The movement for a one-tier faculty system in California Community Colleges (CCC) is gaining momentum—and rightly so. Its goal is to eliminate the structural inequities between part-time and full-time faculty by creating a unified employment model. All faculty, regardless of hiring classification, would receive proportional compensation, equitable access to benefits, and professional respect commensurate with their qualifications and contributions. Crucially, the one-tier model envisions a pathway to tenure for all faculty, no longer based on arbitrary employment categories. This is a long-overdue correction to a system that has relied on contingent labor while denying it stability and recognition.
But as we move toward this vision, we must confront a critical danger: the transition itself could reproduce the very injustices we seek to dismantle.
Many current proposals focus on structural reform—redefining job categories, aligning pay scales, and creating new full-time or proportional roles. Yet few offer concrete protections for the faculty who have sustained our colleges under inequitable conditions: long-serving part-time educators. Without deliberate safeguards, the transition could prioritize new hires under the one-tier model while sidelining legacy adjuncts. It could fail to convert existing part-time faculty into protected permanent positions. It could leave senior part-timers without tenure-track pathways that take their already attained years of service into account. In short, it could erase decades of service, institutional knowledge, and student relationships in the name of reform.
This is not just a policy oversight—it’s a moral hazard. A movement rooted in justice must not reproduce or worsen exclusion in its implementation.
To ensure that the shift to a one-tier system honors those who have endured the inequity, we must insist on a just transition. That means:
- Seniority-based conversion: Long-serving part-time faculty must be prioritized for new protected proportional, or when available, full-time roles.
- Automatic pathways to parity: Conversion mechanisms should be contractual, not competitive.
- Tenure eligibility for legacy adjuncts: Past sustained service must translate into automatic access to tenure-track status.
- Funding protections: Districts must not reduce instructional hours or replace existing faculty with new hires or those upgraded from part-time to full-time.
- Transparent implementation plans: Every district should recognize a roadmap that includes timelines, conversion criteria, and faculty protections.
The one-tier movement is a historic opportunity to correct decades of structural injustice and abuse in California’s community colleges. But equity must be more than a policy—it must be a process that includes those who have borne the weight of inequity. Without intentional protections, the transition risks becoming a new form of exclusion.
Justice delayed must not become justice denied and the treatment must not be worse than the disease.
Scott Douglas is currently CPFA’s Southern Regional Representative and serves on CPFA’s Legislative Committee. Contact him at sdouglas@cpfa.org.