Adjuncts across the country and throughout Boston have been unionizing due to a general lack of benefits and low wages. Although the Brandeis Fair Pay Coalition has taken an initiative in meeting with a representative from the Service Employees International Union and several adjuncts have expressed concerns about the current situation at the University, no specific plan to unionize at Brandeis could be confirmed by the Justice.

Adjuncts at the University currently receive about $6,000 per course in the Arts and Sciences, according to Prof. Bernadette Brooten (NEJS) in an email to the Justice. Senior Vice President for Communications Ellen de Graffenreid wrote in an email to the Justice that $6,000 is the minimum that adjuncts are paid per course, but that disparities can exist between adjuncts' pay based upon areas of expertise and experience.
An adjunct is "someone whose primary employment is not at Brandeis," de Graffenreid wrote. Adjuncts were first introduced in higher education so that universities could hire professionals to teach a course as a unique opportunity for students.

The University hires adjuncts in order to fill in for a faculty member who is on leave or sabbatical, to bring specific expertise to Brandeis "often in more applied fields ... because those people bring real-world experience to students in a way that is really usefu (sic)" and to "fill out the curriculum in areas where there is a need for a specific course in a major or program," according to de Graffenreid.

However, a lecturer, who requested to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the topic and job security concerns, explained that many adjuncts have doctorates in their fields from prestigious universities. "We're getting top quality-trained professionally-academics to do these sort of jobs that were traditionally done by adjuncts to come in and go," the lecturer said in an interview with the Justice.

According to de Graffenreid, two courses per semester is considered half-time employment, and there is not an hourly requirement. De Graffenreid wrote that this means that faculty members hired on a per-course basis teaching as few as two courses may be eligible for benefits their first semester at the University.

According to Assistant Vice President for Human Resources Michelle Scichilone in an email to the Justice, the University offers benefits to any faculty member who is "classified as half-time or more regardless of title." Such employees are eligible to participate in the University's health and dental insurance "and pay the same premium as our full-time faculty members," according to Scichilone. 

All half-time faculty are also eligible to participate in the University's flexible medical and dependent care reimbursement accounts, the group life insurance plan, 403(b) retirement plan, the Employee Assistance Plan, and discounted auto and homeowners insurance, among other benefits.

Despite the availability of benefits for part-time faculty members, the anonymous lecturer said many adjuncts and individuals who get paid per-course can only teach one or two classes per semester, depending upon time constraints. This individual said that he or she only teaches an average of two courses per semester, and that grading papers, responding to emails, answering student questions and other responsibilities are not accounted for in the pay per course. "I'm always here in my office around 8:30 in the morning. I leave around 1:30 after I teach, I send some emails out, but then I go back, at night I spend from 6 to 9 [p.m.] again behind the computer, so I think I work a full-time job," the lecturer said in an interview with the Justice.

In addition, the lecturer must work additional jobs apart from his or her employment at the University. "There's no way you could make ends meet on $6,000 a course per semester. That's $12,000 a year, way below poverty," the lecturer said. The lecturer said he or she knows of other colleagues who also work other jobs outside of the University. The lecturer added that students should also be fighting for appropriate pay and benefits for adjuncts because adjunct pay could affect the quality of education for this reason.

One reason adjuncts may begin working at a University is the hope that they would eventually be able to land a tenure-track position, said the lecturer.

Adjuncts such as Prof. Peter Gould (PAX), who co-teaches "Inner Peace/Outer Peace," continue to return to the University as adjuncts despite the lack of benefits-he only teaches one course that meets for three hours per week-and low pay. Gould has been an adjunct professor at the University since 2009, and shares half of $7,000 to teach this course with an "equal co-teacher," he wrote in an email to the Justice. The course generally attracts 35 to 40 students, according to Gould.

"It is not a financially wise arrangement, but I am willing to do it because I am very good at what I do, I take pride in the work, I get great response from students, and I love the work, the students, the material, and the stimulation," Gould wrote in an email to the Justice. "The [U]niversity knows all this, so that puts me in a weak position, since, they know I will likely continue, although I am underpaid, and they also know that there are probably lots of people out there, more desperate than I am, who would love to step into my job if they had the opportunity."

