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PART-TIME PROFESSORS BILL OF PARTICULARS AND PETITION FOR REDRESS
1. There are close to 300 adjunct faculty members at the University of Houston Downtown and almost
three times as many at the University of Houston Central Campus. Adjuncts are faculty members hired to
teach less than full time or full time only for one semester. Although this group of faculty (“The Adjuncts”
herein) is responsible for approximately half of all student credit hours generated, and thus plays a vital
role in the delivery of University’s primary service, The Adjuncts have no voice in the decisions that affect
them, their work, and their students.
2. Regular faculty have representation and an opportunity to participate in university governance
through the Faculty Senate. Staff is given a voice through the Staff Council. Students are represented
through Student Government. Only The Adjuncts have no representation whatever. Even though the
successful attainment of the University’s core mission depends on The Adjuncts, they are
disenfranchised. Adjuncts may neither vote, nor run as candidates, in the Faculty Senate. The
Administration avers The Adjuncts have no right to form a union either.
3. The System Chancellor at UH is more highly compensated for administering the UH System than
the President of the United States is for running the country, not to mention the Governor as chief
executive of the State of Texas. The full-time annual equivalent of adjunct faculty members’ pay, by
contrast, places them below the poverty line. Assuming an average $2,000 annual tuition bill, it took 250
students to the pay Arthur K. Smith’s salary and 12 to pay the annual full-time equivalent of an adjunct.
Typical class size for lower division courses at UH-D is 50 at enrolment reporting date. The Adjuncts
disproportionately teach lower-division courses. Even though they have advanced degrees, many
adjuncts are paid worse than those of their students who work full-time in jobs requiring no college degree.
4. The Adjuncts at UH-D are paid $2,400 per course. The annual full-time equivalent thereof for the
academic year is $24,000. Most of The Adjuncts earn less because they are assigned two or three
courses at best. Thus even their peers on the Central Campus, who make $3,000 per course, cannot
earn a living wage. The minimal qualification for adjuncting is a Master’s degree in the field in which the
adjunct wishes to teach, although many part-timers have doctoral degrees. First-year school teachers with
zero experience and 10-month contracts, by contrast, are paid $35,000 by Houston Independent School
District, with annual increases for each year of service. The minimum qualification for public school
teachers is a bachelor’s degree in education (or a bachelor’s degree in another filed in conjunction with
successful completion of an alternative certification program or deficiency plan).
5. Public school teachers and tenure and tenure-track faculty are not at-will employees and have
legal recourse in case of termination and nonrenewal. The Adjuncts are deemed to have no vested
property interest in their employment beyond the terms of the courses they teach. It is unclear whether
The Adjuncts even have due process protection during the semester.
6. Faculty members at community colleges can sue the enforce their employment rights because the
Texas Legislature has waived the immunity community college districts would otherwise possess. The
Adjuncts at UH, by contrast (or any other UH faculty members, for that matter) cannot enforce their
contracts in Harris County courts because the First Court of Appeals has ruled that §111.33 of the
Education Code does not constitute a waiver of sovereign immunity even though it expressly authorizes
UH to sue and be sued. Freedman v. Univ. of Houston, 110 S.W.3d 504 (Tex.App.–Houston [1st Dist.]
2003, no pet). Interestingly, the trial court judge who dismissed Professor Freedman’s breach-of-contract
suit is an Adjunct Professor at UH himself.
7. The University and its administrators are entitled to free legal representation from the Attorney
General’s office in employment disputes. The Adjuncts, by contrast, have to cash in their nest egg (if any),
drain family resources, or borrow money to obtain legal representation when the University violates the
minimal legal rights they possess. Those daring to seek legal redress against the University as pro se
litigants are doomed from the start. Not only will they lose, the University’s attorneys will see to it that they
suffer humiliation in the process, and will be stuck with a judgment for court costs once the litigation has
reached its predictable conclusion.
8. Each full-time faculty member at UH-D has an office and a separate phone line. The 65 adjuncts in
the Social Sciences Department, who account for 62% of the student course hours taught in that
Department, share a single room with a few computer workstations and one (1) phone line cum voice
mail. The Department cites it as an example of the support it continues to be able to provide to The
Adjuncts. Adjuncts are expected to regularly go through all of the messages from any of the 4,288
students enrolled in the 128 (of 227) sections taught by them, and to take care not to delete those left for
fellow adjuncts. If they want to be accessible to students, The Adjuncts are forced to provide their own cell
or home phone numbers at their own expense.
