A part-time faculty member teaches class with strep throat. Another part-time faculty member teaches classes remotely from his hospital bed. Still another part-time faculty member resumes teaching on campus two weeks after giving birth. 

These are just a few examples of the real-life consequences when part-time instructors in the Connecticut State Colleges and University system don’t get sick days. Is that fair? We say no.

Let’s start with the idea that anyone with a student-facing job in the CSCU system deserves a minimum level of support.  After all, the Connecticut state universities are all about the success of our students and the sustainability of the system.  Then the long-term well-being of the system depends upon the well-being of the employees who provide direct services to the students.  Surely these employees are provided with the resources they need, right?  The case is not so clear for the part-time faculty in the CSU system.

According to the National Center for Educational Statistics College Navigator (Fall 2023 numbers), 57.16% (1,552) of the 2,715 instructional faculty in the CSCUs are part-time, and contingent.  Part-time faculty are not continuing employees.  We are hired only for one academic semester at a time, with no guarantee of being rehired in the future. 

Years, and in some cases, decades of service matter little, because we provide flexibility to the system.  We make far less money and enjoy far fewer benefits than our full-time colleagues.  We provide substantial cost savings to the system.  An example of these benefits is paid sick time.  Part-time faculty do not receive paid sick time.  That benefit is only available to full-time faculty.  

Here is the problem.  Like every other CSCU employee, part-time faculty do occasionally get sick or injured. Part-time faculty have immediate family members die.  We also must sometimes care for a seriously sick or injured family member.  But, among the professional employees in the CSCUs, part-time faculty alone are required to take unpaid leave for these reasons. 

Add to this the fact that most part-time faculty are not eligible for health insurance through their employment in the CSCUs.  Why is the part-time majority of the CSU faculty treated like this?

This inequity is even worse during times of crisis.  During the COVID pandemic, enrollments in the CSCU system dropped significantly.  Those enrollments are now recovering quite nicely, but the situation would have been worse if the CSCUs had not offered some on-ground instruction during the pandemic. 

With a very few exceptions, full-time faculty got to choose whether they taught on-ground or not.  Part-time faculty were not so fortunate.  Many of us, myself included, were offered courses to teach only if they were partly or entirely on-ground.  If we were unwilling or unable to teach in-person, the courses would be taught by someone else.  As a result, these courses were disproportionately taught by the part-time faculty, who had neither paid sick leave nor health insurance.  Full-time faculty, who had both, could choose to stay remote.

I hope you remember what things were like during the COVID pandemic.  Being on-ground on a college campus entailed a substantive risk of contracting a disease about which little was known.  Many Connecticut residents got quite sick, and some died.  Isn’t it interesting that the group of faculty without sick time or health insurance were asked to assume most of this risk?  What happened to part-time faculty who got COVID, particularly long COVID?  They were at serious risk of losing their courses in the CSUs.

Another wrinkle is that over 600 part-time faculty in the CSCUs lost their courses during the pandemic.  This was due not only to COVID-related issues, but also to the decreased enrollments that resulted.  If you have never heard that statistic, don’t be surprised.  Faculty did lose their jobs, but those losses happened among the group that was asked to assume most of the risk of working on-ground, with no sick leave or health insurance.

So, if you are wondering why part-time faculty should have paid sick leave, the answer is fairly straightforward.  The CSCU system already saves a substantial amount of money by excluding most of us from obtaining health insurance through our employment.  It then asks us to assume the same risk, or more risk as during the pandemic, of getting sick because of doing our jobs.  The result is a longstanding inequity for the majority of the CSCU faculty.  

If we believe that the sustainability of the Connecticut state university system is a good idea, we need to look to the well-being of the students and the employees.  It is time to support the majority of the CSCU faculty, the part-timers.  One simple and relatively inexpensive way to do this is to allow part-time faculty to earn and use sick time.

Kevin Kean is a part-time faculty member in psychology at Central Connecticut State University and a member of the CSU-AAUP executive committee