The Overload Is One of the Many Ways Higher Education Exploits Teachers
We are waiting on reforms that will probably never come.
I was recently urged by a manager to consider the fact that 80% of my colleagues are teaching overloads, and I am always amazed by the administration’s brazenness on this subject.
Overloads are extra teaching work beyond the terms established by a contractual agreement. I have agreed in my current contract to teach a certain number of credit hours within a specific time frame. Any classes I agree to teach beyond my nine-month contract period or beyond the 24 credit hours specified by my contract would constitute an overload.
Overloads are usually presented to teachers as a way to make “extra money.” But that extra money requires extra work, and it is an extraordinarily shitty deal for teachers. We are already overworked and underpaid, and taking on extra work inevitably reduces the quality of instruction.
Some schools have been addicted to overloads for a long time, and they do not seem to be concerned about the impact of overloads on quality of instruction or faculty wellbeing. Several universities in Iowa were famously involved in a national debate about the practice in the first decade of the new millennium, and as far back as 2011, an Inside Higher…
