By Peter Schmidt
Being represented by a union appears to pay big financial dividends for full-time instructors at community colleges, a new study concludes.
Depending on the size, location, and public-financing sources of their institution, unionized full-time instructors earn from about 5 to 50 percent more in pay and benefits than do their nonunionized peers at similar community colleges, says a paper summarizing the study’s results.
“The differences are stunning,” says Stephen G. Katsinas, a professor of higher education at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa who is one of the study’s three co-authors.
Among the forces influencing how much community colleges pay their instructors, “collective bargaining, in itself, matters,” says Mr. Katsinas, who plans to present the study’s findings in New York on Sunday, at an annual conference held by the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions.
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