Shared Responsibility for Employers Regarding Health Coverage(REG-138006-12)

I have been an adjunct instructor for over twenty years. I have several comments. 1. As a historical note, colleges have considered the credit hour as a measure of time spent teaching based on a presumption that for each hour of classroom time, the student and instructor will each spend two hours outside the classroom in preparation and working on papers, research and so on per week. Thus, according to this measure, a 3 credit course equals 9 hours of actual work. This is the so-called Carnegie Unit. The CU was created as a way of determining which teachers would be eligible for a pension for a voluntary system that became what is now TIAA-CREF. Using the CU, an instructor would have to contract for 4 3-credit courses to hit the 30-hour threshold for ACA coverage. This is likely the measure regulators will see colleges and universities try to use as the measure. The reason is simple - many colleges have already begun to reduce their adjunct course loads to bring the adjuncts below that credit count as a way to evade the ACA's purpose in the one year look back period. I, for example, have historically taugh 4 3 credit hour courses for years, only to see my course load suddenly reduced to 3 3 credit courses per semester. 2. The CU does not accurately measure the actual hours worked. Time spent at faculty meetings, with students and on other administrative tasks easily mean a more accurate measure is at least 3 hours per credit hour so that teaching 3 courses equals 36 hours of actual work. 3. Many adjuncts teach online courses. These are even more time intensive since they require training in software, course creation, testing and other non-student contact labor. 4. Consider adopting a standard that says teaching 3 3-credit hours per semester is the equivalent of full-time work or use the FLSA standard which says that employers who don't track actual hours worked must accept the employee's record of hours worked and allow adjuncts to use the FSLA time calculator.