9. The Adjuncts’ university-provided e-mail computer accounts are capped at 21000 KB, a minute
fraction of the capacity of a single CD. If they go beyond the allocation, they can no longer answer
messages from students, much less communicate with each other and other members of the university
community. Some adjuncts report that their email accounts are deleted or frozen immediately at the end of
the semester preventing them from answering student’s queries regarding their grades, requests for
letters of recommendation, or other courses students might wish to take.
10. The Adjuncts are not provided with faculty offices even on a time-share basis. The only
individually designated physical space The Adjuncts have on the UH-D campus is a slightly-larger-than-
letter-sized pigeonhole in the mail room. Each has a typed paper name label, attached with scotch tape.
Students are not allowed in the mail room and can thus not deliver papers or written notes to The
Adjuncts. These boxes are too small to allow for delivery of books. When publishers mail desk copies of
text books The Adjuncts, they are kept in the department office to which The Adjuncts have no key. No
notes are placed in their mailboxes advising them of parcels. The practice of writing the addressee’s
names on packages in large letters which might have allowed The Adjuncts who teach night classes to
ascertain the presence of mail for them by peeking through the glass windows of the department office
has been discontinued.
11. The Adjuncts have the option to purchase a faculty/staff parking permit, which entitles them to
circulate through it faculty/staff parking garage adjoining the building prior to parking four blocks away in
the outlying lot for want of parking space anywhere else. Leaving aside the lucky few who are assigned to
teach one of the popular pre-dawn courses, The Adjuncts suffer the disparate impact of the hunting-
license approach to parking space allocation. Lecture completed, some of The Adjuncts have to dash off
to their next student-contact-hour at one of the local community colleges, or to their real perma-temp jobs
at McBurger, Wallmarred, or Rent-A-Prof.
12. Most of The Adjuncts are given a course load below that sufficient to qualify them for benefits.
The undisguised purpose of this policy is to keep them ineligible and to relieve the University from having
to make the employer contribution to the benefits-eligible employees’ costs of medical insurance. Even for
the privileged ones who qualify, however, benefits-eligibility is a mixed blessing because the deduction
takes a large chunk out of their monthly direct deposits.
13. Adjuncts with three courses do qualify for benefits, but rarely get summer employment. As a
result an adjunct who earns $1,800 a month and insures one child as a dependent receives a net
payment of $803.12 after a $805.60 deduction for Health Select on May 1 and on June 1. The cost of
insurance thus exceeds net pay. She receives nothing July 1 through September 31 and has to find
whatever summer temp work she can line up elsewhere. If she is invited back to teach in the Fall
semester, she does not get paid until October 1 even though the classes start in August.
14. The Adjuncts are not informed of department personnel changes and other department news and
are not invited to department faculty meetings. They are not given copies of internal memos, drafts of
discussion papers, or official department or college plans and reports. Documents considered sensitive in
departmental and university politics are withheld even upon request.
15. As members of the public, The Adjuncts are entitled to have access to public documents
generated in the course of business at the University. As employees they also have a special right of
access to personnel documents pertaining to them individually, even if these records are otherwise
confidential. The typical response by UH’s General Counsel’s Office to Open Records Requests, however,
is to refuse to release anything, assert a plethora of boilerplate exceptions, and request a ruling form the
Attorney General. Once the Open Record Division overrules their exceptions (two or more months later)
and orders the University to release the requested records, the General Counsel’s Office only complies
partially, not at all, or not in a timely manner. In some instances, the Letter Ruling and notice is sent to an
invalid address, or not at all.
16. The Adjuncts are not given notice of job openings in their very own departments. To learn about
available tenure-track vacancies, The Adjuncts have to subscribe to the Chronicle of Higher Education. If
they ask about anticipated tenure-track openings, they are advised that the positions are nationally
advertised in The Chronicle. The “adjunk” badge also trumps diversity considerations. Whatever the
merits of affirmative action, if any, even conservatives will agree that all qualified candidates should be
afforded an opportunity to know when positions are available.
17. Employment applications require candidates to provide their employment history. No argument
with that. Unfortunately a prior or current job title of “Adjunct” is a red flag. It serves as a convenient
screening device to weed out candidates who are otherwise qualified, and to pare down the applicant pool
without having to expend time and effort to evaluate and weigh individual merit. It does not matter if the
prospective internal applicants are themselves members of the minority-majority that makes up the
student body. In the recruiting and hiring process for tenure-track positions, the label “adjunk” trumps
ethnic identity, academic credentials, as well as teaching experience, of which many amiable adjuncts
have aplenty.
