By Audrey Williams June
The Internal Revenue Service has issued final rules on how colleges should calculate adjuncts’ workloads to determine whether such faculty members are eligible for health benefits under the new law designed to expand health insurance to more Americans.
The agency said last year that colleges must “use a reasonable method” for crediting adjuncts’ hours of service.
In a document released on Monday—a text of final regulations to be published in the Federal Register this week— the agency states that “one (but not the only)” reasonable method for colleges to use to tally the work of adjuncts is to say that, for every hour they spend teaching, they work an additional hour and 15 minutes outside the classroom grading papers and preparing for class.
The rules, which could be subject to further guidance, also provide a way for colleges to count other duties that adjuncts are “required” to do outside of the classroom, by calling for institutions to credit adjuncts with an hour of service per week for each hour they spend on tasks such as attending faculty meetings or holding office hours.
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