Webinar on Student Loan Forgiveness on 11/20

SEIU is co-sponsoring a webinar on student loan forgiveness on Thursday, November 20^th from 12-1PM EST. Representatives from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will lead the presentation on student loan forgiveness, what goes into Public Service Loan Forgiveness, Teacher Loan Forgiveness, IBR/PAYE Forgiveness plans, and some state initiatives that forgive student debt – with an emphasis on how to get coworkers/bosses engaged in the discussion.

The presentation will last about 30 minutes and will include a segment on income-driven replacement plans. It will be followed with a Q&A, and the link to access the webinar will be mailed out to those who RSVP.

Click here to RSVP. Please share the invite on your social networks using the hashtag #debtfreefuture.

AAN Member’s Testimony on Adjunct Hours for Department of Education

Adjunct Action Network member Krista Eliot submitted the following testimony to the Department of Education (DOE) on the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. Read her story and submit your comments on adjunct hours and working conditions to the DOE.

Testimony by Krista Eliot, Adjunct Anthropology Instructor

I am a contingent faulty member–one of the new faculty majority who teach half of the courses offered on college campuses in the United States today. Although I love my job as an adjunct community college instructor in the San Diego area, it is very difficult to make ends meet. Community colleges in San Diego County typically pay their adjunct faculty $3,000-$4,000 per course, which means that I can expect to make approximately $35,000 per year, teaching the equivalent of a full-time course load at three different colleges. My husband is also an adjunct, and neither of us has employment that provides us with health insurance. We pay out-of-pocket for insurance for ourselves and our three-year-old son.

In addition, we have a combined student loan debt of $140,000 – twice our anticipated annual income for the foreseeable future. We are in the process of applying for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, but we do not know if our applications will be approved, due to the difficulty of demonstrating that we are, in fact, employed “full-time” in public service.

Although each of our combined workloads (teaching at three colleges each) equals or exceeds the workload of a full-time faculty member, we aren’t hourly workers, so it is difficult to prove that we actually work far more than the minimum average of 30 hours per week that the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program requires. The matter is further complicated by the fact that most of the colleges where we teach pay us per instructional hour. This means that on paper, it appears that we only work an average of about 15 hours per week (the number of hours we spend in the classroom). But this is only a fraction of the actual work that we do – it does not include the many hours that we spend preparing lessons, evaluating student work, reading and answering emails, and meeting with students.

In light of the issues raised by our story, which illustrates problems faced by thousands of other adjunct faculty with high student loan debt, I ask the Department of Education to do the following:

1. Preserve all existing loan forgiveness programs, and provide a reasonable method for determining full-time employment for adjunct faculty for Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

The standard in the proposed Adjunct Faculty Loan Fairness Act, which would extend public service loan forgiveness to all adjunct faculty for whom teaching is their main income, provides the fairest measure for determining eligibility, and this is the standard I recommend that the Department of Education adopt. Most adjunct faculty who make their living by teaching put in far more than the minimum average of 30 hours per week, whether or not these hours are documented on paper.

Another possibility would be to adopt guidelines similar to those issued by the IRS for employers to determine health insurance eligibility under the Affordable Care Act. These guidelines credit adjunct faculty with 1.25 hours of work outside the classroom for every hour in the classroom. However, it needs to be recognized that the IRS number is a very low estimate. Two or more hours of work outside the classroom for every hour in the classroom is a much more realistic estimate of the real work that we do.

2. Extend PAYE to ALL Borrowers Not Previously Eligible.

All people with financial need and eligible loans should be included in the expansion of loan repayment programs like Pay As You Earn. Responsible borrowers who make payments on their loans for twenty years should have the remainder of their debt forgiven.

3. Make sure that all borrowers are informed of their student loan repayment options, including any loan forgiveness programs for which they may be eligible.

It has been my experience that most of my coworkers don’t know about their loan repayment options, or about the possibility that they may be eligible for loan forgiveness. The Department of Education needs to make enrollment accessible and easy.

New Regs on For-Profit Just A Start in Reforms needed to Protect Students

The Department of Education has released new regulations on the for-profit higher education industry (read the Associate Press story here). Below is SEIU’s statement on the new regulations.

The Department of Education’s (DOE) new regulations on the for-profit higher education industry are a modest step forward in efforts to hold these schools accountable for dismal student outcomes but much more still needs to be done.

