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Santa Monica College Faculty Association
1900 Pico Blvd.
Liberal Arts, Room 140
Santa Monica, CA  90405
Phone 310-434-4394
FAX 310-434-3601

President: Mitra Moassessi

Executive Secretary: Janet Watts

www.SMCFA.org

December 2005, Volume 16, Issue 3 - The Incredible Shrinking Full-Time Faculty PDF Print E-mail
by Lantz Simpson

In 2002, Santa Monica College had 337 full-time faculty. Now it is has 314. That giant sucking sound you hear is the incredible shrinking full-time faculty. What's more, through a perverse twist, SMC's percentage of hours taught by full-time faculty has dropped below 50%, yet the college has 44 more full-time faculty than state regulations require. How is all this possible under the 75/25 regulations?

It's possible because SMC administration discovered a loophole in those regulations. After the part-time faculty massacre of 2003-04, when over 300 part-time faculty were laid off and FTES dropped by over 20%, SMC was allowed to reset its base full-time faculty obligation from 357.84 in 2003 to 274.4 in 2004. Yet SMC has also been allowed (so far) to maintain its state revenues! Furthermore, when SMC attempted to recover from the 2003-04 cuts by increasing the number of part-time faculty this year to 996, the readjusted full-time faculty base of 274.4 remained the same!

Acting President Tom Donner claimed at the September Board meeting that the administration has used the regulations to the college's benefit. Why it is a benefit for SMC to dodge the hiring of more full-time faculty remains unexplained. The faculty certainly doesn't think so.

It's been four years since the college hired any full-time faculty under the 75/25 regulations. (It has hired a handful of replacements for retirees.) Through crafty lobbying, SMC convinced the Chancellor's office to waive and defer SMC's full-time hiring obligation for 2003 and 2004. Then the base was reset and there you have it-no obligation.

In fact, if SMC makes this year's funded growth rate of 2.55% (and every year thereafter), the college will not be required to hire any new full-time faculty for six more years! That will make TEN YEARS of virtually no new full-time hiring-and all within state regulations.

In 1988, the year before the 75/25 regulations went into effect, SMC had 59% of its hours taught by full-time faculty. Total full-time hours peaked at 59.5% in 1991. Ironically, the big part-time layoffs of 2003-04 juiced the full-time percentage for that year to 73.7%. Now, sixteen years after the 75/25 regulations were established, the college sits at 49.64%.

If that rate of linear decline continues, in the year 2050 SMC will have achieved an incredible shrinking to only 25% full-time faculty hours and will have the accomplished the Great Reversal to 25/75.
  		 

 

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