Sit-in of the part-time hourly lecturers of the Lebanese University in front of the Ministry of Education on March 5, 2024. (Credit: L'Orient Today)
BEIRUT — Part-time contract professors at the Lebanese University are asking President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, Education Minister Rima Karameh, and the president of the university, Bassam Badran, to consider a change in their employment status, amid a difficult workplace conditions and a heavier workload resulting from a doubling of students enrolled at the university.
Lebanese University physics professor Hisham al-Falou told L'Orient Today that around 1,500 adjunct professors are currently seeking "full-time adjunct status," an intermediate contract between their current situation and that of a tenured professor. On Thursday, a statement was published by 40 representatives from all of LU's faculties and branches calling for the issue to be placed on Cabinet's agenda.
Adjunct professors receive neither a monthly salary, nor transportation or end-of-service compensation, nor family allowances, nor are they affiliated with the National Social Security Fund.
The file has been stuck with the Education Ministry for 11 years due to considerations of sectarian balance within the faculty hiring process, an issue that would make its passage through Cabinet unlikely.
"Since 2014, when the last application for integration to adjunct status was approved, the Lebanese University has not seen any new full-time recruitments," the professors' statement reads. "Yet, the number of students has doubled, and academic and research programs have developed, imposing on adjunct professors additional workloads beyond their capacities, under difficult material and employment conditions that threaten the stability and sustainability of the university."
"We are calling for our temporary contracts to be transformed into permanent full-time contracts," Falou explained. "We demand a monthly salary and the allowances to which we are entitled." However, even if or when part-time professors are given full-time status, their hourly wage would still be "the lowest of any university in the country," the professors point out.
While the equivalent average salary of an LU professor hovers today between $2,000 and $2,500, not counting allowances and other benefits, adjunct professors at the country's only public university received an average an hourly wage of $25 last year, compared to pre-crisis wages that reached $66 for the highest pay grade.
Now, "depending on the grade, the current hourly wage ranges between two million and two million four hundred thousand lira," Falou said. According to him, LU president Badran had promised adjuncts would see their hourly wage rise to $45.
