I am having difficulty finding part-time CompTIA Security+ and CompTIA CySA Instructor around Washington DC area.
Instructors
- Thread starter Wondwosen Asfaw
- Start date
I had a college offer me double of what they were originally offering for an adjunct position. It's a private college so there is no union contract so I guess they can do what they want.
We should have folks here that may be interested, maybe you have to clarify whether its online or on campus.
A challenge training entities (including colleges and universities) face is the low pay compared to earnings for cybersecurity professionals in the workforce. Note in this recent Certification Magazine salary survey all of the six-figure annual income amounts.
This isn't just germane to cyber, but pretty much any environment that employs professionals as instructors. We see it all the time in the VocTech sector. So most of your educators are going to be either folks who are working the job as a side hustle, in-between jobs, or semi-retired from the workforce. HVAC is a big one here in Colorado Springs - almost impossible to get a decent adjunct HVAC instructor and nigh impossible to get one full time. When you can get an entry level tech at $29/hr. while schools are paying $18-20 for an instructor with at least five years in field with a degree, the disparity is pretty hard to overcome.
/r
Dana pointed to a challenging situation for those of us in the traditional education environment. Here in my State, a majority of IT classes in the California community colleges are taught by adjunct faculty. The union ratified salary schedules treat adjuncts as second-class educators when compared with full-time faculty. Adjuncts are typically paid only for the time they spend in the classroom. Out-of-classroom time for grading, curriculum development, and office hours is best characterized as "hero time." From a financial perspective, I'm glad I was able to spend most of my time as a full-timer, and not what is referred to as a "freeway flyer," going from college to college (because of load limitations), trying to make a living.
I've turned down every job offer I've received over the last 25 years to work in academia because of the low pay. One place wanted to offer me a salary equivalent to what I was making in the late 1990s. Being a corporate adult education trainer was always much more lucrative. Even part-time as a contractor.
The part of this that gets under my skin is the disparity between the so-called "real college", State U organizations that are state-funded, versus for-profit, proprietary, and voc tech schools. If Adjuncts at State U are treated as second-class, any instructor at a private school are treated worse, and not by the schools they work for, but by the rest of the industry.
One of my biggest rants in the world is how you can have an instructor, teaching the same content, from the same book, with the same number of seat hours and accreditation demands, and have the State U schools basically poo-poo all over them because they are "not a real college professor". That's the worst.
It is sad that this is the norm - that academia undercuts the pay of the people that actually deliver content. But at the end of the day, every school is "for-profit".
I'll stop, tho, because this is liable to open up a whole host of rant-able topics.
Rick, the disparity that you talk about also exists inside a single institution. I taught for 18 years at a community college as a tenured "professor." In that role, I focused on teaching career and technical education courses, and along with my CTE colleagues, viewed as not measuring up to academic faculty standards. After hearing a computer science instructor attempt to make that point, I explained that I was the only faculty member in the Department paid based on the Doctorial column of our salary schedule. I pointedly express with pride, my former students typically make 6-figure incomes. That's hard to do with a philosophy degree.
Fellow Professionals and Professors, I'm certainly the least among you in experience and expertise. But wow, I feel this conversation greatly! I work for one of those institutions you all have mentioned. I'm a full-time Technology Resource Manager for Health Sciences(Nursing simulators, Classroom tech, etc...). Since I'm here, I thought I may as well pick up a little extra dough instructing part-time. Why do I continue part-time instructing? The entry-level Networking class is also the "Infomercial" to the Cyber Systems Technology program. Being a little exuberant, unorthodox and relational, students naturally want to change their majors in our program. This sort of scratches an itch of mine, I get to teach this one class during normal work hours (Double dipping, why not?), and my workplace is 7 minutes from my front door. Due to circumstantial advantage, I enjoy it, but man, I hear every word you all are saying! @Steve Linthicum I never thought about your angle on the difference in vantage points between out-of-classroom pay for full-time vs part-time. If you all don't mind, I would like to follow this discussion and learn.
Let me illustrate by way of an actual example. For this purpose, I will use Lake Tahoe Community College (LTCC), one of the 116 colleges in the California Community College system. I will also set the faculty member as the top pay (20 years of teaching experience at LTCC). For a full-time faculty member with a doctorate degree, the pay according to the salary schedule for this calendar year is $120,351. A full-time load for faculty is 45 quarter units per year. That works out to $2,647 per quarter hour of instruction. According to the current salary schedule for part-time faculty with the same academic qualifications, the rate paid would be $788 per quarter unit taught.
Admittedly, full-time faculty have other responsibilities that are typically attending meetings along with curriculum monitoring and updating. Full-time faculty also get benefits (e.g. health insurance, an on-campus office, etc.) that are generally not provided to part-time faculty. So, where is the parity?
Admittedly, full-time faculty have other responsibilities that are typically attending meetings along with curriculum monitoring and updating. Full-time faculty also get benefits (e.g. health insurance, an on-campus office, etc.) that are generally not provided to part-time faculty. So, where is the parity?