COCAL Survey Report 3.5.13

7/29/2019 COCAL Survey Report 3.5.13

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Working Conditions of OnLine Instructors: Early results from the COCAL

Survey

March 5, 2013

Online instruction has surged in the last 15 years. It may now be the core deliverysystem for higher education. However, most of what has been written about itfocuses on its cost effectiveness or the quality of the teaching and learningexperience. This study is different: it focuses on the conditions under which onlineinstructors work.

For example, our survey results say that:

An adjunct instructor, teaching on line, makes about $14 per hour.Pay varies by sector (public, private non-profit, community college and for-

profit), with public state colleges and universities paying $4,000-$5,000 per class

and for-profits paying the least (less than $2,000 per class, down to less than$1,000.)

The number of hours spent per day per class (average 2) does not vary bysector.

While over half those who responded report that they wrote the classes theyteach, most were not paid to write that class and nearly half do not know who holdsthe copyright to it.

From these and other responses we can describe a range of the conditions underwhich people teach online courses. This in turn enables a look at the role played byonline instructors as content providers in the overall digital communications

universe.

The origin, purpose and scope of this survey

This survey was proposed and authorized by COCAL (Coalition of ContingentAcademic Labor) at its August 2012 meeting in Mexico City. Our assumption is thatthere are minimum standards for teaching conditions, including online instruction,that make good education possible, and that contingent faculty organizations shouldhave a position on what those standards are. Before debating those standards,however, we wanted to find out what conditions online faculty actually experience.That would give us a foothold to ask for whose benefitCui bono? -- the

unbundling of the academic enterprise, from teaching to research, and the relatedchanges in the higher education industry, are taking place.

The survey was distributed on SurveyMonkey via academic and faculty union listssuch as the COCAL list, XMCA (Mind, Culture and Activity), the MLA (ModernLanguage Association), UALE (United Association for Labor Education) and adj-lwhich reaches many adjunct instructors. In addition, individuals passed it along topeople whom they knew who were teaching on line. Because we had the help of


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multiple faculty organizations, including unions, we were able to gather responsesacross sectors and produce information that had not been available before.

The total number of respondents, after two months of circulating the survey(October-December 2012) was 133 from about 100 different institutions including

community colleges, state colleges and universities, private non-profit colleges anduniversities and for-profits. However, this is not a statistically representativesample of the people who are teaching on line. Our interpretations therefore shouldbe taken as indications of possible trends to be checked in subsequent largersurveys.

This survey focuses narrowly on questions about how the work of teaching is doneby the people who are doing it. It asks how much people get paid, how many hoursper day are spent on a course, whether their technology costs are subsidized, whoowns the copyright to their class, etc. We focus on these questions because webelieve that answers to these questions will explain or deepen answers to other

questions. Therefore this survey does not touch on questions of the quality ofinstruction or curriculum, benefit to students, comparison of capabilities or costs ofonline technologies, etc.

What kinds of institutions do the respondents teach at?

People were asked to name the institutions where the course they were reportingabout was taught. The purpose of this was to identify what sector the class wasbeing offered in. Some responders did not state the name of their institution.Furthermore, websites do not always clearly distinguish whether an institution is afor-profit or a private non-profit. Therefore match of sector categories with

institutions is not complete.

Type of institution (names are examples only; not all names areincluded)

Number ofresponses

For-profits (University of Phoenix, Strayer, National American,LaJolla National, Walden, Full Sail, Everest, DeVry, Art Institute,Capella, Meridian, Argosy, possibly others)

21

Community colleges such as those in the California CommunityCollege system, Holyoke CC, Northampton CC, Front Range CC,Ozarks CC, and tribal community colleges (Bay Mills) and others

21

State institutions (including state-related, like University ofPittsburgh and Snow) such as Portland State, University of IllinoisChicago and Springfield, SUNY, University of Connecticut,University of Massachusetts, Miami U of Ohio, Indiana Universityand others

54

Private, including Roman Catholic (Felician, St. Joseph, St Leo,University of Dayton) various other religious, historically Black(Paine, Southern U of New Orleans), Ashford, Quincy, Johns

20


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Hopkins, Syracuse, National Labor College, Roosevelt, SouthwestChristian, Breneau, Excelsior, Golden Gate, Tiffin, Northeastern,etc.Non-US (responses from Japan, Canada, Israel) 9

This information was useful in figuring out where people with better workingconditions were teaching and where the working conditions were worse.

Who were our respondents?

