Freeway Flyers: Rewards Few for College Teachers on the Move

Bill Gray steps to the lectern and is quickly in command of the 30 students who fill room C-114 at San Diego City College. Witty, fluent and sincere, he leads his Wednesday night Logic 100 class in a spirited discussion of skepticism and the lack of scientific proof for paranormal powers.

He teaches the course again Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings at Southwestern College in Chula Vista and again Monday nights at City College. And on Tuesday nights, he travels to La Jolla High School to teach Introduction to Philosophy to San Diego Mesa College off-campus students.

For Gray, 45, four courses at three campuses is not an unusual work week. He has been teaching this way for 16 years, and unless something changes radically, he will be doing it for 16 more.

Gray is a “freeway flyer,” one of hundreds of San Diego County academics who compose a highly educated migrant work force that scrambles for employment each semester at the county’s eight community college campuses, San Diego State University and beyond.

Working for low wages, under conditions that even some administrators who hire them admit are “horrendous” and “unfortunate,” these part-time faculty members say they are willing to continue peddling their knowledge door-to-door because they love to teach and hope one day to land a rare full-time post.

“It’s a job I love and a subject I love,” said Gray, who earned his master’s degree in philosophy at SDSU in 1968. “And I wouldn’t be happy doing anything else.”

The part-timers earn just a fraction of the pay given professors with contracts. They are not paid for grading papers or preparing courses, sometimes have no health or retirement benefits and can be bumped from teaching assignments by contract teachers who request or are required to teach additional courses.

“We are the peons of the educational system,” said Philip Lopez, who has taught part-time at Southwestern College and elsewhere for 13 years. “We are the serfs.”

“It’s not that there’s no work for me. I’m working full time. All of my non-contract colleagues are working full-time. We’re working full-time plus. It’s just that we’re working in several different districts, and no one’s willing to pay us what we’re worth.” Lopez said he earned $14,000 teaching 12 1/2 courses last year.

The part-time system allows community college administrators the flexibility to hire instructors at low cost on short notice as student enrollment and interests fluctuate each semester. Part-timers are crucial to the community college system, teaching 33% of all courses statewide, and about half in the San Diego Community College District.

“You rely on them because it gives you the ability to expand and contract your faculty quickly,” said Edward Thornton, vice-president for administrative affairs at Southwestern College.

“There definitely is a problem, depending on whose viewpoint you’re going to take,” said Robert Matthews, president of the Education Cultural Complex, part of the San Diego Community College District. “From a management viewpoint, the flexibility is wonderful. But from a labor viewpoint, it’s horrendous.”

A full-time faculty member costs Southwestern about $3,500 per class, Thornton said. A part-timer receives about $1,400 per class, he said.

“I wouldn’t want to do it,” said Garland Peed, chancellor of the San Diego Community College District. “But at the same time, it doesn’t mean we as a college have a responsibility to develop jobs for everyone. We can’t do that.”

Peed said that part-time teaching posts are intended largely for people who hold other jobs, allowing them to earn extra money while contributing their expertise to community college students. But an abundance of teachers and a shortage of teaching jobs has created today’s freeway flyers, who stitch part-time assignments together to create a patchwork teaching career.

The San Diego Community College Teachers Assn., which wants that district to devote more money to hiring full-time instructors, argues that the district should use funds now in a separate foundation and self-insurance fund for that purpose. Peed called that proposal “nonsense.”

It is difficult to determine how many part-timers are teachers exclusively. The vast majority of part-timers in all districts are moonlighters-- attorneys, businessmen or electricians teaching night courses in their field.

But part-timers and administrators estimate that perhaps 300 or more of the 2,500 part-time teachers in the San Diego Community College District, the county’s largest, are people like Gray, scratching out a living solely by teaching.

Gray is quick to admit that his love for philosophy carries a price for him and his family. In 16 years, he has never earned more than $20,000 in a year, and one year his earnings dipped to $5,000. During semesters when no teaching spots were available, unemployment payments helped support Gray, his wife and his daughter.

The Grays rent their El Cajon home and borrow most of their furniture. They cannot afford to pay heating bills and spend chilly winter evenings around space heaters and the stove in their kitchen.

Gray has tried to switch to more lucrative careers in real estate and computer programming, but came back to teaching when he found those vocations too dull.

“Basically, we just live from month to month,” said Gray, whose wife has recently earned a master’s degree and works part time teaching English as a second language. “And some months we don’t manage to do that.”

Wages Vary

Wages vary in the county’s five community college districts, but part-timers--who are paid an hourly wage--earn about one-half to one-third of what full-time contract faculty members earn. Part-timers say wages are better at California State University campuses.

In the San Diego Community College District, for example, the 475 contract faculty members in the college division earn $2,008 to $3,956 per month. (Faculty members in the district’s adult education division earn slightly less.)

The 1,577 part-timers earn $20.50 to $33.14 per hour for the hours they actually teach in the classroom. State law limits them to nine hours per week in a single district. A month’s maximum gross pay, therefore, comes to about $800 to $1,300 per month, depending on experience and qualifications.

