Category: Educational Reform

  • The One-Tier Concept for Advancing Student Success and Achieving Faculty Equality

    By Cynthia Mahabir, Laney College | Originally published in FACCCTS, Fall 2024 The Problem There’s a fundamental weakness in our California Community College system that impairs student success. Fortunately, there’s also a prospective solution. At […]

    e-Newsletter, Improving the Learning Environment, One-Tier Model

  • COCAL XV Examines the Issues Confronting Contingent Faculty

    The Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor (COCAL) is a network of North American union activists who have worked for over 30 years to defend higher education rights and improve work conditions for contingent academic labor by bringing together activists from numerous unions across the United States, Mexico, English Canada, and Quebec that works to promote the sharing of information and strategies to strengthen our capacity for action.  COCAL XV conference was held in Gatineau, Quebec on August 8th and 9th, 2024, with a focus on the many issues specific to contingent academic labor and the means faculty can use to mobilize directly against threats to our work conditions and our representation in universities, colleges, and community colleges.

    CPFA Journal, One-Tier Model, Publications

  • CFT Pushes Forward on a Vision of a One-Tier/Unified Faculty Model

    By Geoff Johnson, Originally published on July 30, 2024 at CFT.org CFT’s One-Tier Task force and CFT members, after over eight months of discussion, has created a definitive list of basic components deemed essential for […]

    e-Newsletter, Educational Reform, One-Tier Model

  • A Unified Faculty Model

    The California Community Colleges (CCC) system plays a pivotal role as an engine for economic and social mobility in California and as a driver for the fifth largest economy in the world. In the past two decades, the CCC system has undergone significant “reform,” narrowing students’ educational opportunities and shrinking the student body by over one million students. During this period, the CCC system’s student outcomes have declined, stagnated, or only slightly improved despite decades of “reform” efforts. This paper illustrates that transitioning from a two-tiered to a nontiered—unified faculty—model will better serve students, colleges, and the state of California. The concept of a unified faculty emphasizes the elimination of the two employment tiers—part-and full-time faculty—to create a nontiered structure. This model is based on faculty and collegewide unity as opposed to the current structure that has produced a divided faculty, inequitable service to students, and stagnant or diminishing student outcomes. Presently, the K-12 system and Vancouver model are structured around a unified, nontiered faculty model. It is time for the California Community Colleges to address the hypocrisy at the heart of its institutions: decades of disinvestment from the faculty and thus, students. Investing in a nontiered, unified faculty model will remedy the CCC system that is currently struggling to bring back the millions of students who have been pushed out of their colleges. 

    e-Newsletter, Educational Reform, One-Tier Model, Publications

  • 2024 Chair’s Report

    Assembly Bill 2277 (Wallis), our bill to raise the part-time teaching cap from 67% to 85% of a full-time course load, is now going through the political process in Sacramento. (For more on this bill, […]

    Chair's Report, CPFA Journal, One-Tier Model, Publications

  • 2024 (Virtual) CPFA Conference

    On Saturday, April 20th, 2024, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., the California Part-time Faculty Association (CPFA) will be hosting its annual conference virtually via Zoom. This event is free and open to everyone, but […]

    CPFA Journal, Events, One-Tier Model, Publications

  • CPFA Sponsors AB 2277: Raising the Part-Time Faculty Workload Cap

    AB 2277 will increase the maximum number of instructional hours that a part-time California Community College faculty member may teach at any one community college district and allow students to build stronger relationships with existing […]

    e-Newsletter, Educational Reform

  • CPFA Celebrates 25 Years: A Founder Reflects

    This year marks CPFA’s 25th anniversary. There are still a few of us who remember those early days, and who are hopeful that the next 25 years will bring even greater changes to the workscape for roughly 35,000+ highly qualified educators who toil daily to keep the community college system in California not only afloat, but also healthy.

    e-Newsletter, One-Tier Model

  • The Campaign for Faculty Equality

    The newly formed Campaign for Faculty Equality (CFE) seeks to correct the broken faculty system in California’s community colleges, particularly the incredibly unequal two-tier faculty structure, a decades-long problem consigned to the shadows of academia. […]

    CPFA Journal, One-Tier Model

  • Building Our Future: The One-Tier Model is The Answer!

    The Campaign for Faculty Equality (CFE) is a new statewide organization that aims to work in conjunction with existing advocacy groups and to serve as a forum of strategic thinking and action among those who […]

    CPFA Journal, One-Tier Model

  • Tenured Faculty: Friend or Foe?

    by Jack Longmate At the Higher Ed Labor United (HELU) conference of July 20, 2023, a number of the non-tenure-track (NTT) speakers underscored the importance of collaboration with tenure-track (TT) faculty.  Not as avidly expressed […]

    e-Newsletter, One-Tier Model, Publications

  • “One Faculty”: A Shifting Conversation

    By Jon Fox Reprinted from FA News, Foothill De-Anza Faculty Association One of my roles in FA is serving on the Board of Governors for the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges, where I have […]

    Newsworthy, One-Tier Model

  • Chair’s Report 2023

    A new, two-year legislative cycle in Sacramento began this year, and with it, up to a quarter of California’s Senate and Assembly were newly sworn in. New legislators are usually relatively fresh to the process […]

    Chair's Report, CPFA Journal, One-Tier Model, Publications

  • Pursuing a One-Tier Faculty Workplace

    The two-tier workplace, with an upper tier of tenured faculty and a lower tier of non-tenured faculty, has been the norm in U.S. higher education for half a century, long enough to have enabled several generations to become acculturated to it.  Just as it seems natural and normal for water to run downhill, no one is surprised when adjuncts are not paid the same as tenured instructors. 

    CPFA Journal, One-Tier Model, Publications

  • Should Contingents Support More Tenure-Track Jobs?

    By Jack Longmate When hearing about proposals to fund new tenure-track jobs, adjuncts might think to themselves: “If I could only get a tenure-track job, I could say ‘Good riddance’ to this dead-end adjunct gig […]

    CPFA Journal, One-Tier Model