In late June, members of an adjunct faculty union at Northern New Mexico College (the Northern Federation of Educational Employees) secured a 10% wage increase to be implemented in the upcoming school year. But, according to union members, issues with the overall adjunct pay structure linger.
Anthony Ballas, an adjunct faculty member and lead union negotiator who has taught in the humanities at NNMC for a few years in addition to part-time teaching at the University of Colorado in Denver, tells SFR the negotiation is “historic.”
“That 10% might not seem like a large increase, but it’s a serious increase for us adjuncts at [NNMC],” Ballas says. “Some face food insecurity, some have trouble paying the rent—we also don’t get benefits from [NNMC].
But despite the gains, NNMC is still far below the nation when it comes to adjunct faculty pay, although comparable to the nearby Santa Fe Fe Community College. Adjunct faculty act as temporary professors and are paid per-credit hour they teach in a semester rather than a salary. For example, Ballas, who has a master’s degree, says he earned $2,220 for each three-credit hour class he taught last year. According to a report from the American Association of University Professors, the national average adjunct pay for the same experience level was $3,458 in the 2022-2023 school year. Even with the 10% boost, Ballas would still make 30% less than the national average.
Kelvin Rodriguez, an adjunct professor who has taught mathematics courses at NNMC for about eight years, tells SFR that while he believes this year’s negotiations set a foundation for future negotiations and for adjunct faculty to “have a voice,” he doesn’t expect the salary increase to change his personal budget by much.
“It’s very miniscule. It really does not make that much of a dent,” Rodriguez says. “The comfort is really more in that a process has begun. Adjuncts basically have not had an increase in salary for over 10 years, so a 10% increase, you don’t really see that much in your paycheck.”
Additionally, members of the union continue to see glaring issues with the overall structure of adjunct pay at the college, namely the college’s policy of “proportional scaling” pay for adjunct faculty. This policy means that professors who agree to teach classes with low enrollment (at NNMC, under 10 students) are paid on a prorated basis, and lose 10% of their per-credit hour rate for each vacant student spot.
Prior to the wage increase, Ballas reports that with a master’s degree, he earned $740 per credit hour he taught in a semester at NNMC. He has consistently taught 10 credit hours in both the fall and spring semesters, and teaches six during the summer: adding up to an annual salary of $19,240. With the 10% increase, he would earn about $21,164 in a year with the same number of credit hours.
But if just one of Ballas’ three-hour courses has low enrollment—seven students, for example—he would only earn 70% of the pay ($570) for that class, and bring his yearly salary down by $732.
“That, we have been pushing to abolish, because it’s a way of penalizing adjuncts for serving students in these low-enrolled courses,” Ballas says. “There’s sort of a moral impetus put on the adjuncts: ‘Well, you should teach these low-enrollment courses, because students need them— you’d be hanging them out to dry if you don’t—but then we incur a penalty for doing so.”
NFEE President Tim Crone expresses agreement with Ballas, and notes that the union has made a slight stride toward limiting the proportional scale policy: in the upcoming year, adjunct faculty are guaranteed to receive at least 40% of their pay in classes with low enrollment, regardless of whether the class has one or four students. Ballas says the union will continue to push for the abolishment of the practice in the upcoming year.
Rodriguez notes the proportional scaling policy for low-enrollment classes has actually been an improvement from previous years, as classes used to be canceled entirely if less than 10 students enrolled. Rodriguez, who has had to supplement his adjunct teaching income by tutoring and coaching basketball for local high school students, says this has always put him “in a nervous position” before the start of the school year.
“From that point of view, I still have something, and that’s compared to nothing. That’s its biggest benefit, but regardless of if I have four students or 10 students, I still have to do the work,” Rodriguez explains. “I may be correcting four papers instead of 10 papers, but the amount of preparation and the teaching...I have to be 100% to teach four or 10 students. It’s a little bit unfair.”
According to Crone, adjunct faculty have taught “about two-thirds” of all credit hours taught at NNMC for the past 30 years, and estimates that adjunct faculty, on average, earn about one-third of the pay that full-time faculty earn at the college.
Crone says this situation is part of a wider trend that first began in the 1970s, when colleges began to increasingly hire greater numbers of adjunct faculty in place of tenured full-time professors to save funding. He says he believes recently, NNMC President Hector Balderas “has done more for adjuncts than any other president of the college,” and that “the attitude of the administration toward adjuncts and collective bargaining” at NNMC has greatly improved in the past year.
Balderas tells SFR in an emailed statement that he was “excited” to work with the NFEE and the American Federation of Teachers unions this year (which both represent full-time and adjunct faculty) noting that he believes student success is dependent on retaining “high-quality instruction.”
Another area in which the adjunct faculty hope to address issues with pay parity in the upcoming year is the legislature. Rodriguez says he thinks “the legislature plays a lot in how the college itself also functions,” and notes disappointment with the legislature’s lack of action in the past few years regarding adjunct pay.
Balderas says in an emailed statement, “I will advocate alongside them to push lawmakers to increase investment in adjunct faculty.”
Some in the Legislature have already shown support for the idea of investing in adjunct pay. In the 2024 legislative session, state Rep. Joy Garratt, D-Albuquerque, introduced House Bill 84, which would have required all public colleges in the state to give temporary faculty a minimum of $2,000 per credit hour and $1,833 per credit hour at four- and two-year institutions, respectively. A House memorial she also co-sponsored would have requested for the Legislative Finance Committee to conduct a study on higher education compensation for all faculty. However, both died in committee.
Ballas says he believes the step forward NNMC has accomplished this year “could set a precedent for similar momentum in terms of wages and benefits moving forward” for adjunct faculty at other colleges in the region, and also notes that NNMC’s union has been working with a task force of AFT-affiliated colleges (including NNMC; the University of New Mexico; Navajo Technical University; and New Mexico Highlands University) to “address the recent failures to pass minimum salary legislation for adjuncts in the state legislature.” He says this task force will work on improving higher education working conditions at the legislative level as well as locally.
“We’ve really relied on some of the wins and the accomplishments of the labor movement more generally,” he explains. “This isn’t just confined to adjuncts and higher education. We think of ourselves as an expression of the labor movement in the United States. That would include the enormous wins of the UAW, SAG-AFTRA and the Writers’ Guild and others. We don’t see our movement as disconnected from those.”