"The Rise of Contingency in the Professoriate: Strategies for a Response" —Richard Schneirov (Indiana State University) Annual meeting of Missouri Conference of AAUP Webster University, St. Louis, MO, February 24, 2007 Today, American academia is on a long, slow slide into crisis. You might even say the crisis is already here. You may have heard what I am about to say before; others may not have. It is worth repeating and emphasizing. Tenured faculty are a minority at American institutions and a shrinking minority at that. How did that happen? The answer goes back to state funding. Nationally, state funding for higher education as a proportion of state budgets has declined from 6.7% of state budgets in 1977 to 4.5% in 2000. Adjusted for inflation, funding has basically been flat during this period. The percentage of the cost of higher education supplied by state governments fell from 31 in 1980 to 23 in 1996. Rising tuitions have taken up much of the slack, but there are limits to that approach. The result is a shortfall in spending on higher education in America. It is this that has fueled administrators’ resort to hiring off the tenure track. Why has this occurred? The answer is complicated. But, there are two major points to make. First, during the 1980s spending for prisons and Medicaid began to skyrocket; higher education was deemed a more flexible part of the education budget by state legislators because universities could raise tuition to make up for declining state assistance. Second, the 1970s, when this process began, represented a watershed in American social and economic history. We opened up our economy to global competition, reduced regulation of domestic markets such as the airlines and trucking, attempted to shrink the public sector, and we allowed the social contract originating in the immediate post-WWII period between workers and corporations to erode. Since that time, median wages for workers have stagnated or risen slightly, contingency in the American workforce has risen to upwards of 25 percent, and economic inequality has gradually increased after declining from the 1930s to the early 1970s. At present, we are facing levels of inequality similar to that of the pre-WWI period. The rising inequality among university faculty closely parallels these trends. In fact, the higher education “industry” is in the lead in creating a two-tiered workforce—though it is hardly something we can take pride in. One measure of this trend in the funding of higher education is that spending per student at public institutions of higher education relative to private institutions has fallen from 63% to 53%. Salaries at public universities have fallen 30% behind those at private university, compared to 1980 when they were about even. And the number of top public universities in the top 25 has fallen from 7 to 3. But the most salient measure for the future of higher education is the decline of tenure-track and tenured positions at higher education. Right now, 65% of all employed faculty in the US are off the tenure track. Almost half of all faculty, about 46%, are not even fulltime. These temporary, part-time appointments went from 22% of all faculty in
2 1970 to 32 percent in 1982, to 42% in 1993, to a current level of about 46 percent of all faculty. The change in the proportion increased at about one percent a year. While a small percentage of part-time faculty are specialists or practitioners of a profession such as law or architecture and teach a class on the side, this situation is the exception rather than the norm. The majority of our contingent faculty constitutes a new academic proletariat—facing poverty-level wages, little or no access to benefits, little or no control over the workplace, no job security, and minimal respect accorded them even by their colleagues. Among the many “signs of the times” of the advent of this new proletariat are new terms like the “academic underclass,” “roads scholars,” “freeway flyers,” and the “manpowerization of the university.” American academia now exists in a multi-tiered arrangement. At the lower tier, the community colleges, where about half of all students are enrolled, we see the highest rates of contingent faculty employed, about two-thirds. At the highest level are the tenure-track and tenured faculty at the research universities. These faculty tend to acquiesce in the new system of inequality because they can use adjunct faculty to be relieved from teaching introductory courses and to get time off for research. The result is a classic divide-and-conquer approach. And it has worked. But it comes at a cost. Just as with American workers, median salaries for faculty in the US have stagnated since that period. Meanwhile, part-time faculty are paid at piece-rates, that is by the course, which translates into hourly rates that approximate that of Walmart “associates” or McDonald’s employees. Another cost is that the distinction between the tenure-eligible faculty and contingent faculty creates a similar distinction between research and publication work and teaching. In a word, teaching and research, which ideally should be mutually enriching, are unbundled and treated separately. Teaching, which in effect is deemed less skilled and less important, is accordingly paid less. It is important to recognize that when we accept uncritically the idea that teaching is adequate even when it is not accompanied by scholarship and research, we are giving up on a major tenet of higher education. As a labor historian, I cannot help but remark on the fact that the situation I have just described is very similar to what happened to craft workers in the mid to late nineteenth century. The all-round skilled artisan lost his skill as employers broke up the general skill into more discrete components, many of which could be done by lesser skilled and lesser-paid piece-workers. These lesser-skilled workers were often employed under a sub-contracting system, which encouraged skilled workers to exploit their brethren. The skilled workers that remained were fewer in number and gradually lost their control over the workplace. This could be seen with the carpenters whose places were largely taken over by immigrant piece-workers who installed factory-made woodwork by the piece. And with the cigar-makers, who lost much of the simpler aspects of their work to tenement house labor carried on by women and children. The term for this labor—“sweatshop labor”—can also be applied to the work of contingent faculty today. It would be a mistake to think that this process was inevitable or was necessary for progress. Strong unions of some skilled workers, such as those in the building trades, stopped this process from evolving to its logical conclusion and even were able to reverse
