Charter Oak State College is making national headlines and that success should come with competitive wages for the faculty who make it possible. Charter Oak is Connecticut’s online public college, serving working adults and others who benefit from flexible, remote learning. It is home to Conne cticut’s AI Academy and was recently named to Forbes’ Best Colleges list for 2025. While colleges across the country struggle with declining enrollment, Charter Oak has grown by roughly 60 percent over the past three years. Student retention is up. Enrollment of students of color has increased. Pell recipient enrollment has risen. Graduate programs are expanding. Eighty-seven percent of Charter Oak students live, work, and vote in Connecticut. This is a public institution delivering measurable returns to our state: economically, educationally, and civically. That success is no accident. It reflects the dedication of faculty who design courses, mentor students, provide feedback around the clock, and help adult learners persist to graduation while balancing jobs, families, and caregiving responsibilities. Students benefit from higher levels of education, stronger career outcomes, and the knowledge to be engaged parents, citizens, and voters. Communities benefit from those engaged citizens. Taxpayers benefit from a college that produces significant returns with relatively modest public investment. Other employees at Charter Oak benefit from long-standing collective bargaining agreements that have delivered regular wage increases. Everyone has benefited from Charter Oak’s success — except the faculty. In June 2025, Charter Oak faculty won their first union contract. It included a 6 percent raise, our first compensation adjustment in 13 years. That’s the good news. The bad news is that even with that raise, Charter Oak faculty remain among the lowest-paid faculty in the country. After more than a decade without increases, during a period of high inflation and extraordinary institutional growth, this situation should not be acceptable to Charter Oak management, the Board of Regents, the state legislature, or the governor. Since that first agreement, faculty have continued bargaining in good faith. Recently, however, the union was forced to declare impasse on two core issues: wages and tuition waivers. The administration’s wage proposal amounts to roughly two dollars per student, an amount that does little to address long-standing inequities or the realities of faculty workload. This is not a symbolic disagreement. At Charter Oak, faculty are paid per student rather than per course. The average part-time faculty member earns about $11,400 a year for year-round work. Some of the small, high-touch classes that Charter Oak relies on to help students succeed quickly require extensive time and individualized attention. Yet under the current pay structure, that work can translate into compensation that effectively falls below minimum wage. Faculty are not asking to be treated like “fat cats.” They are asking for a wage floor, a basic guarantee that professional work requiring advanced degrees, specialized expertise, and sustained student support will be fairly compensated. Connecticut currently has budget surpluses. Charter Oak is experiencing phenomenal growth. The institution’s success is being celebrated nationally. This is exactly the moment for our academic and political leaders to step up and ensure that the people doing the core educational work are not left behind. Fair faculty compensation is not a luxury. It is a prerequisite for sustaining quality, access, and student success at a public institution that so many Connecticut residents depend on. If Charter Oak’s achievements are worth celebrating, and they are, then the faculty who made them possible deserve to share in that success. Ruth MacDonald and Erica Butcher are Charter Oak State College delegates to 4Cs SEIU 1973.   ...read more read less