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of true professional status. But they will seek, and in some areas are already seeking, means of power through collective action at state and local levels — and possibly, in a few years, even nationally. Public junior college teachers do not feel restricted by the web of traditional, "unwritten" sanctions on direct action which inhibit their four-year colleagues. Whatever the means of organization whether through faculty senates, local chapters of the American Association of University Professors, the American Federation of Teachers, state organizations, or even local area ad hoc groups faculty militancy will grow in direct proportion to their sense of isolation (whether fancied or real) from the sources of power that control their professional destinies.

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Section Two: 2

BASIC ISSUES

AND PROBLEMS AS

DESCRIBED BY TEACHERS

Basic Issues and Problems

In this section are described some of the basic problem areas with which junior college teachers are professionally concerned. They speak of inadequate time to do their jobs properly; their need for professional refreshment; their role(s) in college government; professional affiliations; teaching in the junior college as a permanent career; faculty relationships to guidance and counseling; academic and other preparation for college teaching; and other

matters.

Almost without exception, their responses to questions were thoughtful and studded with examples and illustrations highlighting the problems discussed. Usually, they expressed satisfaction that such a study was being conducted, and a typical comment was, "Thank goodness, somebody on the national level is interested in this."

Indeed, one striking fact-familiar but worth underscoring is borne home again and again to anyone who visits junior college teachers around the country: individual faculties are isolated from one another, both as groups and as individuals within separate disciplines. Means of communication nationally are either nonexistent or just beginning to be established, through already organized professional groups in the academic disciplines, or newly formed national or regional junior college associations. (The new regional organizations for teachers in two-year colleges being set up by the National Council of Teachers of English is one such example.) Such organizational projects are difficult, expensive, and time-consum

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ing - especially the formation of national groups — and these tend to evolve slowly, rather than spring into being. Yet there is unquestionably an immediate need for junior college teachers to have multiple and effective sources of contact with one another, so that innovations in curriculum and teaching practices, the development and sharing of instructional materials, and the mutual profit and stimulation of discussion, can contribute to their sense of professional unity.

Indeed, though the junior college faculty member asserts and believes that he is, in fact, "in higher education," he is not at all certain of his professional identity, particularly since he does not have the sense of having a professional "home." Typically, for example, his institution has an inadequate (or nonexistent) travel budget for faculty, and if an individual teacher wants to attend a conference or regional meeting, he either pays part or all of his own way — or he doesn't go. Effectively tied to his own campus, the teacher is apt to lack the awareness that he belongs to a larger community of scholars, including his four-year college and university colleagues. He knows he is a "college" teacher; but he feels very much cut off, at least at present, from many of those associations, organizations, and similar sources of communication which his four-year counterparts have developed over the years.

TIME

With the unvarying insistence of a metronome's tick, faculty pinpointed their most pressing professional problem with one word: Time. Indeed, it is hardly an exaggeration that most of this report consists in exploring the facets of meaning in this terse response. There is not enough time, the teachers said over and over, to keep up in my own field; to develop innovations or new methods in my own teaching; to do a proper job with individual students; to investigate what other junior colleges are doing; to study for myself; to discuss educational matters with my fellow-teachers; even, more often than I like to think, to do a decent job of preparation for my classes; to refresh myself, even occasionally, by brief association with some of my colleagues in my own discipline, whether

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at conventions, special regional meetings, or whatever; to function effectively on faculty committees; to help in advising student organizations.

The list multiplies. Yet again, with heartening unanimity, the sound of complaint (or mere typical faculty griping) was missing. Rather, the entire thrust of the comments about lack of time was toward frustration at not being able to do the kind of truly professional job the teachers saw as necessary and desirable. One faculty member, whose college had grown in student population from about 300 to nearly 10,000 in less than a decade, said: "I feel like the driver of a huge bus, crammed with people, careening down a winding mountain road at increasing speed. I'm followed by other buses and more all the time and always the speed increasing — and we simply can't stop. All I can do is concentrate on keeping the vehicle on the road. Yet, more than anything else, I'd like a turn-off once in a while to ask myself what the destination of the bus is . . . And why and how I'm going where I am."

Another said: "It's tough to see any real way out of this time bind. Most of us on the faculty talk about it constantly. For myself, I feel like a man caught in a vortex, being swirled around faster and faster each year. I don't blame our administration: I know they're caught in the same thing, and I guess they're doing the best they can with the limitation on the mill-levy (tax ceiling) and all. I've been here six years, and this increasing pressure (of time and student number) sure doesn't help my teaching any."

Though isolated examples do not make adequate generalizations, the four that follow (each from a different college) are typical of many dozens similarly related.

1. History instructor: Teaching hours per week: 15. Student load: 150 (thirty students in each of five sections.) Weekly division curriculum committee meetings: one hour. Adviser to student political club: about 11⁄2 hours per week. He said, "On the face of it, this isn't so tough. But here's the way it really works out. The college officially expects me to be on campus, either teaching or holding office hours, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday

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through Friday. 15 of these hours I spend in classroom instruction. But, because we are, after all, a studentcentered college, I find most of my office hours taken up with individual students who need help, and I find it difficult to get much of my own work done. So there's 40 hours. Now, suppose I give each student one three-page paper a week and one brief objective quiz - and I don't like those. Suppose I'm really efficient and can correct a paper every seven minutes: that adds 17.5 hours. And let's say I correct a quiz every four minutes: that adds 10 hours. Add the division meeting and my adviser time for another 21⁄2 hours. Total time per week: 70 hours, give or take a couple. Now here's the interesting thing. My gross salary is $7,200 this year I've got an M.A. plus 28 hours. In a 30-week academic year, I work 2,100 hours which makes my hourly pay $3.43. Hardly professional. You wanted the time problem spelled out as I see it. There it is in a nutshell."

2. Biology instructor: He has 23 contact hours a week, 15 of which are lecture classes, 8 are laboratories; a total of 218 students, 86 of whom were also in the labs. He does all of his own preparatory work in setting up the lab sessions. He explained: "Well, this is an unusual situation this year. But they (administration) haven't been able to find lab assistants for me, and anyway we opened the year much more overenrolled than we expected." When asked whether he thought this sort of load would continue another year, he responded: "I certainly hope not. But I'm told that the budget is awfully tight — and our projections of enrollment show a big jump in student numbers next year."

3. English teacher: She has five sections of freshman composition, with section enrollment limited to twentyfive. Her college permits instructors to teach one evening school section, in addition to day schedules, and she has an evening journalism class with thirty-eight students. Weekly hours of teaching: 18. Total student load: 163. When asked how many themes she was able to assign in a semester, she said six.

4. Speech instructor: 132 students in five sections. She stated that it took her nine weeks of the first semester to