Yesterday, I wrote about a new study that suggests that the primary factor in determining whether a student passes a community college math class is the instructor. By itself, that justifies having a primarily full-time teaching staff in mathematics. By extension, community colleges should use full-time instructors in all STEM subjects.
STEM is all the rage right now, and for good reason. The technical capacity of the United States depends on it. Colleges and universities around the nation should be focusing resources on making sure students enrolled in entry level STEM classes have the support they need to pass the classes with a solid understanding of whatever is being taught.
Student success is just one reason community colleges should prefer full-time instructors. Full time instructors not only anchor student success, but they also develop new courses and programs, which attract new students. In the case of Miami University, the administration has also called upon the faculty to develop strategies to attract more students to their struggling programs.
The Education Equity Solutions study should give any college executive the necessary justification to refocus the staffing strategy to favor full-time instruction. Effective STEM instruction is simply too important to do anything less. The benefits of full-time instructors to Black and Hispanic students are especially pronounced.
This is not as much a practice issue as a policy issue, and the Board of Trustees should insist upon the use of full-time instructors exclusively for entry level STEM courses. When this is not addressed at the Board level, the result is predictable: the administration invests in more administrators instead of investing in core instruction.
Full-time instructors add strategic value; administrators do not
We have already seen this: at WCC, the size of the administration exploded under the current executive. That strategy has not improved the enrollment, the retention rate, or the graduation rate. It has, however, resulted in WCC having twelve Vice Presidents on the payroll. Instead of focusing on what the President needs to be successful, the Board should be singularly focused on what the students need to be successful. At the moment, that seems to be more full time instructors.
Without a doubt, part-time instructors fill a need, but the need is artificial, having been manufactured primarily by the administration’s refusal to hire more full-time instructors. Would moving to full-time instructors be more expensive than using part-time instructors? Sure, but if that produces the results we need, then the results speak for themselves, don’t they?
It is time for our “policy Board” to start coming up with some policy.
Photo Credit: University of Illinois Springfield, via Flickr
