These part-time professors make big money teaching dozens of classes online. Are their students learning?

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. As online classes proliferate, community college professors have found a hack — repackaging similar courses for hundreds of students at a time and teaching more than a dozen classes in a single semester. Professor Thien-Huong Ninh Villarreal has at least two tenured, full-time community college jobs, plus recurring part-time gigs over the past 12 months at UC Berkeley, Cal State Sacramento, and seven other community colleges. This fall, she’s teaching 30 sociology, ethnic studies and business classes to about 1,100 students. In 2024, with roughly the same courseload, she made nearly $800,000, according to public payroll records. CalMatters reached out to her three times for comment, but she never responded.

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