Which explains how “freeway flyers” acquired their nickname--crossing district lines to teach courses at several schools to pay the bills. Rod Freeman’s work week is an extreme example. If his plans for the semester work out, he will make five appearances at Cal State Northridge, five at San Diego City College, three at San Diego State University, and one at Miracosta College’s Del Mar Shores campus each week. Freeman’s schedule will require at least two trips to Northridge each week.

The system works this way: Each semester--about every four months--part-time teachers inform deans at the various colleges that they are available to teach that term. After administrators chart which courses will be offered and full-time faculty members are assigned their complement of five courses, part-timers are hired to teach the rest.

No Certainties

Many part-timers prove their ability over time and are assigned the same courses each semester. But they can never be sure of sufficient enrollment to hold the class--or that they will teach it--until it begins.

One middle-aged part-timer had arranged to teach a schedule of eight different courses at three campuses this term, a schedule that would bring in about $2,200 a month. She had just bought a house, and the extra classes would pay for remodeling work.

But four days before she was to start teaching one course, a full-time faculty member replaced her because one of his courses was canceled. The next week, she lost another course for the same reason. She received no compensation for the hours spent preparing to teach the courses. The remodeling will have to wait.

“It’s a significant drop,” said the woman, who asked to remain anonymous because she feared angering the deans who assign courses. “Any luxuries of any kind, I’ll have to do without.”

Part-timers become even angrier when they are bumped because a full-time faculty member wants to earn extra money by teaching more than five classes a week, called an “overload.” And at Southwestern College, for example, contract faculty members facing layoffs can retrain for another discipline by going back to school. If they complete the requirements, they will be receive course assignments ahead of part-timers who have taught in that department for years.

“I’ve been there 12 years, and somebody who has been there one day with a contract has more seniority than I do,” Lopez said.

Although Peed said that part-timers’ hourly pay is based on a formula that includes compensation for out-of-class work, the teachers said they may spend as many as two hours working outside of class for every hour they spend teaching. In reality, the hourly wage is no compensation for that time, they said.

District-paid medical benefits are available to part-timers only in the San Diego Community College District, and only to anyone teaching three courses during a term. They are ineligible for vision, dental and other benefits available to the contract faculty. Part-timers are eligible to participate in the State Teachers Retirement System, but some said they cannot afford to devote part of their income to the future.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do when I retire,” said Patricia Biehl, president of the hourly teachers’ academic senate in the San Diego Community College District. “That’s going to be difficult.”

For offices, part-timers have the trunks of their cars and rooms in their homes.

“I’ve taken students in the bathroom. I’ve used my car as an office. I’ve talked to them in the hallway, in the cafeteria,” said Donna Obata, a part-timer for the past 15 years. “You do whatever you can do wherever you can do it.”

Many part-timers said that their livelihoods rest entirely in the hands of the deans and that they must stay in favor with them. Some said the deans are sympathetic. But several, fearing retribution, refused to be interviewed by The Times and others insisted on anonymity.

‘Capricious Whims’

Part-timers are at the mercy of “the capricious whims of various and sundry administrators,” one woman said. “If you have a dean who likes your work, you’re OK. But if one comes along who doesn’t like the way you look, well, you’re out on your tail.”

Betty Fortier, dean of off-campus programs at Mesa College who spent eight years as a part-time instructor, said such sentiment is unfounded. “I really can’t think of anyone who has been blackballed” for political reasons or public statements, she said. “I heard the same thing when I was an hourly.”

The bottom line, part-timers say, is that constant travel, little communication with colleagues, and a lack of funds for conferences and journals detracts from the education they are able to offer to the county’s 115,000 community college students. But administrators and some students said a class’ success or failure depends more on the commitment and enthusiasm of the individual teacher.

Legislators and teachers unions have proposed reforms over the years, but little has been enacted that significantly changed their lot, part-timers say. The Hourly Faculty Assn. in the San Diego Community College District is pressing for seniority, equal pay, a reduced work load for full-time faculty members and pay for preparation time, among other issues.

But part-timers realize they have little power to enforce their demands. The San Diego district has a waiting list of about 8,000 people asking for first-time or additional teaching assignments, said W. Wayne Murphy, director of personnel and administrative services.

Despite the conditions, part-timers continue to reach for the brass ring of a full-time contract, knowing that the odds of securing one are growing slimmer all the time. Proposition 13 in 1978 and declining enrollment the past few years have cut into community colleges’ incomes, and new contracts have become rare.

In the past three years, the San Diego Community College District has provided only 62 new full-time contracts. In 1980 alone, it filled 59 contract positions, and in 1981, 55 new people were hired.

“You always think there’s going to be some light at the end of the tunnel,” Lopez said. “Some day, you’ll get a contract and be a real teacher.”

“That is still my hope,” Gray said. “I’m trying very hard to get a contract . . . but it wouldn’t surprise me if I never succeed.”