The following bullet points give a sense of who our respondents were. Thepercentages are not to be read as describing the whole field; they just tell us whoresponded to this survey.

56% said that they taught the class that they described as adjuncts; a fewsaid they were independent contractors (1099-ers) or didnt answer.

36% said they were full-time employees, whether contingent or tenure track;some full-timers were teaching as adjuncts at a second institution;

31% of adjuncts taught only at one institution; 23.5% said they taught atseveral institutions, up to five;

61% of all respondents said they wrote the course they teach. 77% of the ones who wrote their course were full-time contingent or tenure

track;

75% of those who wrote the class they teach said they were not paidanything to write their course;

43% of those who wrote their courses said they didnt know who held thecopyright for their course; three said they owned it and had licensed it totheir university so others could teach it;

52% of respondents say they have no seniority right to teach their class inthe future, and 43% say they have it only by past practice. Only 4.7% have itby written agreement or contract.

72% supply their own computers and 87% supply their own internet access. Typical class size is 20-40. Smaller classes are likely to be paid by headcount.

Larger classes up to 100 were reported.

The people who teach on line as part of their load as full-time employees,whether contingent or tenure track (29%), did not break out how much theyget paid to teach their on line class. Of people who teach as adjuncts and get

paid by the course, 18% make less than $2,000 per course, 28% make$2,000-$3,000, 12% make $3,000 - $4,000 and 12% make $4,000-$5,000.

Two hours per day is what the largest group (47 out of 126) spend teaching aclass. Thirty two people spend less than an hour and a half; 27 spend 3 hoursa day, and 18 spend four hours a day on up. Several people reportedspending more hours in the day than is humanly possible (20, 45, etc.) Thequestion was asked How many hours do you spend per day? which did not

assume a 5-day week. The arithmetic in this analysis assumes a 7 day week


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and a 15-week course, but many courses are compressed to 7 or even 5weeks. We did not collect information on what percent of classes arecompressed.

33% of respondents have a union. These were primarily people incommunity colleges and state universities. This exceeds the share of the

higher education faculty which is unionized, which is 27% (from Berry andSavarese 2012). The 33% figure probably is the result of the way the surveywas circulated first through faculty unions and then other organizations.

Pay per class by sector

The following, given the nature of our sample, should be viewed as trends to beexplored further.

There appears to be a difference in level of pay by sector, with a greater percent offaculty at state colleges and universities making between $4,000 and $5,000 per

class. Pay at for-profits was lowest, with over half (11 out of 18) reporting pay ofless than $2,000 per class.

Most of those who reported per-class pay were adjunct faculty. Full time contingentor tenure-track faculty were generally paid as part of load and therefore did notreport per-class pay. When full-time tenured or emeritus faculty were paid asoverload, they got higher than $5,000 ($6,000, for example). State colleges anduniversities have a high rate of unionization. However, so do community colleges,where pay was likely to be $3,000 or less.

$1,000 -

$2,000 perclass

$2,000-

$3000 perclass

$3,000

$4,000 perclass

$4,000 -

$5,000 perclass

Paid as part

of full timeload

Communitycolleges

6 10 1 2 2

Statecolleges anduniversities

8 14 10 18 10

Privatecolleges anduniversities

5 7 1 2 7

For-Profitcolleges anduniversities

11 6 1 - -

Hours per class by sector


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On the other hand, there does not appear to be great difference by sector in numberof hours spend by faculty teaching on line. The typical online instructor appears tospend just over 2 hours per day per class. This seems to have nothing to do withhow much he or she is getting paid, which does vary by sector.

One Two Three Four Five ormore

CommunityColleges

5 5 4 1

Statecolleges anduniversities

6 19 10 2 7

Privatecolleges anduniversities

4 5 4

For-profit

colleges anduniversities

1 6 3 2 1

This matters because wages per hour of work are a basic part of working conditions.

Other questions

Differences by platform

It is hard to tell, but it looks as if people who use Blackboard may spend between 1-2 hours per day on average per class while people who use Moodle spend 2-3 hours

per day on a class.

Twice as many Blackboard users get paid $2,000 -- $3,000 per class than $3,000 -$4,000. (23 to 10).

People who teach on line as part of a full-time load appear to be more likely to useMoodle plus other technologies than Blackboard.

Who writes classes?

