Editorial: Lecturers deserve greater job security

Lecturers may teach up to 30 percent of classes at the
University of California ““ 50 percent at UCLA ““ but
they have not been compensated or respected accordingly.

Though pay grievances were part of the reason lecturers went on
strike Monday and Tuesday at five of the UC’s nine campuses,
the more important issue facing lecturers is lack of job security.
Currently, lecturers are hired by a series of one-year contracts
the university has the option of renewing each year for six
consecutive years. After the sixth year, lecturers undergo the same
process, but the option to renew a contract occurs every three
years instead of annually. The university can stop renewing
contracts whenever it wants, whether a lecturer has been teaching
for three or 33 years.

The university claims the short contracts give it the
opportunity to release poor lecturers. But it may also allow it to
release lecturers during their first six years so they won’t
have to be offered longer contracts, something the lecturers have
expressed concern over.

This approach may save the UC some money and make the employee
pool more easily expendable. But it’s also unfair and
disregards lecturers’ contributions to the university. UCLA
is a research institution, where many tenured professors would
rather focus on their research than teach general education courses
to 300 undergraduate freshmen ““ someone has to do the dirty
work for them.

Instead of having lecturers’ contracts renewed every year,
they should be given a defined probationary period where the
university evaluates their work. After that, those who meet the
university’s expectations should be offered full-time
positions. These positions don’t need to be the same as
professor tenure in that the university could still cut poor
lecturers. But it would give good lecturers the job security they
deserve, rather than having them stress about whether they’ll
have a job after June every year.