CUHK Employees General Union
eNews (June 2018)
Editor-in-chief: Chan Yin Ha Vivian | Data: Wong Ka Po | Design and Typesetting: Cheng Chun Wing, Aidan Chau and Dora Lam (e-version) | Translation: Emily Ng
Special Feature
Difficulties faced by part-time teachers
How many part-time teachers are there at CU? The university publishes
staff figures every year but part-time staff are not included. [
1] With the help of legislators, we have requested data from the UGC and
the Education Bureau. [
2] What difficulties are these colleagues facing? Some of them might be
beyond our imagination.
Difficulty 1: High hourly pay? But precarious income.
In general, there are four levels of hourly rate for part-time teaching at CU, currently ranging from $690 to $1,505, depending on one's qualification and the type of programme. For example, taught master programmes may pay a higher rate. Nevertheless, beginning young lecturers are often paid the minimum level, making about $27,000 for a 3-unit course. To maintain a monthly income of $30,000, one will have to teach 6 courses a term including the summer term. It is of course a question whether or not one can secure so many teaching assignments. But teaching 6 courses a term is simply beyond reasonable capacity of a person. So here is a problem of overload; but if you are teaching less, you have trouble paying your bills. Many part-time colleagues have to look for other sources of income in order to make up for the gap.
Difficulty 2: On call everywhere. A new course each year.
To make enough for a living, one has to teach at different departments, different institutions. As substitute teachers, they have to teach whatever is required. You are often teaching new courses each term. All your efforts on course preparation may only be for one term, so you are constantly preparing for new courses. Teaching quality is affected as experience cannot be accumulated.
Diffculty 3: Last minute course arrangement. Last minute course prep.
Some electives or self-finance courses are not offered until the last minute when the departments know that there will be sufficient enrollment. Some substitute teaching posts are also not offered till the last minute. The lack of preparation time thus also affects teaching.
Difficulty 4: Tomorrow is another day?
Paid by the course, even when each contract is half a year, you still constantly have to worry for the next term, you are forever a job seeker, not able to have any long-term plan. The Education Bureau urges students to make life planning. Entering the field in their early thirties, these elites with a PhD degree can only find temporary jobs. How are they going to plan for the next thirty years?
Difficulty 5: Zero benefits. Zero protection.
Aside from salary and MPF, they are not offered any benefits. Medical expense alone can be a heavy burden.
Difficulty 6: A hundred kinds of electronic platforms.
E-platform is the big trend. All institutions are now using them for both teaching and teaching administration. Yet, they all use different platforms–for paper submission, or grading, etc. Part-timers therefore have to spend multiple amount of time to learn and get familiarised with them.
Difficulty 7: Little teaching support. Loads of administrative hurdles.
As part-timers, you have to do everything on your own: teaching, teaching admin, IT, contacting students. Often times, your contract only starts with the term. So you are not able to handle some preparation work directly. You have to ask the department to help with simple tasks such as borrowing books for preparation, placing books on reserve, etc. At the beginning of term, you still will not have your library card, computer account or photocopy account. At the end of term, you have to rush to grade all the papers. A colleague reported this adventure where the contract expired before grades could be input–no VeriGuide, no grade system.
Difficulty 8: No desk, not even a place to get your lunch.
Some departments do not provide working space for part-time teachers. They have nowhere to do preparation before class, no space to meet students outside class. A colleague resorted to meeting students in the Lingnan Stadium. They don't have lockers, which even non-resident students enjoy. Some part-time teachers bring their own lunch, but they can't enter the pantry. They don't even have a spot to keep their lunch box or eat.
Difficulty 9: Lack of sense of belonging. Lack of job satisfaction.
With a short contract, no office space and teaching in mobile mode, it is hard for part-time colleagues to have a sense of belonging to their departments, let alone making any further contribution to the institution. It is also hard for them to build any deep relationship with their students. They do not have real colleagues nor any community support. Part-time teachers are then all lone fighters. This kind of casualisation of teaching is deemed to bring irreversible damage to teachers and students alike.
They try to help themselves. Can't the university also make remedies too?
In our forum for part-time teachers, we find that many of these colleagues are survival gurus. Their strategies include:
- Build your own expertise to increase bargaining power–you are not just a little screw in the system. We have here expertise in info graphic, we have also expert of land issues.
- Not be limited by your degree. The academia is not everything. You have different possibilities. We have a colleague who organises authentic cultural tours. Yet another makes a second life of Zen meditation and aromatherapy. 。
But these self-help efforts cannot fix the structural problems. There are things that the university can now do to improve the situation:
- Be flexible in handling part-time teacher's library card and computer account, so that they can access the library for course preparation and have more sufficient time after the term to grade.
- Provide office space to part-timers. At least they should be able to share desk space and use lockers.
- Make sure departments allow part-timers access to their pantries.
- Some departments pay extra hours for student consultation and grading. These should be considered good examples for the rest.
UGC conducting consultation during summer again
The Chief Executive announced in her policy address in October last year
the reservation of no less than 10 billion of additional funding for university
research activities. As it turns out, the UGC already quietly released
an interim report on the “Review of Research Policy and Funding” on 6 June
on their website. The report puts forth 7 recommendations, which include
an increase of RGC grants from 1 billion to 2 billion, an integration of
the existing funding schemes and a comprehensive review of research funding.
An increase of funds is certainly a positive development. But if
the funding strategies and directions remain the same, namely, that they
are all for specific use, require competition among the universities, and
the bidding performance for which plus the RAE performance affect the overall
block grant, then no matter how much money they are giving, the universities
are still drawn into the resource fighting game, ultimately affecting also
teaching.
The consultation lasts only one month, with submission deadline set on
10 July. This is a major development in the sector that will have
lasting impact. We urge all colleagues who have a concern over UGC funding
policies to participate in the consultation. UGC is lining up a symposium
for administrators, academics and researchers. Details are as follows:
Date: 22 June 2018 (Friday)
Time: 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Venue: V322 Lecture Theatre, 3/F, Jockey Club Innovation Tower, The Hong
Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
[Map:
https://goo.gl/GB79fe]
Enrolment:
https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=5402846
The interim report can be downloaded here:
http://www.ugc.edu.hk/
[1] As of 30 June, 2017, there were 1623 full-time teaching staff.
[2] According to figures provided by the Education Bureau on 23 May 2018, there were 229 part-time teachers at CUHK. However, these probably do not include teachers hired for self-financed programmes.
Special thanks to Ah Kai, Ah Lung, Celia and Tiny West, who gave us generous
help in preparing this special feature. We would also like to thank colleagues
who participated and shared valuable experiences in our forum for part-time
teachers.