免学费引发社区大学繁荣，但教授薪酬却远远落后

【中美创新时报2024 年 9 月 6 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）马萨诸塞州社区大学正努力以微薄的工资招募和留住员工，因为一项新的免学费计划推动了入学人数的激增。对此，《波士顿环球报》记者迪蒂·科利（Diti Kohli）作了详细报道。

今年秋天，走进米德尔塞克斯社区学院乔纳森·贝内特 (Jonathan Bennett) 教室的学生将无需支付一分钱的学费。一项名为 MassEducate 的州政府资助计划现在涵盖了马萨诸塞州 15 所社区学院的所有费用，旨在让高等教育变得触手可及且大部分免费。

相反，贝内特——一位来自罗利的说话温和的人文学科教授——将承担这个负担。贝内特使用“他们”的代词，基本工资为 63,000 美元，上课时间一直持续到晚上和周末。他们看到同事们也在苦苦挣扎，用信用卡给冰箱充电，接受他们永远不会拥有房子的事实，或者放弃房产税来支付电费。

贝内特说，这就是工资过低和价值被低估的现实，尽管 MassEducate 十年来首次吸引了数千名新生进入社区大学。

“我看不到我们摆脱巨额债务的尽头，”贝内特说。“留在社区大学让我自己和家人的生活变得不稳定。如果我在私立学校，我可能会得到 100,000 美元或更多。”

教育工作者说，这归结为缺乏资金。 7 月，Beacon Hill 从该州新的“百万富翁税”中拨款 9300 万美元用于吸收社区大学的学费，另外拨款 1400 万美元用于学生支持服务。但这些资金都不会用于聘请社区大学员工或教授。

这是社区大学系统遭受的最新一轮冲击，在 COVID-19 爆发前的几年里，社区大学入学人数一直低迷，然后在疫情期间大幅下降。全职教学人员的数量也因此下降，从 2014 年到 2021 年，从 5,800 人减少到 3,700 人。

直到该州启动针对社区大学的免费学费试点项目 MassReconnect，情况才出现转机。因此，去年秋天，该系统迎来了 67,000 名新生，增长了 8%。本学期，学校准备迎接高达 30% 的增幅。

现在，许多机构无法足够快地扩大助学金和招生部门，从而减慢了处理申请和财务信息所需的时间。为满足需求而增加教室人员的努力遇到了障碍。管理人员表示，如果不提高工资，社区学院将很难招募到他们急需的教师来教授额外的课程，特别是在护理和数据科学等其他高薪领域。

入学人数激增还意味着学院需要为学生几年后毕业所需的高级课程配备人员。

虽然教育工作者认为 MassEducate（该国最广泛的降低高等教育的运动之一）是一项胜利，但挑战正在加剧。

科德角社区学院在 8 月中旬关闭了申请，因为兴趣“如此巨大”，一位发言人在一封电子邮件中写道。其他学校花了数年时间才聘请到一位全职教授或招生职位，越来越依赖兼职教师以低工资和无福利的方式逐班授课。与此同时，北岸社区学院新生入学指导协调员布莱恩·法特（Brian Falter ）表示，学生人数的突然激增给学校带来了压力。

“当你习惯了水龙头里流出的小水流时，突然间一条花园水管全速冲向你，你可能需要一秒钟才能处理，”他说。“社区学院需要这一秒钟。”

让问题更加复杂的是，社区大学教授（其中许多人拥有博士学位）在马萨诸塞州的薪水并不高。根据马萨诸塞州教师协会 4 月份的一项研究，典型的全职教师每年的收入仅为 68,324 美元，比当地州立大学的平均工资低近 20,000 美元，远低于康涅狄格州和纽约州社区大学教授的六位数平均水平。相比之下，公立学校教师在 2020-2021 学年的平均收入为 86,118 美元，这是最新数据。

马萨诸塞州社区学院协会执行董事内特·麦金农（Nate Mackinnon ）表示，巨大的差距可能会损害免费学费计划的成功。

“现在我们被赋予了实施全民免费社区大学的任务，在吸引更多教职员工方面，我们立即看到了快速增长带来的痛苦，”麦金农说。“其中很大一部分是支付员工工资。如果拥有硕士学位的人在中学教书比在社区大学教书赚得更多，那么这是一个根本问题。”

这种薪酬差距早于 MassEducate。由州政府官员设定的社区大学教职员工生活成本增长长期落后于通货膨胀率，从 2015 年到 2023 年都没有超过 2.5%。直到去年，希利政府才将调整幅度提高到 4%。该州正在与代表大学教职员工的工会马萨诸塞州社区学院理事会就下一次加薪进行谈判。

米德尔塞克斯社区学院院长菲尔·西森表示，除了州政府规定的加薪外，大学管理人员几乎没有提高工资的灵活性。

社区学院每年从立法机构获得 3.81 亿美元的资金，增长 6%（经通胀调整后），以支持日常运营。本月，高等教育部将开始为 MassEducate 发放资金，但这些资金将用于支付学费、书籍和其他由学生承担的费用。