The response to this question was complicated. An equal number of part-timer/adjunct faculty said they either did or did not write the class they teach, butmany of these added comments about the way they shaped the class. Many of theserespondents did not feel they could claim that they wrote a class entirely, but theymodified it, wrote tests, provided readings, etc. By contrast, nearly all full-timetenure track faculty said they either wrote their class or collaborated on it. Asomewhat smaller share of full-time contingent faculty said they either wrote the


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class they teach or collaborated on it. Respondents reported pay ranging from zeroto $1000 to $5000 for writing a class.

Technology platform questions

95 respondents answered the question, What technology platform do you use?What platform is used for teaching has important budgetary consequences for theinstitution and will shape how courses are conducted and integrated into aninstitution. The choices offered in this survey were telephone, Skype, Blackboard,Moodle and dispersed classrooms with microphones and video (typical of distancelearning classrooms from the 1990s). Respondents offered other choices such asWebCT, ANGEL, Elluminate, Desire2Learn, eCollege, VoiceThread, Ning, ComCourse,Sakai, Etudes, WEBTYCHO and Oncourse, and platforms possibly unique to theircollege.

There is weak trend suggesting that Blackboard users average 1.5 to 2 hours per day

on each class. Moodle users average 2 to 3 hours per day on each class. It is notpossible to tell how other delivery technologies (Skype, telephone) interact withthese two platforms.

Technology support questions

Respondents were asked whether they got tech help from the school promptly andeasily. Most responded that tech assistance was easy and fast.

Sixty out of 87 said they supply their own computer and 73 pay for their owninternet. Overall, 95% get no technology subsidy. Only 20% work in an office

provided by the institution with equipment provided by the institution. It is likelythat those who use school-supplied equipment and offices are the full-time faculty;however, they also work at home on their own equipment.

Intellectual property questions

Sixty one percent (76) of the 124 people who answered this question said theywrote the class they taught. Eighteen said it was a collaborative effort. Seventy-seven percent of those who wrote their class were full-time contingent or tenure-track.

Seventy five percent, or 88 of the 117 who answer this question, did not get paid towrite the class they wrote. Ninety two or 76% of the 121 who answered a slightlydifferent question either did not get paid or got paid less than $1,000 to write aclass. Note: those who are employed full-time often mentioned that they wrote theclass as part of their full-time load.

Forty one percent did not know who owns copyright to the class they wrote. Twoindividuals who wrote and owned their class licensed the class they wrote to the


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school so that the school could use it. It is not clear that anyone understood thatcopyright is a bundle of separate rights which are all owned by the creator unlessexplicitly sold or licensed.

Three out of 66 get compensated if someone else teaches the class they wrote.

Academic support questions

Ninety-one and a half percent get no academic support for teaching a class (graders,readers, research assistants to develop or update a class, teaching assistants).Respondents at one state university said that graders were hired to read thediscussion sections in their on line classes. This could be compared to technicalsupport which appears to be satisfactory.

Job security questions

Four out of 93 respondents have written contractual seniority rights to teach theclass they are teaching. Forty six out of 93 (about half) say they have this right bypast practice. Since 33 percent say they have a union (mostly at community collegesand state universities) this high percent of past practice rather than contractualrights may be a function of the question not having been negotiated yet. It also mayreflect the number of full-time faculty who assume they have a continuing right toteach their class. However, enforcing a past practice depends on more than collegialgood will. Furthermore, in some faculty contracts, online faculty are specificallyexcluded from union representation.

Benefits

Eighty five percent of those who responded as adjunct faculty got no benefits fromtheir employers (contribution to healthcare, retirement, paid sick days and vacationaccrual). The fifteen percent who got some benefits got contributions to retirement.

Motivation

We asked two questions intended to reveal the attitude of instructors who areteaching on line toward their work and its role in their school. 74% percent agreedwith the statement, An important part of the mission of the institution where I

teach this course is to reach students who are geographically dispersed, live in a

remote place, or have mobility limitations, so distance learning is an effectiveresponse to that challenge.

And even more, or 81%, agreed with the statement, I believe that this course, andthe expertise which I bring to teaching it, is an indispensable contribution to themission of the institution where I teach.

Adjunct faculty and full-time faculty did not differ much on these two questions.


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Imagining working conditions

One way to bring this information to life is to ask how much are instructors in this

picture making per hour and how much they would have to work, at that rate, toearn a living wage.

