BY MARTIN KICH
The current situation at the University of Akron is extreme but nonetheless illustrative of the situations developing at many of our college and university campuses across the state of Ohio and the nation.
At Akron, the administration and Board are attempting to use a force majeure clause in the faculty contract to eliminate faculty positions arbitrarily: that is, programs with low enrollment are not being targeted for reduction or elimination, and the usual practice of eliminating positions according to rank and seniority are not being applied. Indeed, very senior and very accomplished tenured faculty members are being targeted precisely because the elimination of their salaries creates the greatest immediate savings.
But this arbitrary undermining of tenure not only sends a terrible message to the communities that the university serves and to prospective students in those communities and beyond. It also has the effect of further reducing meaningful shared governance—one of the fundamental principles of American higher education–at a time when the only constituency that is vocally and consistently defending the academic missions of our institutions is the faculty.
Over the past decade, the Ohio Conference has been drawing attention to the ways in which revenues at our institutions have been diverted away from instruction to all sorts of other things: bloat in administrative compensation and dramatic increases in administrative positions and support staffing; ever-increasing subsidies to intercollegiate athletics; campus construction, off-campus real-estate purchases, and expensive on-campus amenities; contracts with consultants to develop initiatives and enterprises that are ostensibly supposed to support recruitment, retention, and the expansion of academic offerings but that, instead, almost always drain resources from instruction—and are almost never meaningfully reviewed for their efficacy.
With the pandemic, we have come to a point where the longstanding rationalizations of these skewed priorities are no longer sustainable. On average, only about a third of our institutional budgets are allocated to instruction, only about a fifth to a quarter of our budgets goes towards faculty salaries and benefits, only about half of the faculty headcount is full-time, and only about 50 to 60 percent of the full-time headcount is tenured or tenure-track. Moreover, at best, three-quarters of the cost of a college education is being borne by students, most of whom are taking on debt that they will be paying off for half or more of their working lives.
For the past three to four decades, the mantra has been that our colleges and universities need to be managed as businesses are managed. Some businesses do sacrifice investment in the products and services that they provide for the sake of other strategies that produce shorter-term increases in stock prices and dividends. But those businesses usually suffer in the long run.
Moreover, our colleges and universities are institutions, not enterprises. They are meant to sustain the development of our economy, our communities, and our citizens over decades, not months or quarters.
Likewise, institutional reputations are built over decades but can be undermined much more quickly. It is time to ask whether colleges and universities that devalue faculty can maintain reputations that attract students and impress prospective employers.
It is time to ask whether most students care more about intercollegiate athletics or climbing walls than the value of the degrees that they are earning and the amount of debt that they are incurring.
It is time to ask whether students from economically disadvantaged and racially marginalized parts of communities such as Akron will have a better chance to succeed if there are fewer full-time faculty, larger class sizes, and less personalized instruction.
It is time to ask whether employers in the Akron area who looking to expand their workforce will give a damn that the university has been “investing” heavily in E-sports.
Our students’ prospects of success have already been eroded significantly by decades of declines in the state support for higher education and the deepening problems related to income inequality and the extended transition to a post-industrial economy.
At almost all of our institutions, instruction is the only source of net revenue. Revenue from instruction supports everything else.
Our colleges and universities do not have too many faculty members. Our faculty are not overpaid or under-worked. We are dedicated to our professions. We recognize the central importance of instruction. We also provide significant institutional, community, and professional service. We are active scholars, and many of us are fully engaged in the public dialogue over the many challenges facing our localities, the state, and the nation.
And as our numbers contract, all of these demands on our time and energy have been relentlessly increasing at rates far exceeding any increases in salary and benefits that we have been receiving.
But we are not asking for more.
Rather, we are sounding the alarm that it is simply no longer sustainable to keep asking for more from us while not only providing less and less support for what we are doing but also very publicly and very pointedly devaluing what we are doing.