“这是一个结构性问题，”西森说。“很多人说，‘你为什么不给教员多付点工资呢？’因为我们没有这种灵活性。”

与此同时，教授们忙得不可开交，教授的课程是最低标准的两倍，在多所学校授课，或者兼职。有一位教授记得自己每天要开车 200 英里，到三所不同的大学工作，以养活他的四口之家。其他人则接受系主任的津贴职位，以赚取额外的几千美元。伯克希尔社区学院商业系唯一的全职教员凯伦·海因斯 (Karen Hines) 找了一份兼职工作，为坦格伍德夏季音乐系列的音乐家寻找住房。

“你告诉人们，从大局来看，他们没有什么价值，”昆西加蒙德社区学院的幼儿教育教授梅根·马丁 (Meghan Martin) 说。 “我们陷入了一个永无止境的循环。”

这也造成了长期任职的教师和新聘同事之间的紧张关系，由于对教授的需求飙升，新聘同事的工资往往差不多。

科德角社区学院的英语教授汤姆·谢弗 (Tom Schaffer) 表示，与经验不足十年的人拿同样的工资可能会令人沮丧。

“我为学院投入了这么多服务和时间，他们却立即被聘用，工资几乎和我一样，”他说。“这些年来，我的薪水基本上没有真正提高。”

高等教育部发言人妮可·贾姆布索 (Nicole Giambusso) 在一份声明中表示：“教师为社区大学的学生带来了改变人生的机会，我们致力于签订一份公平的合同，承认他们的贡献，同时也符合预算标准。”

立法者希望免费学费能提高社区大学的毕业率，并让人们掌握技能，以填补困扰该州的劳动力短缺问题。研究表明，拥有更多受过教育的居民最终会导致更少的人依赖政府服务，并可能为每个拥有副学士学位的人带来 13 万美元的净公共福利。

但研究公司 MassInc 的研究主管本杰明·福尔曼 (Benjamin Forman) 表示，由于教职员工的工资仍然很低，这将很难实现。

“如果我们所做的工作吸引了更多学生到校园，但却因他们无法获得所需的课程而陷入困境，那就是一个问题，”他说。

邦克山社区学院院长帕姆·埃丁格表示，如果现状保持不变，那么学生可能会成为输家。许多新入学的学生在离开课堂多年后，对学习有很高的要求，或者正在努力解决心理健康问题、无家可归和粮食短缺等问题。学院需要资金来配备人员和服务，以支持他们直到他们到达终点线。

“为了在五年后获得所需的劳动力，或者社区学院可以帮助培训的数百名护士，这就是一场博弈，”她说。“这是一项跨代投资。”

《环球报》的希拉里·伯恩斯对本报告做出了贡献。

题图：米德尔塞克斯社区学院哲学、伦理学和普通人文学科主任乔纳森·贝内特 (Jonathan Bennett) 每学期教授大约 10 门课程，年薪为 63,000 美元。JOSH REYNOLDS FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

附原英文报道：

Free tuition sparks community college boom, but professor pay lags far behind

Schools are struggling to recruit and retain staff for dismal wages, as a new free tuition program drives a boom in enrollment

By Diti Kohli Globe Staff,Updated September 5, 2024 

This fall, the students who walk into Jonathan Bennett’s classroom at Middlesex Community College will not pay a dime in tuition. A state-funded program called MassEducate now covers all fees at Massachusetts’ 15 community colleges, a bid to make higher education accessible and mostly free.

Instead, it’s Bennett — a soft-spoken humanities professor from Rowley — who will bear the burden. Bennett, who uses they/them pronouns, earns $63,000 in base salary, their classroom time extending into the evenings and weekends. They see colleagues struggle, too, charging refrigerators to credit cards, accepting that they’ll never own a house, or forgoing property taxes to make the electricity bill.

Such is the reality of being underpaid and undervalued, Bennett said, even as MassEducate attracts thousands of new students to community colleges for the first time in a decade.

“I don’t see an end in sight where we will be out of significant debt,” Bennett said. “I’m creating precarity for myself and my family by staying at a community college. If I was at a private institution, I would probably be getting $100,000 or more.”

It comes down to a lack of funding, educators say. In July, Beacon Hill allotted $93 million from the state’s new “millionaires tax” to absorb tuition costs at community colleges, and another $14 million for student support services. But none of that money will funnel toward hiring community college staff or professors.

It’s the latest round of whiplash for the community college system, which saw enrollment slump for years leading up to COVID-19, then plunge during the pandemic. The number of full-time instructional staff fell accordingly, from 5,800 to 3,700, between 2014 and 2021.

Matters only took a turn when the state launched its free tuition pilot for community colleges, MassReconnect. The system exploded with 67,000 new students, an 8 percent increase, last fall as a result. This semester, schools are bracing for jumps as high as 30 percent.

