BY MICHAEL BÉRUBÉ
Guest blogger Michael Bérubé is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Literature at Pennsylvania State University and a member of the AAUP Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. He is past president of the Modern Language Association. He first published this post on his Facebook page; it is reposted here with his kind permission.
This should go without saying, but every year, it seems, it needs to be said again.
There is a significant difference between saying “tenure-track faculty are responsible for the explosion in contingent faculty and the general hideousness of contingent faculty working conditions” and saying “tenure-track faculty are complicit in, and the beneficiaries of, the system that has produced the overall hideousness of contingent faculty working conditions.” The first proposition is merely mistaken, placing the blame on the tenure system when it should be directed at badmin (and therefore, unfortunately, helps to undermine tenure, ostensibly from the academic “left”). The second proposition is so obviously and entirely true that there really is no plausible response to it, from the ranks of the tenured, other than “shit yes. Now what can we do?”
Kevin Birmingham’s wonderful acceptance speech for the Truman Capote award, “The Great Shame of Our Profession,” which went viral last October but has more recently gone Chronicle-viral, was pretty clearly in the second camp. “If you are a tenured (or tenure-track) faculty member teaching in a humanities department with Ph.D. candidates, you are both the instrument and the direct beneficiary of exploitation.” http://www.chronicle.com/arti…/The-Great-Shame-of-Our/239148
There is simply no denying this. 23 years ago, I wrote a Chronicle essay with a dear friend who is no longer a dear friend, because reasons. Back when we were allies, we said: “at those institutions with large graduate programs, all faculty members benefit from the work that graduate students do. Many faculty members are freed either from teaching or from grading in introductory courses. At some institutions, hundreds of sections of such courses — from basic language instruction to introductory calculus, from composition to introductory logic — depend on graduate student labor. These so-called teaching assistants may have as much responsibility for these courses as would any tenured professor. Those faculty members who do little or no graduate training thus have an almost parasitic relationship to graduate-student employment: Their own salaries and privileges are sustained by exploiting teaching assistants.” http://www.chronicle.com/…/Graduate-Education-Is-Los…/91381/
The widespread exploitation of graduate student labor in the mid-1990s has become, for reasons that should be as obvious as the exploitation itself, the widespread exploitation of contingent faculty labor. Tenured faculty did not create this system, but we are complicit in it, and we benefit from it, every single day. This should go without saying, but every year, it seems, it needs to be said again. Now, what can we do?
(One tentative answer: I am happy to say that Jennifer Ruth [co-author of The Humanities, Higher Education, and Academic Freedom] and I have been approached by someone who supports our conversion-of-contingent-faculty-positions-to-tenure-track-positions proposal and wants to form an organization of tenured faculty who will try to answer this question. Another less tentative answer: I didn’t get a conversion plan implemented at Penn State, but I did get a review and promotion system for our fixed-term faculty that involves committees consisting of, and elected by, fixed-term faculty. That system has been approved by the president and provost, and takes effect next year. But suggestions are always welcome.)
It would be nice if somebody who claims “adjunct exploitation” actually attempt to demonstrate that adjuncts are exploited under the common scholarly definitions of the term. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/exploitation/
Good day Phil
Your comment is on target, not just for adjuncts in the humanities but for post secondary education in general:
The issue to be explored is why individuals apply to a graduate program, particularly, in the humanities. If it is to gain advanced knowledge with no expectations that this provides the gateway towards a position in academia as a tenure track scholar, then such employment as an adjunct or non-tenure track faculty may be a way to finance that aspiration. On the other hand, if the system induces the individual to accept this option under the idea that this is the or only path to a tenure track without providing an honest assessment that path then I believe, we are bordering on the definition you cite
The situation in many colleges/universities stretches down to the bachelor’s level, even in the STEM/STM area. Institutions are seeing that the population bubble has gone for basic secondary program graduates and the institutions are seeking other sources for matriculation (the recent alarm raised by the current US gov’t administration regarding foreign entrants is more than the loss of brilliant researchers). What makes this problematic is that the data is starting to show that graduates, in their areas of major, may be under or unemployed in that area and may find employment in orthogonal areas (baristas don’t count though they do provide benefits)
In this latter case, the economic term defining the institutions is “rent seeking” which might be a variance of the idea of exploitation In both cases, it’s the institution that is the perpetrator. Faculty have long ducked the responsibility of actively engaging in the institution itself having given up that right in exchange for a sinecure called tenure. As one party has said, once one has given up their “NO” it is hard to get it back.
The issue is not the relationship between the tenure, non-tenure and adjuncts, it’s the relationship of the faculty to the institution itself, one that they have avoided by burying themselves in the game of publish/perish. They, in effect, are like the mice in the laboratory where one says to the other: see, I have those people trained, I just jump on the wheel and they feed me. Only now the mice are being culled- another subject.