Many things are coming together to undermine the fundamental principles that have shaped the success of American higher education and that have made it a model for much of the world. But, let’s be clear, COVID-19 isn’t really one of those things. The pandemic may be exposing many skewed institutional priorities and many of those responsible for promoting those skewed priorities. But a system that has withstood two world wars, a worldwide economic depression, and an earlier and even more deadly pandemic—among many other challenges—is not being threatened by this pandemic in itself. Just as the healthcare system and the national economy are showing the effects of shiftless political leadership, American higher education has suffered from a lack of leadership focused on the longer term and a lack of respect for the long tradition of meaningful shared governance.
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The more I learn of this case, even though I support the profs who are being terminated, the more I think that the union did not fully protect its membership fully in drafting and ratifying the contract.
This phrase seems instructive: “Programs with low enrollment are not being targeted for reduction or elimination, and the usual practice of eliminating positions according to rank and seniority are not being applied.” Maybe I’ve got this wrong but in legal matters one cannot rely on “usual practices.” If you want to protect seniority first, it must be clearly spelled out in writing.
My previous union, PSC, which represents all CUNY faculty and staff, made a similar error in contract negotiations: they left adjunct faculty without Academic Freedom and even Free Speech rights.
Our contract at UA includes Article 15 on Financial Exigency. It is there that the force majeure clause exists. The administration has interpreted this article, in the face of FM, differently than the union has interpreted it. The union’s interpretation is that, after FM is demonstrated by the administration, there is a process of removing faculty starting with the rank of Assistant Professor of Practice and working upward, all based on seniority with a process that involves both faculty and administrative oversight (an expedited financial exigency model). The administration believes FM means they could fire whomever they wanted without due process or the criteria in Article 15. FM and the interpretation have both been grieved and are headed to arbitration.
Sue: This is exactly the point I made above. Financial Exigency and FM clauses are probably necessary in a contract. However, what happens when those contingencies are invoked need not be subject to conflicting “interpretations,” as you mention.
If the union wanted “removing faculty starting with the rank of Assistant Professor of Practice and working upward, all based on seniority,” then wording could have been worked out in advance in the contract so that the issue would not now be subject to the whim of an arbitrator.
This crisis – which is not limited to Akron, of course – was visible, as you say, 30 years ago. During that decade, when I worked in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions at the University of North Carolina, I began to see a difference as the University transitioned from an educational model to a business model. I made a personal transition from the university world to the secondary school world, and witnessed some colleges misrepresenting themselves to my students. When I started to document, with statistics, the ways in which colleges abused their armies of part-time teachers, other counselors didn’t want to know about it. They wanted their students to be accepted by colleges – they didn’t care about what that college did to its faculty. Now the proverbial sh*t is hitting the fan. Colleges are putting, as this article states, real-estate purchases, sports, and administrative “bloat” ahead of academic instruction. Unfortunately, the students will reap as the admin have sowed.
The University of Akron stands to lose 1600 years of collective faculty expertise as a result of RIF
And…? What is the solution? Arbitration that decides WHICH faculty members get fired?
One problem is that Ohio, like some other States, has too many State universities. [And in Ohio’s case, too many private ones also.]
A public institution of higher education was the brainchild of our former Ohio Governor Jim Rhodes. The idea was that every county would have access to public higher education. Frankly, I think it still an awesome idea as it best serves the most vulnerable in our society. The idea of the “mega-university” is one that does not embrace the framework of social justice… that is better served by smaller public universities.
Are the claimed FM circumstances caused by declining enrollments or “too many state universities”? Why is Akron hit so hard?
In any case, as an outsider, it seems to me that this situation can be resolved in a less disastrous way: modest tuition increases, revised priorities, consolidation of departments, etc.
I can say it is unclear because there is no information coming from the administration in this regard. The Acting CFO made a video about budgets but budgets are not “real” financial data. An external evaluation did not support the university’s position regarding finances.
Good to know. Thanks, Sue!
I thought Rhodes’ idea was an awful one then and is awfuller now that Ohio is losing electoral votes with every decinial census. A community college in every county is even too many — smaller counties can share. But 13 State universities?!
As far as “embrace the framework of social justice”, I don’t. If ‘social justice’ is justice, then the ‘social’ is redundant and does no work for us. If it is something different from ‘justice’, then social justice is not justice, and oughtn’t be promoted.
