At Edmonds College, associate faculty are paid less than full-time faculty to teach classes. To be specific, Edmonds College associate faculty are paid 65% of a full-time faculty member’s salary to teach the same class. It is commonly argued that full-time faculty have more responsibilities than associate faculty, like office hours, student advising, or committee work that associate faculty are not required to do, so they get paid more for that work. However, it is also well understood that the extra responsibilities of full-time faculty represent 15% of their workload.
This means that associate faculty are paid 65% of a full-time faculty salary to teach classes, whereas full-time faculty are paid 85% of their salary to teach the same classes. Associate faculty are paid 24% less than a full-time faculty member to do the same job! Our associate faculty have the same qualifications as our full-time faculty, and are teaching the same classes, but are only getting 76% of the pay.
Moreover, the percentage of full-time salary that associate faculty at Edmonds College receive is much lower than the percentage at other local colleges. Below you can see a comparison of these percentages between Edmonds College and other local colleges.
If Edmonds College is going to stay competitive in this market, we need to offer associate faculty more salary.
Let’s Talk Corrections
Our faculty who teach at the Monroe Correctional Complex (MCC) are also experiencing workload differences compared to faculty who teach at the Edmonds College campus. A full-time faculty member on the Edmonds College campus teaching a full load of classes can expect to be in the classroom for 15 hours per week. Meanwhile, a full-time faculty member teaching at the MCC, who are teaching the same classes as those taught on campus, will be in the classroom for 6 hours a day for 4 days a week, a total of 24 hours per week. If you happen to be a full-time faculty member at MCC who teaches the Basic Skills curriculum, you can expect to be in the classroom for 6 hours a day for 5 days a week, a total of 30 hours per week. This means that our Corrections faculty have less prep time which means less time to evaluate their students’ work. Granting our Basic Skills faculty at MCC more compensated prep time each week would be a good step towards addressing this imbalance in workload.
What We Want
- Increase associate faculty pay to 85% of full-time salary so we can hire and retain associate faculty.
- More prep time for our Corrections faculty.
When We Fight, We Win!
If you want to join our fight for pay equity, you can join our Contract Action Team by contacting our VP for Action and Advocacy, Chuck Mueller, at cmmuelle@gmail.com.