[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 160 (Thursday, October 5, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6361-S6362]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. DURBIN (for himself and Mr. Franken):
  S. 1927. A bill to amend section 455(m) of the Higher Education Act 
of 1965 in order to allow adjunct faculty members to qualify for public 
service loan forgiveness; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, 
and Pensions.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, today I reintroduced the Adjunct Faculty 
Loan Fairness Act, a bill that would enable faculty working less than 
full-time to participate in the Public Service Student Loan Forgiveness 
Program.
  Contingent faculty members are like full-time instructors. They have 
advanced degrees. They teach classes and spend many hours outside the 
classroom preparing for class. They hold office hours, grade papers, 
and give feedback to students. They provide advice and write letters of 
recommendation. Students rely on them. Since most adjuncts have 
advanced degrees and, as the 63 percent of graduate degree recipients 
who borrow have an average of almost $59,000 in student loans, they are 
among the 44 million Americans with student debt.

[[Page S6362]]

  The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program is meant to encourage 
graduates to go into public service by offering student loan 
forgiveness for eligible Federal loans after ten years of full-time 
work in government or the non-profit sector. Public service fields like 
nursing, military service, and public health qualify. And many 
education jobs qualify, including full-time work at public universities 
and part-time work at community colleges in high-needs subject areas or 
areas of shortage. But other faculty members, those who work part-time, 
are not eligible for loan forgiveness because the law requires an 
annual average of 30 hours per week to qualify for the program. For 
adjunct faculty working on a contingent basis--many of whom may only 
teach one or two classes while holding down other part-time jobs to 
make ends meet--this requirement can be difficult or impossible to 
meet, even when they are putting in more than 30 hours of work each 
week.
  The number of faculty hours given for each class is calculated 
differently at different schools. Some schools give one hour per hour 
in the classroom while others actually take into consideration the time 
required outside the classroom. So, even as these faculty members are 
working hard to provide quality instruction for their students, often 
without the option of moving into a tenured, full-time position, their 
public service is not recognized by the current Public Service Loan 
Forgiveness program.
  The Adjunct Faculty Loan Fairness Act of 2017 would solve this by 
amending the Higher Education Act to expand the definition of a 
``public service job'' to include a part-time faculty member who 
teaches at least one course at an eligible institution of higher 
education. They would still have to meet all the other requirements to 
qualify for the public service loan forgiveness program, including 
making 120 on-time payments while employed at a qualifying institution, 
and they could not be employed full-time elsewhere at the same time. I 
believe it corrects a major flaw in the current system and rewards 
individuals for their contribution to public service rather than 
penalize them for the number of hours they work.
  This bill would benefit someone like Brittany, an adjunct professor 
in southern Illinois. Brittany finished her graduate degree in 2013 and 
still has over $70,000 in student loan debt today. This debt has 
prevented her from attending law school, her longtime dream, and makes 
it challenging to put money aside for her retirement. This debt is also 
putting her children's future at risk--Brittany will still be paying 
off her own loans when it is time for her now four-month old child to 
attend college. This bill would ensure that Brittany, and thousands 
like her, could secure their family's financial future by earning 
credit towards the Public Service Loan Forgiveness for loan payments 
made while teaching, regardless of the fact that she isn't full-time 
faculty.
  Unfortunately, for all their contributions to their colleges and the 
students they work with, adjunct faculty like Brittany often don't have 
the same employment benefits or job security as their colleagues. The 
number of classes they teach every semester varies. To make ends meet, 
these professors often end up teaching classes at more than one school 
in the same semester, getting paid about $3,000 per class and making an 
average annual income that hovers around minimum wage. This also means 
that, in some parts of the country, they spend as much time commuting 
as they do teaching.
  Nationally, over half of all higher education faculty work on a 
contingent basis. In the past, these were a minority of professors who 
were hired to teach an occasional class because they could bring 
experience to the classroom in a specific field or industry. Over time, 
as university budgets have tightened and it has gotten more expensive 
to hire full-time, tenure track professors, higher education 
institutions have increasingly relied on adjuncts.
  From 1991 to 2015, the number of part-time faculty in the U.S. 
increased two and a half times from 291,000 to over 743,000. At the 
same time, the percentage of professors holding tenure and tenure-track 
positions has been steadily decreasing from 45 percent of all 
instructors in 1975 to only 29 percent in 2015. The number of full-time 
instructors, tenured and non-tenured, now makes up less than half of 
all professors on U.S. campuses. Today, a majority of the 1.5 million 
faculty employees at public and non-profit colleges and universities in 
the United States work on a part-time, contingent basis.
  Illinois colleges rely heavily on adjuncts. In 2015, 52 percent of 
all faculty at all Title IV degree-granting institutions in the state--
more than 31,700 faculty employees--worked on a part-time basis. This 
is a 32.4 percent increase in part-time faculty in Illinois compared to 
a 7 percent increase in full-time faculty since 2002.
  This bill does not fix the growing reliance by our higher education 
system on part-time professors who are underpaid and undervalued. But 
it would ensure that members of the contingent faculty workforce are no 
longer unfairly excluded from the loan forgiveness program for public 
servants. I would like to thank my colleague, Senator Al Franken from 
Minnesota, for joining me in this effort. I hope my other colleagues 
will join us to ensure this program benefits faculty members who 
provide our students with a quality education.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the text of the bill was ordered to be 
printed in the Record, as follows:

                                S. 1927

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

       This Act may be cited as the ``Adjunct Faculty Loan 
     Fairness Act of 2017''.

     SEC. 2. LOAN FORGIVENESS FOR ADJUNCT FACULTY.

       Section 455(m)(3)(B)(ii) of the Higher Education Act of 
     1965 (20 U.S.C. 1087e(m)(3)(B)(ii)) is amended--
       (1) by striking ``teaching as'' and inserting the 
     following: ``teaching--

       ``(I) as'';

       (2) by striking ``, foreign language faculty, and part-time 
     faculty at community colleges), as determined by the 
     Secretary.'' and inserting ``and foreign language faculty), 
     as determined by the Secretary; or''; and
       (3) by adding at the end the following:

       ``(II) as a part-time faculty member or instructor who--

       ``(aa) teaches not less than 1 course at an institution of 
     higher education (as defined in section 101(a)), a 
     postsecondary vocational institution (as defined in section 
     102(c)), or a Tribal College or University (as defined in 
     section 316(b)); and
       ``(bb) is not employed on a full-time basis by any other 
     employer.''.
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