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November, 2003 Volume 14, Issue 3 - AAUP Addresses Contingent Faculty Issues |
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By Martin M. Goldstein
The American Association of University Professors, the oldest and most prestigious union in academia, recently issued a major policy statement, Contingent Appointments and the Academic Profession, addressing “the overuse and abuse of part-time and non-tenure-track faculty that threaten the quality and stability of higher education today.”
It seems appropriate, given that the national week of recognition for the plight of contingent faculty, Campus Equity Week (CEW) is ongoing as I write this, to summarize and contextualize the document, which is available in full at the aaup.org website or in the current issue of their journal, Academe.
First one should note that the statement, which in itself really breaks no new ground, is immediately significant because of where in the AAUP it came from, which is Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, their most prestigious committee, jointly with the Committee on Part-Time and Non-Tenure-Track Appointments. There is serious weight behind this statement, and having met Jane Buck, the current President of the AAUP at a part-time issues meeting in northern California, it is clear to me that this issue an ongoing primary concern for them, for numerous good and proper reasons.
These reasons are laid out pretty clearly in the AAUP’s document, though some require a little interpolation. “The vast majority of non-tenure-track faculty, part and full-time, do not have professional careers outside of academe, and most teach basic core courses rather than narrow specialties,” it states, in opposition to the idea that part-timers are used only to teach the narrow specialty courses where their outside work experience is an asset. No, they’re mostly teaching introductory courses that could and should be taught by regular full-time faculty.
But they teach them for less money. They provide, as academic management knows full well, a fully legitimate supply of cheap labor willing to do -- and actually doing -- the work of the higher paid full-timers. They’re teaching the same classes for less money and any union worth it’s name knows that’s a recipe for disaster.
And they’re increasing at great rate, faster among full-timers than part-timers in the last decade, the part-time ranks having just about maxed out in places. Now the push is to increase contingent (non-tenure-track) full-time positions. Who needs all those messy freedoms and guarantees, anyway?
The result is what the AAUP terms a “systemic problem” for higher ed. Students’ learning is diminished by reduced contact with tenured teachers. Faculty governance weakened by constant turnover, and on many campuses (but not here!) by the exclusion of contingent faculty from governance. (Here, we’re all excluded from governance. A bit of gallows humor, that.)
The integrity of academic work as a whole is threatened, they continue, by the piecemeal division of academic work, as if we were actually making widgets on some assembly line, rather than shaping and creating the next generation of citizens. And, as per the name of the prestigious AAUP committee’s that co-wrote the report, it’s all bad for academic freedom. As your job security goes down, so does your willingness to speak up. Now, more than ever, that’s a bad thing and not just for the university, but for the nation as a whole.
So what can be done? The report gives a series of well-reasoned steps to “regularize” (to use the Canadian term) contingent faculty, giving them equality in pay, working conditions, job security and general integration into the academic institution. Tenured part-timers instead of Freeway Flyers. It is clear, in the AAUP’s opinion, that this can and should be done.
Whether it will be done, however, is a question of political will and power, and whether that exists at this time is most certainly not yet clear. What is certain is that only a effort of a strong and united higher ed lobby can make it happen, and statewide and national consciousness-raising events, like CEW, are steps in that direction. It is not a part-time issue. It is, I believe, the defining issue of all of higher education at this point, and nothing less than the independence, quality, and morality of American higher education are at stake.
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