[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.''.
______