom and shared governance, and defining
fundamental professional values and standards for higher education; Willamette faculty have
recently formed an Advocacy Chapter to support these aims here and to connect us with the
national and state AAUP groups." This organization has a project called the One Faculty
campaign which is designed to help advocacy chapters and state conferences to improve the
conditions for faculty with contingent appointments. As they say, “It explains why a united
faculty is a strong faculty and includes specific guidelines for bargaining key contract issues.”
While this advocated for improving working conditions and academic freedom for all of those
who teach and research at universities, they have also been working specifically on helping
adjunct professors and improving their conditions. AAUP staff and members participate in
multiple coalitions, both national and local, on academic workforce issues to “improve
conditions for contingent faculty members and to help all faculty fight the trend towards part-
time and non-tenure-track appointments.” One of the coalitions which AAUp is largely involved
in in Campus Equity Week. They believe in what is at the core of what Campus Equity Week
fights for, which is that “we must improve compensation and professional support opportunities
if we want to maintain a quality higher education system.”
The AAUP isn’t the only organization working on this issue however. The New Faculty
Majority (NFM) was formed to improve quality of working conditions for what's also known as
"contingent" faculty, meaning adjunct or part-time. Service Employees International Union
(SEIU) is a union that is also concerned and involved in advocacy.The National Education
Association (NEA) has published some information about this as well as the United University
Professors Association. The organization COCAL, which recently partnered with New Faculty
Majority, as well as CEW’s many sponsors all “ have been active in promoting, coordinating and
arranging events for Campus Equity Week.” Another organization that has been involved is the
American Federation of Teachers. They stated that "Campus Equity Week… is all about
educating students, parents and education advocates, who are shocked to discover that many
part-time professors live below the poverty line due to wages that are a fraction of what full-time
faculty earn. And it is about changing the paradigm of exploitation by circulating petitions and
surveys, holding membership drives and crafting fair contracts that provide job security, higher
wages and better working conditions so that adjuncts don't have to wait tables to make ends
meet." There are many campuses throughout the country organizing events to raise awareness.
CEW suggests signing petitions to promote fairness for adjunct faculty, write letters to the editor,
blog, tweet and use tumblr to raise awareness. The first step is to learn about the issue and how it
impacts higher education.
These problems aren’t occurring for no reason, however. As tenured faculty have retired,
so many colleges and universities have replaced tenured positions with non-tenured positions
because it saves a lot of money and gives them more flexibility in hiring and firing. This
behavior is a reaction to problems with having a large amount of tenured professors. Once a

3. tenured faculty member has tenure, they have a job for life which causes other problems when
people misbehave and can't be fired. The colleges and universities don’t want to be locked in
with their professors. Even if a professor doesn’t want to retire or isn’t doing their job well, if
they have tenure there is nothing the university can do. This is extremely problematic so
universities have responded by swinging to the other side of the spectrum and hiring many more
adjunct professors than they used to. The question up for debate is does it impact the quality of
education at colleges to have the majority of classes taught by part-time faculty? The
organizations advocating equity believe it does. Keeping in mind fairness to students who need
to be well educated, professors who need to be well paid, and universities that need to have
flexibility leads to a struggle to find what is key to solving this issue, balance. Finding balance
between tenured and adjunct professors can lead to a more equitable workplace. The real issue is
how.