Costs for adjuncts, overloads draining NMC funding

The employment of part-time instructors and payment of overloads took away over $645,000 of the Northern Marianas College’s funds for programs and services in fiscal year 2004.

NMC president Antonio Deleon Guerrero said this to illustrate why the administration should provide the college with assistance in covering these costs.

Deleon Guerrero said in a letter to Gov. Juan N. Babauta that the cost for adjuncts and overloads have steadily increased over the past five years, indicating that the institution needs to rely on adjunct instructors to fill the void left by lack of funding for necessary full time employees.

“One of the biggest financial challenges the institution faces as a result of the freeze in our funding levels under continuing resolution is its inability to hire faculty to continue to provide the current level of programs and services while also trying to meet the increasing demands for new and innovative programs from our traditional and non-traditional students. The college has had to resort to using adjunct instructors or paying overloads to existing faculty to make ends meet,” Deleon Guerrero explained.

Although these costs are technically personell costs and therefore should be funded through appropriations, such are paid for using revenues from tuition and fees.

“As you are aware, the college only receives personnel funds from the CNMI government and uses its tuition and fees for our institutional operations… Naturally paying for the adjunct and overload costs substantially reduces funding available for operating expenses of the institution,” Deleon Guerrero said.

In an interview, the NMC president recalled that the Legislature more than 10 years ago granted the college authorization to hire 62 new, full-time employees. However, the college has received only enough funding for 24 new employees, he said.

Earlier, NMC has also protested the administration’s failure to remit the college’s full entitlement under Public Law 10-66.

P.L. 10-66 states that except for $725,000 that should be reserved for other purposes, all fees collected from the issuance of alien work permits should be given to NMC to fund business, tourism, industrial or technical, or professional programs.

At $250 per permit, the government collects about $7.75 million annually from the 31,000 nonresident workers in the Commonwealth.

But of the approximately $7 million that should be remitted to the college, NMC receives only an average of $1.4 million every year, Deleon Guerrero said.