Afflicted by a pandemic, the 2020-21 academic year has us listing along in the uncharted waters of a new kind of economic crisis. But just as the pandemic has exposed deep racial, gender and economic inequalities nationally, the SCCC financial shortfall exposes profound disparities among those who learn and work here.

While administrators continue to thrive, faculty are cut or are threatened to be cut. These conditions have the potential to betray the ethos of community college education and undermine the democratizing mission of our college.

To be sure, SCCC is in line with national trends. As noted by the American Association of University Professors, “Non-tenure-track positions of all types now account for over 70% of all instructional staff appointments in American higher education.” At SCCC adjuncts alone constitute 75% of the instructional staff. This is not the result of our current local and state financial difficulties but of longstanding decisions and practices. Who’s hurt the most? Students—especially those already food and housing insecure—who struggle to pay the ever-increasing cost of tuition, fees and course materials as well as adjuncts.

Budgets reflect values. In the June issue of The WORD, FA President Dante Morelli points out that during a decade when full-time lines decreased by 5.42%, exempt lines increased by 50%. The priority, it appears, is to shift financial resources from grassroots education to administrative positions.

We can already hear the retort: “All administrative positions work for the students and are committed to the mission.” Indeed, some are! Administrators whose purpose is to promote an inclusive environment and offer programs that speak to and address the needs of students’ diverse backgrounds are essential.

However, our college risks losing the wealth of experiences and knowledges only found in diverse classrooms if we price out these very same students. According to an October 2019 report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “Cuts to higher education, rising tuition, and stagnant household earnings make it difficult for today’s students—a cohort more racially and economically diverse than any before it—to secure those benefits.”

Moreover, eliminating administrative positions and adding additional tenure-track faculty positions, contrary to popular belief, is more cost effective. A study conducted by Robert E. Martin, professor emeritus of economics at Centre College, and R. Carter Hill, professor of economics at Louisiana State University Baton Rouge found that three tenured faculty to one administrator is the most cost effective ratio for colleges. Unfortunately, the national trend is two full-time administrative jobs for every one tenured or non-tenured faculty. To hire more administrators, colleges and universities cut costs by hiring more adjunct faculty.

Given that we are a community college, the emphasis must be on teaching. Yet the college continues to sacrifice the very element that makes our college a community college: the students and faculty, with adjuncts—the most vulnerable among us—as the backbone. Imagine the horror we felt when, during the May 19 meeting of the Suffolk County Legislature, the Vice President of Business & Financial Affairs, Dr. Mark Harris, responded to a legislator’s inquiry about finding funds to fill in the financial gap by asserting, “because the adjuncts would fall […] then we have some flexibility in reducing what we have budgeted for the adjuncts’ position.”

This draconian attitude—another word that interestingly arose during that meeting—is offensive to the hardworking adjunct members of the FA.

Prioritizing funding for administrative positions rather than investing in effective teaching and holistic student-centered learning experiences that SCCC’s mission statement promises is effectively diverting valuable resources away from classrooms, away from students and the majority of the faculty, and toward administrators.
All faculty are essential workers on the front lines of SCCC’s mission. More tenured faculty who participate in duties and decision-making would function as a check and balance and effectively reduce the need to hire so many administrators.

Getting back to grassroots education is long, long overdue at Suffolk County Community College.