Opinion: Do you know who's really teaching college courses and how much they AREN'T paid?

Samantha Kirgesner is a PhD candidate in the anthropology department at Ohio State University.  

With the Supreme Court striking down President Joe Biden’s loan forgiveness plan, questions resurface about the value of university educations versus ever-rising tuition costs. Because of this discussion and pandemic impacts, college enrollment rates are in the largest decline in a decade. 

Rising costs, however, should not be the only consideration when deciding if — and what — college education is the best option. The type of instructor, their experience, salary, and workload all impact undergraduate instruction quality but is often overlooked.

Rising tuition costs should be reflected in ensuring proper instruction, but universities’ budget allocation for instruction are declining, making up about 30% of the total budget.

Issues of overworked and underpaid instructors, along with a lack of mentorship, are further exasperated by increasing costs of living.

More: Supreme Court strikes down Biden's student loan forgiveness plan. What happens now?

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Adjunct professors and lecturers are not faculty and only instruct courses. Lecturers have longer contracts than adjuncts, teaching up to six courses per semester with an average salary of $48,695.

Adjunct professors are hired on semester basis for one or two classes. Their pay frequently falls below $25,000, and many combine positions across several institutions. Graduate teaching assistants/associates are graduate students that receive stipends and tuition waivers to assist or instruct courses.

The average graduate teaching assistants/associates stipend falls in the low $20,000s.

This wide range in compensation results in variable teaching quality, yet students’ expectations persist across university courses. Part-time faculty and graduate students are increasingly used for undergraduate instruction, with about 73% of all faculty position being off-tenure track.

Hiring more part-time faculty, which has risen from about 30% of total faculty in 1975 to 51% in 2011, has become a major way to cut budgets. There are approximately 135,160 graduate teaching assistants in the United States, however, no data exist on what proportion of those teach their own courses.

One study of introductory biology laboratories found that 71% of course sections at comprehensive universities – and 91% at research universities – were instructed by graduate students. My own department follows this trending reliance on non-tenure track instructors with 32 out of 36 undergraduate introductory courses last semester taught by non-tenure track positions. A total of 16 courses are taught by my fellow graduate students.

A lack of expectation or knowledge of academia may leave undergraduate clueless about why they may be struggling in a class. Those taking one of these courses as a general elective may assume that these issues may just be a result of little interest or their abilities in the subject. Good teaching, however, works to combat both of those issues in its students.

An absence of mentorship exists to ensure graduate teaching assistants/associates have the skills and resources necessary to teach high-quality classes. This uneven compensation and experience create inconsistencies course quality in departments. Teaching mentorship is largely absent across academia, with only about 22% of graduate students reporting receiving mentor support. This results in more postgraduates being thrust into academic jobs without receiving mentorship experience.

Developing rigorous mentorship of graduate students to refine teaching skills alongside research skill ensures proper support of both graduate and undergraduate students.

But the creation of resources is not enough.

Incorporating in-depth teaching support into coursework and ensuring workload expectation across departments is vital. Additionally, all faculty salaries should be equitable to administrators’ salaries, like former OSU’s president Kristina M. Johnson who made a base salary of $900,000, with an additional $625,500 in bonuses and benefits.

Instructors should make comparable salaries, including non-tenure track and graduate student instructors. A larger cultural shift in academia towards greater respect for teaching is necessary for universal and meaningful change.

Samantha Kirgesner is a PhD candidate in the anthropology department at Ohio State University.  

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Opinion: Do you know who's really teaching college courses in Ohio?