3 it in some cases. Today, about one-quarter of carpenters, for example, have an all-round skill in unionized states. What are the consequences of the rise in the employment of powerless contingent faculty for the rest of the academic community? By the way, notice I used the word “powerless.” When contingent faculty members are organized and powerful, these conditions can be greatly mitigated. EDUCATON. The growing use of contingent faculty has important consequences for students’ education. We have many dedicated and superior teachers among contingent faculty, but the conditions they work under offer powerful disincentives which erode and limit that potential. Among other things, excellence in teaching requires continuity, repetition, and security; adequate resources, such as office space, telephones, and computers; support for professional development; the highest possible level of educational attainment; and the time and opportunity to experiment with new approaches—all conditions denied to contingent faculty. Statistics back up this conclusion: 30% of liberal-arts part-time faculty report no scheduled office hours, and in the liberal arts, adjuncts are 50% less likely to require essay exams than fulltime faculty. ACADEMIC FREEDOM. The increasing use of contingent faculty threatens professional standards enjoyed by all faculty. Put quite simply, the steady rise of contingent faculty threatens to destroy the professional standards enjoyed by regular faculty. The threat to tenure that comes from replacing tenure-track lines with non-tenure lines is self-evident. Academic freedom is also jeopardized. Joe Berry, a contingent faculty member for twenty years and an organizer based in the Chicago area, puts it this way: “No contingent faculty member can afford to be fully open, honest, and transparent about his teaching and work life to anybody who might potentially have power over him.” That means that contingent faculty are less likely to challenge their students or experiment with controversial subject matter. Meanwhile, the declining number of those with tenure reduces to a dangerous minimum those who have an everyday stake in defending academic freedom, whether in curricular matters or in the realms of campus governance and state and national politics. Insofar as academic freedom becomes moot, so does tenure, which was designed to protect academic freedom. Just as nineteenth-century skilled workers often lost control of the workplace, professors are in danger of losing academic freedom. POWER. The increasing reliance on contingent faculty also drains power away from the faculty in relation to the administration. Not only are contingent faculty not represented in the departments or on the faculty senate, their increasing use makes the model of shared governance less relevant to colleges and universities. With fewer regular faculty members left to stand up for the older standards, the hierarchical, corporate model of governance, already dominant in community colleges, looks more and more appropriate to other institutions of higher education. For these reasons the representatives of the core faculty—AAUP, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and the National Education Association (NEA)—have advocated a cap on the use of contingent faculty and the re-conversion of contingent jobs to fulltime, tenured jobs. These groups have also sought to improve the conditions of existing contingent faculty, partly out of professional solidarity but also as a way of raising the cost of using them to institutions of higher education. This approach bears
4 close resemblance to the late-nineteenth-century labor demands of an eight-hour day to spread employment and raise wages, and the craft workers’ demand for a standard minimum wage to be applied to all workers, whatever their skill level. What can be done about this situation? Since 1998, there has existed a national movement for organizing contingent faculty. Up until that time, existing faculty associations, such as the AFT, NEA, and AAUP, did not give priority to the interests of contingent faculty. But since then, contingent faculty have organized caucuses to press their demands on faculty association leadership; they have also built community-based coalitions, notably in Boston and Chicago. These coalitions have been used to bolster their power within these faculty associations and to mount a legislative agenda. These coalitions have been called COCALs, or Coalitions of Contingent Academic Labor. There are regional COCALS in Boston, Chicago, California, and Western New York, and I understand that there is the possibility of one here in the St. Louis area. Meanwhile, activists organizing contingent faculty have organized seven national conferences called COCAL conferences. The last one was in Vancouver in August 2006; the next one is scheduled for August 2008. They are inspirational events to attend, and most return to their local situations much more invigorated. What can be done about this situation? There are three major strategies that would address the problems of contingent faculty. These strategies are not mutually exclusive and can and should be combined. First, collective bargaining. Right now, considerably less than 20 percent of all contingent faculty are organized for collective bargaining. The major bastions are the west coast and the New England and Mid-Atlantic states, with another cluster in Illinois and Michigan. As of fall of 2000, 25 states had collective bargaining laws for 2 and 4year public institutions (Florida was the only Southern state), six states had laws for 2year institutions only, and two had meet-and-confer laws (including Alabama). In California a majority of contingent faculty are organized. These are states that have strong collective-bargaining laws. Where collective bargaining occurs, contingent faculty are able to mount demands to improve pay equity, access to benefits such as health care, compensation for time spent with students outside of the classroom, and various kinds of job security. Where tenure-track and contingent faculty are together in the same bargaining unit, contract provisions are usually the strongest. The AFT, NEA, and AAUP are all involved in collective bargaining; in many cases, such as California, locals have joint affiliations. The AAUP has locals at Emerson and Curry and Emerson Colleges in Massachusetts, Kent State University, Oakland University, Rider University, Rutgers University, and Western Michigan University. A second strategy is legislative and originates in the difficulty in organizing contingent faculty for collective bargaining, the exception being, of course, where specific state laws promote it. Let’s face it, throughout history, unions have always had great difficulty organizing casual labor markets, though precedents do exist in organizing farm workers and longshoremen. A legislative strategy involves creating a broad coalition in the public sphere that can unite a variety of interests. The goal is to win positive legislation, such as funds for higher education earmarked for higher salaries, the creation of more fulltime jobs; but also to create a public opinion more receptive to contingent faculty demands. The broad