The Zeitgeist in this Trumpian era is anti-intellectual; tenure is seen as privilege, and not something you earned (and continue to work for). This is a well written article, with an excellent point about what these draconian decisions mean for the education of underprivileged populations. The admins have created a three tier system – tenure, NTT, adjuncts. The ultimate goal probably to reduce tenure to 20% , and with that say goodbye to any scholarship that goes against lobbyists or corporations. NTTs with medium-term contracts, often with Masters degrees, find themselves to be even more dispensable. But to survive in the mercenary culture admins have created, and without tenure protection, have inevitably adopted admins’s talking points, to survive. Finally are adjuncts, who are the most exploited, and don’t even picture in the debate. If we have to preserve higher education for all, faculty needs to take charge and push for investment in faculty and demand at least 70% jobs to be tenured with faculty qualified to do scholarship and teaching.
From what I gather, these factors have been brewing for years, if not decades. I’m no Trumpist but those who blame him for EVERYTHING may be partially responsible for his re-election, if that takes place. Rational voters know that his administration is not to blame for every social problem and many may react to the “fake news” (and there IS such a thing, just as he and his people lie and spin the facts) by voting against the “P.C.” crowd.
Re. John’s specifics — Tenure has ALWAYS been a controversial matter in academe, especially when state legislators have any power over universities. The move toward “dispensable” NTTs and adjuncts has been ongoing for years. The question is why has this hit like a ton of bricks right now (the Plague?) and why was Akron hit so calamitously?
Inquiring minds want to know.
I used the word “Trumpian era” to capture the tide that has been brewing for decades, by systematic media and political campaign by corporate and extreme right wing interests. Trump is not the cause, just the symptom. Anyone with some intelligence understands that. We cannot ignore the systemic corruption in this country, which both political parties are responsible for. However, anti-intellectualism is a gift endowed by right wingers supporting corporations over every principle and cause.
I am not sure why you are bringing up PC crowd comment.
Ignoring the forces that have made 50% of population mistrust science and education will not solve the problem. Sure faculty is to blame for not holding the line to some extent, and has many other faults. One key antipathy from elite and big research universities that keep churning out Phds in a pyramid scheme, and never preparing these graduates for the bleak future they face in academia. In the end we all lose.
You can argue that tenure has always been controversial. But once 70% faculty was tenured. Now this number is shrinking, due to corporate style management, erosion of academic values, and anti-intellectualism that makes states like Ohio easily deny funding to universities, without public backlash.
The brick has hit now, because COVID19 has made further financial mismanagement impossible. It has hit Akron particularly hard because it happens to be one of the worst managed university in a state that continues to cut funds. Just look at the history of revolving door presidents, despite decade long crisis, building construction still going on, huge football stadium to attract students, instead of investing in instructional resources.
Thanks for the clarification, John. It still seems odd to me that you’d use the term “Trumpian” to describe a period that included eight years of the Obama administration and (possibly) eight years of Bill Clinton.
I’m all against systemic corruption (who isn’t) but many feel that corruption is allowed when it’s for the good of one’s own ideology. I’m glad you hold both Donkeys and Elephants accountable, as I do.
I’m not sure that 50% of the population “mistrust science and education.” I’d like to know where that stat comes from.In the meantime, “science”.has often presented contradictory “facts,” diagnoses, and solutions for various problems (i.e., the COVID19 that you mention), so many people might be confused.
In the end, you hint at one of the potential reasons for the financial crisis: an overly ambitious building crisis. An “Edifice Complex” has been the undoing of several universities.
Frank! Thanks for a civil debate.
“50% of population” has become tacit knowledge in my mind based on myriad polls I have come across over the years. For example, polls such as “climate change is real” etc
Trumpian ۔ not a term I invented. Though, I like it, as the term succinctly communicates both neoliberal economic agenda and extreme right wing political goals.
True science can be messy; but it does not mean we stop investIng in science or stop listening to scientists. And this is the reason, academic and scientific community should have freedom to do research, we don’t want science crippled by politics and corporate pressures.
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