Possibility #1:

An online instructor, an adjunct, works at home for two, three or moreinstitutions, getting paid $2000 per class for three classes per semester. Since thesemesters are compressed (5, 7 or 8 weeks, meaning 5 semesters per year) he orshe can teach 3 x $2,000 x 5 or $30,000 per year working 6 hours per day (assuming2 hours per class for 3 classes). That is about $14 per hour. The cost of computersand technology and office-in-the home might come to $200 a month but are tax

deductions. The instructor has no healthcare, retirement, or other benefits, and nojob security. Occasionally he or she writes a class for another $1,000.

Possibility #2:

An online instructor, an adjunct, works at home for one institution gettingpaid $3,000 per class for two classes per semester. Again, the semesters arecompressed making 10 classes per year possible, or $30,000 per year again. Thisperson might spend 3 hours a day on each class, which is still a little less than $14per hour.

Possibility #3:

An online instructor, an adjunct, teaches one class per semester twice a yearfor $4,000 per class, spends 4 hours a day on his or her class, gets $8,000 per year,but actually only works about 120 days out of the year and makes and so makes $16an hour in a less-than-half time job. No benefits, healthcare, retirement, job securityor subsidy for technology.

Teaching in an interactive digital environment means providing content

Based on these findings, it looks as if an adjunct faculty member who teaches online,

and whose income is entirely from that work, can make a living that is about twicethe federal poverty level for a single individual. This includes no benefits, jobsecurity or subsidy for office and technology costs. What does that mean for facultyorganizations that are concerned with standards for workers in higher education?

One way to start is to compare the new digital environment to the brick-and-mortarclassroom of twenty years ago. A school has a building; each room in that buildingcan be used to convene a class, for which students pay tuition. The school hires


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teachers to run the classes. The teacher designs the class, assigns books, runs theclass, and is paid by the school out of tuition and other revenue. The wholeenterprise is, more or less, a single financial entity.

Or compare it to the publishing industry of twenty years ago. A writer would write a

book, sell it to a publisher who would then print up books and market them throughbooksellers. The publisher organized the economics of the system, balancingpayouts to the writer and the printer with revenue from bookstores and people whobought the book, and keeping some. Authors kept their copyrights. Academic andtrade publishing both worked this way. Again, the enterprise is a single financialwhole, more or less.

Both of these are relatively simple systems and the connection between income andoutgo are at least traceable by the average person. This is not the case in the newworldwide digital distribution system.

The architecture of the new system goes like this: At the base are global fiberopticnetworks, funded by governments to serve administrative, commercial and militarypurposes and connected internationally through international agreements. These inturn sell space to content delivery networks (CDNs). These CDNs deliver content toaudiences of end-users. What was a book, and what happened in the classroom andbetween the student and the teacher, is now called content. CDNs get their contentby hosting media companies. Examples of these in the US include Amazon, BBC, FoxNews, Facebook, MySpace, NetFlix and others. Distance education contentproviders are just another media company. Their job is to populate a CDN withcontent, which happens to be the communication tasks of the classroom and itssupport services.

The most reliable stream of revenue supporting this whole edifice of the worldwidedigital distribution system, other than governments, is individual purchasers ofaccess to internet providers. At between $45 to $100 per month times billions ofsubscribers, this is where the money comes from. Therefore it is essential that thecontent which is available on line be as magnetic and indispensible as possible.Individual experiments in online content delivery do not have to make money,short-term. The question is not, Does this contentmake money by itself? It is,Does this content keep internet service purchasers paying the monthly bill?

The education industry is huge, mature and complex in ways that even

Amazon.com is not. Creative ways to monetize its various aspects emerge almostdaily. Setting aside the increases in tuition and the boom in student loans, howabout research and the tradition of peer review? SAGE has just established anonline peer-reviewed journal and is inviting submissions, which are free, but whichincur a publishing fee of $99 (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/sageopen) if thearticle is accepted. What about diplomas and certificates? Coursera, which was astart-up in 2012, just announced partnerships with 62 universities world wide andclaims a student base of 2.7 million (www.coursera.org/team). They will award a
http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/sageopenhttp://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/sageopenhttp://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/sageopenhttp://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/sageopen


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Verified Certificate of completion from a MOOC (Massive Open Online Class) for$30 to $100. These are just news items that have reached the mainstream press inlate February, 2013. In a period of excess demand for higher education, driven bythe use of a college degree as the minimum requirement for even entry-level jobs(Rampell, 2.20.13) during a period of high unemployment, the market for higher

education, fueled by desperation, is a healthy target for financial inventiveness.

One generation ago, a university was an integrated whole both academically andfinancially. Today, money is flowing through this system very differently. Theinstitution rides on top of a pyramid of other industries, all of which have their owneconomies.