18. Even if The Adjuncts survive the initial screening process, they face a daunting challenge. Dearth
of teaching experience (in recently-graduated adjuncts) is a negative because tenure-track faculty are
expected to be first-rate teachers. Years of adjunct teaching experience, however, is also a negative also.
After all, the adjunct-applicant has been nothing but teach.
19. Ranked faculty resent that The Adjuncts in their departments generate so many student credit
hours (SCHs), but don’t carry their share of advising those students. What they do not appreciate is that
The Adjuncts would gladly advise students if only they were compensated for it, or if they were to receive
tenure-track, or at least living-wage FT positions which include advising, researching, and service within
the job description. As it is, part-timers can are paid much less than pro-rata, thus undercutting prevailing
wage rates even for regular faculty and giving budget cutters an unseemly incentive to deny tenure and
fire ranked faculty on pretexts, in order to replace them with much-cheaper part-timers who can be hired
and fired at will.
20. While The Adjuncts loom large in the statistics on SCH production [sic], they are not considered
missing when those statistics are discussed at planning and strategy session at departmental or college
level.
21. While student fees are being raised so the Regents can continue to lavish $400,000 per annum
on the UH Chancellor in times of budgetary constraints and belt-tightening for others, and while University
budget executives carve up the tuition and fee pie, The Adjuncts are relegated to lecturing for leftovers.
Gulping down a bean burrito in the cafeteria during dead-time between classes, they may accidentally
learn something from an ad the Advancement Office has placed in the free Bayou City weekly: They are
part of the highly respected faculty!
22. Not only are The Adjuncts not respected, they are not even visible. Students don’t know the
difference, but The Adjuncts are reminded each time they (fail to) balance their checkbooks.
23. The Adjuncts are not just second-class citizens relegated to the back of the bus. When if comes
to shared governance, The Adjuncts are not on board at all. Unless they make a move, The Adjunct will
never get anywhere.
24. The University Administration is firmly in the driver’s seat, however, and ready to eject those not
invited to take the University on the road to the much-touted level of excellence. UH has already achieved
Tier-One status in executive compensation. Now is the time to pursue other lofty aspirations, such as
investing in the University’s human capital, its faculty. All of its faculty, regardless of rank. How can UH
persuade students and parents of the income-enhancing value of a college education when half of its
professors cannot make a living doing what they love to do: Share their knowledge and pass it on to the
next generation of students who head to college because they want to live the American Dream.
25. The Administration has been unperturbed by individual expression of concerns shared by the
silent majority. In response to the first sign of a collegial effort to seek redress, the Administration has
invoked System Administrative Memorandum 02.A.32. This policy purports to prohibits collective
organizing and advocacy (deemed labor union activity) on campus, in apparent violation of The Adjuncts’
first amendment rights to freedom of speech, freedom of association, and right to seek redress of
grievances and betterment of their conditions of employment. A request for a ten-minute meeting with the
President was predictably denied last week.
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FACULTY RIGHTS COALITION
2038 ½ Lexington
Houston, Texas 77098
Fax: 713-527-0391
E-mail: admin@faculty-rights-coalition.com
Note: Copy of FRC’s Amicus Curiae brief in Freedman v. Univ. of Houston, 110 S.W.3d 504 (Tex.App.–
Houston [1st Dist.] 2003, no pet) is available upon request.
Articles on Adjuncts and TA’s:
Professors of Desperation; Bad pay, zero job security, no benefits, endless commutes. Is this any way to
treat PhDs responsible for teaching a generation of college students? The Washington Post, July 21,
2002, p. W24.
Part-Time Instructors Deserve Equal Pay for Equal Work, The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 3,
2002, p. 14.
Part-Time Faculty Teaching Hefty Portion of Classes; And at Community College of Vermont-All of Them!
The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education, Oct 20, 2003.
Profs and Losses. Boston Magazine, April 2002.
Adjuncts at Rosevelt U. Vote to Unionize, The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 14, 2000.
United Auto (or Is That ‘Academic’?) Workers. The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 17, 2003.
Teaching Assistants and Universities Plot Strategy in Union Battle. The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Nov. 17, 2000.
NLRB Ruling May Demolish the Barriers to T.A. Unions at Private Universities, The Chronicle of Higher
Education, April 14, 2000.