5 coalition I am talking about includes tenured and tenure-track faculty, students and parents, legislators, and administrators, as well as contingent faculty. Some of you may be wondering—why administrators? Actually, they too have an interest in change, because some administrations recognize that treating large numbers of faculty as casual labor prevents them from taking full advantage of their educational assets. And many are aware of how bad it looks when parents find out that the majority of the courses that their children are taking are taught by part-time faculty. Legislators are also open to arguments about the quality of education. In California and New York coalitions won major concessions from the state legislatures, including opening up fulltime jobs to part-timers. In Indiana we have been talking to legislators for the past two years about demands to double the number of fulltime faculty in our community college system, raise pay twenty percent, grant tenure to full-timers, and create a faculty senate to control academic matters. Presently, the AFT has a state-by-state strategy for securing legislative benefits. A third strategy involves using AAUP chapters to change university handbooks and campus policy regulations. These changes usually involve advocacy chapters, which are the norm where collective bargaining cannot exist. The key in building an advocacy campaign is to convince tenure-eligible faculty that supporting the demands for equity of contingent faculty is in their own interest. This is not hard to do; it is actually quite simple. Faculty with some experience are open to the old labor argument, that raising the cost to the university of hiring contingent faculty reduces the incentive to hire more of them, in place of faculty lines. They also can understand that hiring more contingent faculty puts a governance burden on the smaller number of tenured faculty that are left and has an impact on the quality of education. In Indiana, both IUPUI and Indiana State University, where I teach, have recently established comprehensive policies guaranteeing due-process rights and raising percourse salaries. At ISU, the new policy sets a cap of 35% of total instructional hours to be delivered by non-tenure-track faculty at the university level. It also sets up an Advocate for the rights of contingent faculty. Though it does not establish tenure, it does allow for three-year contracts for full-timers and creates priority hiring for part-timers with some seniority. Finally, it returns hiring authority from chairs to the department faculty. IUPUI has also established due-process procedures, including search and screening procedures for hiring contingent faculty. They have also set a goal for each school and department of 60% tenured and tenure-track faculty. One advantage of campus-based advocacy campaigns is that they do not rely on organizing large numbers of contingent faculty. Even if only a half-dozen get involved as spokespersons for the rest, the movement can take advantage of faculty senates and existing AAUP organization among regular faculty. But one thing is important to underline and remember: just winning changes in the Handbook or new laws will not mean anything if they are not enforced. For that, contingent faculty members have to be organized, if only to monitor enforcement. We have found this to the case at Indiana State—for example the refusal to put contingent faculty on multiyear contracts as promised and the hiring of large numbers of lower-paid contingents in place of a smaller number of more experienced and therefore higher-paid contingent faculty. I would like to challenge the Missouri Conference of AAUP to put in place a policy and strategy specific to their state and not rely solely on the policy documents
6 originating with the national office. The task of creating such a policy and strategy should include both contingent and tenure and tenure-track faculty. Finally, I want to address two groups of faculty in the matter of organizing. First, contingent faculty. Let me be frank. Organizing contingent faculty is not easy. Bringing together workers in a casual labor market has always been difficult, because a single individual usually works in different job settings; and with no tenure, fear of losing one’s livelihood simply by not being rehired is very great. It is easy for activists to succumb to fatalism and to give up hope. But I have a word of optimism for you: I know it is workable. The minute you begin to organize—just get one other person to work with you—the apathy will give way to hope and realistic anticipation. Just make that initial choice to start working with your fellows, and your whole mindset will begin to change. I have one other bit of advice. Don’t allow one or two people to do all the work. Make recruiting more activists a high priority. And once you do so, spread out the work so that you do not get burned out. As for regular faculty, your task is to bring up contingent faculty as an issue in two respects. First, your must raise the issue of justice for our contingent colleagues and must draw them into your faculty organizations and departments on an equal basis; second, raise the issue of the long-term implications of the “manpowerization of the university” in terms of academic freedom, tenure, and the quality of education. This is actually not difficult, but it does require persistence. Once this has been accomplished— and it may take three or four years, as it did in my school—you can leverage existing faculty institutions to make changes.