“I’m glad the Department of Education is taking steps to ensure that these schools begin to live up to their commitment to their students,” said Tyrone Jones, a veteran and a former Corinthian College student. “We are pushing for even stronger student protections, and we’re going to keep fighting to make sure both Congress and DOE do their part to keep this industry honest.”

The Department maintained a crucial accountability metric which ensures that career education programs are held accountable for the debt of their graduates as it relates to their income. However, it is worrisome that the regulations do not hold predatory programs accountable for students who have defaulted on their loans, which amounted to over a quarter million students between 2009 and 2011.

We know, based on Department of Education data, students attending for-profit career education programs are twice as likely to borrow and three times as likely to default. Without the default rate measure, programs can still saddle students with crippling debt and continue to receive taxpayer funded financial aid as long the vast majority of students drop-out.

It’s disappointing that even in the face of these modest regulatory improvements, the lobbying group for the for-profit higher education industry is signaling that they will sue the Department for this effort to ensure that they prepare their graduates for the workforce.

While these regulations are not sufficient, they are a step in the right direction and send a clear signal to the for-profit industry that students’ interests must be a priority. In order to protect students and taxpayers’ investment, the Department of Education and members of Congress must use all available means to hold for-profit colleges accountable.

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Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is home to over 90,000 college and university faculty and employees who have won improvements in pay, job security, evaluation processes, and access to retirement benefits.

http://forprofitu.org/

Boston University Adjunct Faculty Announce Union Election Filing

Adjunct faculty at Boston University announced that they have filed for a union election to join SEIU Local 509 as part of the regional and national Adjunct Action campaign to raise standards in higher education.

Boston University adjuncts are continuing to build support while taking an important step towards a vote to join colleagues at Tufts, Northeastern and Lesley universities who have joined SEIU in the last year. The filing comes days after Tufts University part-time faculty overwhelmingly approved a landmark first union contract that covers roughly 200 part-time instructional faculty.

Laurie LaPorte teaches in the Anthropology department at BU. She said, “I’m thrilled that my colleagues and I are a step closer to a union by filing for an election, adding to the momentum that we’re all building in the Boston area. The recent Tufts contract is a great accomplishment. It shows that adjuncts have the power to reverse the trend of ever-increasing contingency in higher education. It’s important to think about the real benefits from the reversal of this trend, particularly in regard to providing quality education and instruction to our students, which is the very purpose of higher education.”

Sixty-six percent of Boston University faculty are not on the tenure track and 41 percent of BU faculty are part-time. The trend at BU follows a national crisis in higher education that has led to broad concern over issues like the marginalization of teaching, academic isolation and job stability.

Dan Hunter teaches playwriting, politics and public policy at BU. He said, “As Boston University has grown in the national education ranking, so has the number of adjuncts and part-time faculty teaching at BU. We are critical to the success that BU has attained, yet adjuncts have no voice in the future of the university, low pay, no job security and no benefits. Adjuncts have the same credentials and are held to the same standards as tenured and full-time faculty. Through our union, we are asking Boston University to support all its teachers and invest in the classroom experience.”

Boston Globe Article on Tufts Contract

Check out a new article in the Boston Globe

Tufts part-time professors to get better pay, job security

“Most part-time professors at Tufts University will get a 22 percent pay raise over the next three years and improved job security under a new contract that could influence negotiations at other schools where adjunct faculty have recently organized or are considering doing so.

The Tufts deal, a three-year agreement ratified Friday, will also keep an existing arrangement that makes professors who teach at least three courses over the course of an academic year eligible for health, retirement, tuition reimbursement, and other employee benefits, according to union officials.”

Read the full article here.

Tufts University Part-time Lecturers Approve Landmark First Contract

***Learn more about the Tufts part-time lecturer contract at the 2014 Boston Symposium on November 15. RSVP here.***

Tufts University part-time faculty have overwhelmingly approved a landmark first union contract that covers roughly 200 part-time instructional faculty. The three-year agreement makes groundbreaking progress in job stability, includes a significant increase in per course pay and establishes new pathways for professional development.

In September 2013, Tufts part-time lecturers were the first Boston area faculty to form a union through the Adjunct Action campaign, a national project of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). A year later, more than 2,000 adjunct faculty in Boston are united in SEIU. Lesley and Northeastern University are currently in the early stages of contract negotiations, while Boston University part-time faculty are building towards a union vote.