Gould wrote that he receives no University benefits. In fact, according to Gould, "the benefits are minus." Gould wrote that he has to pay all his travel expenses to work to Brandeis, with his "long trek" from Vermont.

Gould acknowledged that the need for adjuncts does exist, but he said adjuncts should receive more pay. "If [the University has] these very believable reasons why they hire adjuncts, they should bend over backwards in showing their appreciation by paying these specialists a reasonable reward for their work," Gould wrote.

The anonymous lecturer added that many universities hire adjuncts because there is no required long-term commitment. The lecturer said that those who maintain a certain number of students in their classes might be able to teach that course again, but that those who do not have no job security. The lecturer's contract is on an annual basis.

Differences in standing
According to de Graffenreid, there is a distinction between contract status and rank. Contract status would define whether or not an individual is, in fact, an adjunct. Rank would determine whether or not the individual is an instructor, senior instructor, lecturer, senior lecturer, assistant professor, associate professor or professor. 

De Graffenreid defined a lecturer as a "rank." Although the anonymous lecturer has an annual contract, de Graffenreid wrote that there are long-term, or five-year, contracts for lecturers, as well.

In regard to the claim that the anonymous lecturer was paid per course like an adjunct, de Graffenreid wrote that her "understanding is that per course vs. salary depends upon their individual contract."

According de Graffenreid, there are 202 tenured faculty members, 59 faculty members on the tenure track, 103 long-term and full-time faculty members and 46 adjuncts.
Adjuncts that fit the part-time criteria comprise 11 percent of instructional faculty, according to de Graffenreid.

Comparing salaries
According to the 2013 American Association of University Professors Faculty Salary Survey on the Chronicle of Higher Education website, full professors at Brandeis make $131,400 per year on average, while associate professors make $93,400. Assistant professors make an average of $83,400 and instructors make $59,000 per year. According to these figures and the Chronicle of Higher Education, Brandeis has the 14th highest paid faculty in Massachusetts.

By comparison, adjuncts typically make $6,000 per course. If "a person were able to piece together four courses at different schools-which itself is hard to line up, that person, with a doctorate and the resulting high student debt, would be earning $24,000 per year, without benefits," Brooten wrote in an email to the Justice. The $24,000 per year figure assumes the adjunct only teaches four courses in one year, or two courses per semester.

The SEIU, a union that is currently working with adjuncts to unionize, published a report through Adjunct Action titled "The High Cost of Adjunct Living: Boston." The report states that the average annual pay in 2013 for a tenured professor at a private research university in the United States was $167,118, while the average pay per course reported by adjunct faculty was $3,000. According to the report, by 2009, nationally, tenure and tenure-track positions had declined to about 33.5 percent of faculty positions, leaving 66.5 percent of faculty ineligible for tenure.

Unionizing efforts
Efforts have recently taken off for adjuncts to unionize at universities in the Boston area, including a successful vote last month to unionize at Lesley University.

Adjunct Action through SEIU "is a campaign that unites adjunct professors at campuses across the country to address the crisis in higher education and the troubling trend toward a marginalized teaching faculty that endangers our profession," according to its website.

According to a Feb. 24 post to the website, the Lesley University adjuncts voted to join SEIU. The post states that 84 percent of adjuncts across the four campuses were in favor of unionizing. Tufts University adjuncts voted to join SEIU last September, and are currently bargaining their first contract, according to the website.

"Quickly rising tuition has resulted in record levels of student debt, putting higher education out of reach for more and more working families," the SEIU website reads. "At the same time, ... being a university professor, once the quintessential middle-class job, has become a low-wage one."

Andrew Nguyen '15, one of the student leaders involved in the Brandeis Fair Pay Coalition, said in an interview with the Justice that the group had been working to meet with an SEIU leader who had helped to organize adjuncts into unions at other colleges in the area. According to Nguyen in the interview, the coalition had not met with many adjunct faculty members, although some were invited to attend the meeting. Nguyen did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the results of the meeting by press time.

"I have not heard about a union, more than in some news stories, but I would be happy to join in an organization working for the general benefit of adjunct teachers at Brandeis and throughout the world of education in the US," wrote Gould of the possibility of unionizing adjuncts at Brandeis.