Making a CFU Connection Part II

The Proposal and Audition Process

 Most of the second half of this guide concerns how to design and propose a course to be publicized in the CFU catalog. Without a well-conceived effort on your part to submit a solid, marketable course, we cannot evaluate whether or not to invite you to audition. Along with the course proposal form, we require an applicant to complete a successful audition with a program manager before we can commence negotiations relating to tuition, pay rate, facility usage, materials fees, and all the other dimensions of a complete relationship. Until we can evaluate your teaching ability, your attitude toward community education, and the quality of your course, we cannot quote an exact compensation figure to you.

You must prepare your proposal, investing the time and effort in designing your course, with no guarantee that CFU will agree to offer it, or pay you as much to teach it as you would hope. We understand that this requirement involves a measure of risk for you of disappointment. That risk is inescapable, as is the risk CFU takes when it spends marketing dollars to publicize a new course, hoping but not knowing for sure whether the community will embrace it. If we determine that your course will be high quality and marketable and also that your teaching meets our quality standards, then we will negotiate a contractual relationship to publicize the class. On the page following this one is the evaluation form our programming staff uses during the audition.

 Payment Strategies

We use the following payment strategies to determine what to offer a new teacher:

1. If we determine that your course well lends itself to attracting potential clients to your professional practice or other business services (fields like financial planning, real estate, counseling, legal issues, etc.), then most likely we will ask you to volunteer your teaching time. Like all CFU teachers you will be required to give great value to your students and not use the class for extolling your credentials or marketing your services.

2. If we determine that your class has very little chance of exceeding our break-even point ($300 net income to CFU), we will likely propose a “multiple off the top” payment strategy to give CFU the very best chance not to lose money from offering the class. For example, we may construct a formula whereby CFU takes all the tuition from the first six attendees with that from any additional attendees being divided at the ratio of 60% to the instructor, 40% to CFU.

3. If in the judgment of the program staff the class has reasonable expectations of good enrollment at a moderate or higher fee, then CFU will likely propose a tuition sharing formula for all students past the first. (We always exempt from the payment formula the 1st enrollee, our “one off the top” exemption that goes to underwrite fixed costs of course set-up.) Typical starting point for a tuition-sharing arrangement is 20% to the instructor, converted into a per attendee rate. Classroom usage is subtracted from the instructor’s compensation at a rate somewhere between $1-$2 per person per class session. The spread of these pay arrangements typically falls between 15% and 38% paid to the teacher.

4. In some cases, a guaranteed honorarium is negotiated with instructors to be paid if the class is held regardless of number enrolled or attending.

Ongoing Course Evaluation Process

In the months and years following the acceptance of a course into the CFU program, students are regularly encouraged to evaluate it. Teachers handout evaluations in class. These evaluations are an important source of information for instructors seeking to keep their teaching quality high and their course content relevant. Acquaint yourself with the evaluation form so that you may become sensitive to what CFU’s students are looking for in a great class. It is important for you to return evaluations with your invoices. Evaluations are placed in your file and used extensively during pay reviews. During the review process, absence of evaluations in an instructor’s file is grounds for the committee to recommend a downward adjustment in the pay rate.