Now, many institutions cannot expand financial aid and admissions departments fast enough, slowing the time they need to process applications and financial information. Efforts to staff up classrooms to meet the demand have hit roadblocks. Without raising wages, administrators say, community colleges will struggle to recruit faculty they desperately need to teach additional courses, particularly in otherwise high-paying fields such as nursing and data science.

The enrollment boom also means colleges will need to staff advanced courses that students will need to graduate in a few years.

And while educators see MassEducate — among the broadest movements to discount higher education in the country — as a triumph, the challenges are mounting.

Cape Cod Community College shut down applications in mid-August because the wave of interest “was so immense,” a spokesperson wrote in an email Other schools have taken years to hire for a single full-time professorship or admissions position, leaning more and more on adjunct instructors to teach on a class-by-class basis for low pay and no benefits. Meanwhile, the sudden surge of students is weighing on schools, said Brian Falter, coordinator of orientation and onboarding at North Shore Community College.

“When you’ve gotten used to handling a small little trickle out of the faucet, a garden hose aimed at you all of a sudden at full steam can take a second to handle,” he said. “Community colleges need that second.”

Complicating matters is the fact that community college professors — many of whom have PhDs — are not well paid in Massachusetts. The typical full-time instructor, according to an April study from the Massachusetts Teachers Association, earns just $68,324 a year, almost $20,000 less than the typical pay at local state universities and well below the six-figure average for community college professors in Connecticut and New York. Public school teachers, by comparison, made an average of $86,118 in the 2020-2021 academic year, the most recent data available.

The yawning gap could hurt the success of the free tuition initiative, said Nate Mackinnon, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of Community Colleges.

“Now that we’ve been handed the task of implementing universal free community college, we’re immediately seeing the pains associated with fast growth when it comes to attracting additional faculty and staff,” Mackinnon said. “And a big part of that is paying folks. It is a fundamental issue if someone with a master’s degree can make more money teaching middle school than at a community college.”

That pay gap predates MassEducate. Cost-of-living increases for community college faculty and staff, set by state officials, have long lagged inflation and did not exceed 2.5 percent from 2015 to 2023. Only last year did the Healey administration bump up the adjustment to 4 percent. The state is negotiating the next increase with the Massachusetts Community College Council, the union that represents college faculty and staff.

Beyond the state-mandated increase, college administrators have little flexibility to raise wages, said Phil Sisson, president of Middlesex Community College.

Community colleges received $381 million in annual funding from the Legislature, a 6 percent uptick (after adjusting for inflation) to power day-to-day operations. This month, the Department of Higher Education will start distributing money for MassEducate, though it’s reserved for tuition, books, and other expenses borne by students.

“It’s a structural problem,” Sisson said. “A lot of people say, ‘Why don’t you just pay your faculty more?’ Well, we don’t have that flexibility.”

In the meantime, professors stretch themselves thin, teaching double the course minimum, accepting classes at multiple schools, or taking second jobs. One remembers driving as much as 200 miles daily to work at three separate colleges to provide for his family of four. Others accept stipend positions as department chairs for a few additional thousand. Karen Hines, the only full-time faculty member in the business department at Berkshire Community College, sought out a second job finding housing for musicians at the Tanglewood summer music series.

“You’re telling people they are of little value in the bigger picture,” said Meghan Martin, a professor of early childhood education at Quinsigamond Community College. “We’re in a cycle of never getting ahead.”

It also creates tensions between longtime faculty and their newly hired colleagues, who are often paid similarly because of the soaring demand for professors.

Tom Schaffer, an English professor at Cape Cod Community College, said making the same as people with a decade less experience can be frustrating.

“I’ve put all this service and time into the college, and they’re being hired immediately at a pay scale that is almost exactly where I am,” he said. “I’ve basically made no real strides in salary over the years.”

In a statement, Department of Higher Education spokesperson Nicole Giambusso said, “Faculty bring life-changing opportunities to community college students, and we’re committed to a fair contract that recognizes their contributions while also meeting budget criteria.”

Lawmakers hope free tuition will boost graduation rates at community colleges and give people skills to fill workforce shortages plaguing the state. Studies show that having more educated residents could ultimately lead fewer people to rely on government services and could produce $130,000 in net public benefits for each person with an associate’s degree.

But that will be difficult with faculty and staff pay still so low, said Benjamin Forman, research director at the research firm MassInc.

“If we’re doing things that bring more students to the campuses, but then hit a wall because they cannot get the classes they need, that’s a problem,” he said.

Should the status quo remain, it may be students who lose out, said Bunker Hill Community College president Pam Eddinger. Many of those arriving have high academic needs after being out of the classroom for years or are grappling with mental health issues, homelessness, and food insecurity. Colleges require money for staffing and services to support them until they reach the finish line.

“In order to get the workforce you want five years from now, or the hundreds of nurses that community colleges can help train, this is the skin in the game,” she said. “This is a multigenerational investment.”

Hilary Burns of the Globe staff contributed to this report.