Andy Klatt teaches Spanish at Tufts. He said, “We are pleased that part-time faculty and the administration have come together in a positive and collaborative process to produce an agreement that will improve the working lives of faculty, advance the goals that we share as a learning community, and benefit our students. We hope that our non-confrontational process and the agreement that we reached will serve as positive models for other universities in the Boston area and around the country as we work together to address the national crisis of contingent academic labor.”

The Tufts contract is an important milestone in the national conversation on contingent faculty. Half of the nation’s faculty are now part-time with little or no job security from semester to semester. The Tufts part-time lecturer contract includes pay increases, in some cases up to 40 percent per course over the life of the agreement and multiyear teaching appointments with pay protections for cancelled courses.

Tufts part time lecturer Elizabeth Lemons said, “We made real progress toward equitable working conditions and full inclusion in the Tufts community. Our work, our contributions, our value are now more acknowledged. This is an important beginning, not only for us at Tufts, but also for our colleagues at other universities in Boston and nationally who are committed to raising standards in higher education.”

At a Glance: 2014 Tufts Part-time Lecturer Contract

For the first time, most part-time faculty will have the security of knowing that they have a job next year – reversing the trend towards contingency that has marginalized the profession.
• Everyone will have at least 1 year contracts.
• By the end of the contract period, lecturers with more than 4 years of service will be eligible for 2 year appointments and those with more than 8 years will be eligible for 3 year contracts.
• Part-time lecturers will get first notice and fair consideration for full-time positions including a guaranteed interview. If the part-time faculty member isn’t offered the position, the instructor can find out why in a meeting with the dean or head of the department.

All Tufts part-time Lecturers will receive a meaningful pay increase – as much as a 40 percent raise over the life of the contract in Romance Languages.
• By September 2016, all Tufts part-time faculty will make at least $7,300 a course. Minimum for someone with more than 8 years of service is $8,760.
• The contract clearly states that work outside the classroom (e.g., advising, mentoring and independent studies) will be compensated.
• Those with a 3-year contract will receive full compensation for a cancelled course.

Tufts part-time lecturers contract reflects how critically important part-time faculty are to the full life of the university.
• A revamped evaluation process will be used to improve performance, not punish.
• The contract sets up a professional development fund for scholarship and artistic practice that contributes to teaching excellence.

University of the District of Columbia Part-Time Faculty Vote to Join Majority of DC Adjuncts in SEIU

Adjunct faculty at the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) have voted to join their colleagues at Georgetown, Howard, George Washington and American universities and form a union in SEIU Local 500. A vast majority voted in favor of forming a union, joining a rapidly growing national union movement to address the crisis in higher education and the troubling trend toward a marginalized teaching faculty.

Seventy-five percent of adjunct faculty in Washington, DC are now united in SEIU Local 500. Professor Juan Laster, a UDC adjunct, said, “We worked very hard for this victory, but this is only the first step. I am looking forward to working with the administration on a first contract that respects our work as educators and faculty and as a key part of the UDC community. I am also proud to be joining Howard University as the second HBCU to have a union for part-time faculty.”

Adjunct faculty at UDC are already working on issues to discuss during first contract negotiations. Workplace conditions in higher education have quickly and dramatically changed for the people responsible for the core mission of instruction in our colleges and universities. Contingent faculty are now a majority of college and university faculty, and through their union contracts, adjunct faculty are already winning better pay, job security and access to professional development.

Throughout the Washington, DC area and across the country adjunct faculty continue to fight to address the crisis in higher education: a marginalized teaching faculty, administrative bloat, quickly rising tuition, and record levels of student debt. Thousands of adjunct and contingent workers have joined SEIU/Adjunct Action in the last year.

Workers at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York and the California College of the Arts are set to vote to form their union in early September, following in the footsteps of faculty at a dozen other schools, including the Maryland Institute College of Art, Northeastern University, Hamline University, San Francisco Art Institute, Georgetown, Howard University and Mills College, all of whom have joined SEIU/Adjunct Action since May 2013.

In addition to five schools in Washington, SEIU Local 500 represents adjunct faculty at Montgomery College and the Maryland Institute College of Art.