What do other content providers make?

If we think of online instructors as another category of content providers, to whomshould we compare them? In a way, academic content providers are creatives like

screenwriters and musicians and composers. Musicians and composers registerownership through ASCAP (www.ascap.com/about/) which licenses and distributesroyalties for public performances. They contend with piracy and pay attention tocopyright, both of which are concerns for online instructors. Scanty revenues tomusicians from online platforms like Pandora are in the current news.

Academic online instructors are also like workers who staff technical assistance,media and commercial websites, generating content for CDNs. In the digitaluniverse, these are entry-level jobs. According to Simplyhired(http://www.simplyhired.com/a/salary/search/q-website+content+provider), thepay for a website content provider averages $50,000 per year or $24 an hour. This

is obviously more than the $14 per hour that the adjuncts in our survey make.

Next steps

The existence of sophisticated digital communication platforms makes possible theunbundling of activities associated with higher education in ways that would nothave been efficient in the past. Once the platform exists, implementing thisunbundling can be rapid. Then each can be monetized.. Teaching is low-hangingfruit in this economic picture.

The place where labor actually has some power, however, is still the point of

production, the place where the teacher works, interacting with the student on theone hand and the employer on the other. Now it is necessary to ask: Production ofwhat? And: Cui bono? Who benefits?

Organizational background of this survey and findings

This survey was authorized at the August 2012 conference of COCAL (Coalition onContingent Academic Labor) in Mexico City. It is also a project of the United
http://www.ascap.com/about/http://www.ascap.com/about/http://www.simplyhired.com/a/salary/search/q-website+content+providerhttp://www.simplyhired.com/a/salary/search/q-website+content+providerhttp://www.simplyhired.com/a/salary/search/q-website+content+providerhttp://www.simplyhired.com/a/salary/search/q-website+content+providerhttp://www.ascap.com/about/


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Association for Labor Education Online Learning Working Group (UALE.org) and theOnline Education Work Group of the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education(http://www.calfac.org/campaign-future-higher-ed).

Contact: Helena Worthen21 San Mateo RoadBerkeley, CA [email protected]

REFERENCES

Berry, J. and Savarese, M. 2012.Directory of U.S. Faculty Contracts and Bargaining

Agents, National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and

the Professions, Hunter College, CUNY.

Central Valley Next Generation Broadband Infrastructure Project. CVNGBIP receives$46.6 million in ARRA funding.(http://www.cvngbip.org/overview/funding.html), [email protected]. Feb 22, 2013

Cortese, Janis. Feb 2013. Transpacific Agreement Signed to Increase Global Ultra HighPerformance Networking. Media contact for CENIC, 714-220-3453, [email protected], R. January 8, 2013. Coursera Takes a Big Step Forward Monetization, NowLets Students Earn Verified Certificates for a Fee. Downloaded from

http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/08/coursera-takes-a-big-step-toward-monetization-now-lets-students-earn-verified-certificates-for-a-fee/

Rampell, C. February 20, 2013. It Takes a BA to Find a Job as a File Clerk. New YorkTimes, A-1, A-3.

General information about CDNs from various articles on Wikipedia
http://www.calfac.org/campaign-future-higher-edhttp://www.calfac.org/campaign-future-higher-edhttp://www.calfac.org/campaign-future-higher-edmailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.cvngbip.org/overview/funding.htmlhttp://www.cvngbip.org/overview/funding.htmlhttp://www.cvngbip.org/overview/funding.htmlhttp://www.cvngbip.org/http://www.cvngbip.org/mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://techcrunch.com/2013/01/08/coursera-takes-a-big-step-toward-monetization-now-lets-students-earn-verified-certificates-for-a-fee/http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/08/coursera-takes-a-big-step-toward-monetization-now-lets-students-earn-verified-certificates-for-a-fee/http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/08/coursera-takes-a-big-step-toward-monetization-now-lets-students-earn-verified-certificates-for-a-fee/http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/08/coursera-takes-a-big-step-toward-monetization-now-lets-students-earn-verified-certificates-for-a-fee/http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/08/coursera-takes-a-big-step-toward-monetization-now-lets-students-earn-verified-certificates-for-a-fee/mailto:[email protected]://www.cvngbip.org/http://www.cvngbip.org/overview/funding.htmlmailto:[email protected]://www.calfac.org/campaign-future-higher-ed

Documents

COCAL Survey Report 3.5.13