Thank you, Prof. Berube, for continuing to ask our tenure-track colleagues “now what can we do?” I am at an institution that would not consider AAUP guidelines for conversion, and they have managed to continue to hire new tenure lines by demoting contingent faculty, even in the face of a budget crisis. I think one thing that can be done is for AAUP to press guidelines for conversion more aggressively, perhaps even to consider violations of those guidelines as reason to censure. Somehow tenure-track faculty have to see that it is somehow valuable to them to have the backs of non-tenure-track faculty. Otherwise it just continues to be another example of the American way–every man for himself.
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It’s easy for me to say from my 4-year college, but graduate programs should base their admission numbers on the number of recent graduates who have found permanent employment in their field.
Last year there was loads of talk in my circles about the gainful employment rule. It should be applied at the graduate level, and the results highly publicized – as well as compared with the number of graduate students accepted to a given program.
I agree that the real war is with management. I’m not sure if converting contingent faculty to tenured is the most immediate concern, however, except maybe on a contract-by-contract basis in terms of collective bargaining. This is a fast-moving train, and conversion sounds like more of a long-term, theoretical goal. Supporting and fighting for pay parity, job security and compensated professional development is more along the lines of what adjuncts need from tenured faculty yesterday. Less contemplation, much more action.
The UNC system is toying with the idea of dealing with the “adjunct situation” by increasing full-time faculty (tt-track and tenured) teaching loads. The “conversion” process is not to shift part-time jobs to tt-track full-time, but to increase the teaching loads of all full time faculty already employed. Faculty whose research brings in money will be deemed research “productive” and therefore exempt.
My perspective, contra Miranda’s comment, is that this is a very slow-moving train, one that many of us have been on a very long time. Collective bargaining is largely not available, and why is that? I would submit that it is because faculty cannot get it together as a faculty, and then institutional administrators take advantage of that disunity. I completely agree with “less contemplation, more action,” but the action has to go beyond the perpetual battle between faculty and administrators that is baked in to American higher ed. There is no quick fix. We as faculty have to model what it means to support each other, even badmin, so that we can ALL have better working lives in service to both students and to the intellectual disciplines that we treasure so much. If tenure is valued as an essential part of a good academic working life (and there is a debate), then we should work for it for everyone who is faculty. No more “us against them.”
Hi Jane.
A Kumbaya strategy only works in a world where all parties have an equal role in power and decision-making. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. As you know, adjunct faculty don’t get to renew themselves or choose to not be fired and replaced under institutional pressure to hire more TT profs and throw away the adjuncts who have been teaching the same courses for decades at an institution, or more likely, multiple institutions.
If collective bargaining is unavailable, then I would argue for direct action with all ranks of faculty supporting each other. These national days of action and Campus Equity Week 2017 are great ways to demonstrate faculty power and unity.
By the way, did you read the Kevin Birmingham piece cited in the post above? Curious to hear your thoughts.
In Solidarity ~
“Kumbaya strategy” is not what I am suggesting, Miranda. (That term was taken over by right-wing churches in the 60’s to calm young people down and sentimentalize a radical faith). No, what I am suggesting is that faculty as a whole see the root of our toxic profession as not each other, not even “badmin” (who think they are doing the jobs they were hired to do), but as forces outside of our institutions that need to be countered by a united faculty. They are the 1%, the dark money people, who want to control what and how students learn to prepare them to step in to their corporations to do their bidding. They would also be opposed to tenure and to academic freedom. Is this a “conspiracy theory?” Those who believe in those corporations would certainly like to say so. And yes, I read the Birmingham piece when it first came out–loved it.
*I meant fast-moving train in terms of the increasing contingency and disposability of faculty as a whole. Even tenure by itself is not legally-binding, which more and more administrations are figuring out, to faculty’s detriment.
Adjuncts are the undocumented workers of academia. Quite simply, they need a path to citizenship.
Very perceptive comments about what is going on here (“increasing TT loads,” “path to citizenship”). I have been in this movement for decades. It seems to me that there is a new and hidden agenda, which is to reduce the number of contingent faculty nationwide in a “budget neutral” way (in order to justify it). So whatever our higher ed institutions can do to achieve that, like increasing TT loads or “non-renewal” or hiring a few contingent faculty into FT lines at the expense of others, is rewarded by institutional leaders. The labor unions are disappointing at best, and AAUP doesn’t choose to exercise its clout to help contingent faculty, only to say repeatedly “there is a problem.” One thought is to try to mobilize contingent faculty and grad students in a national movement (not just campus to campus) to lobby AAUP to act. They would need to see that it is in the best interests of their main constituency, tenure-line faculty, to do so.
The “beneficiaries” label, for tenured faculty, is an important framing that needs annual repeating. By one rough calulation I made, the average academic book is subsidized by adjunct labor to the tune of about $350,000). But what needs to happen in the unionized environment is much different than what must happen in a non-unionized environment. Where there are unions, well-established ones– the union itself must be radically reconstituted in order to ensure fair representation. The existing union structure–the per cap pathways, the way the money flows through the system from local to state to national (the dues money) and how that money is used and in whose behalf, must be evaluated critically and carefully. In my view, most unionized environments, most bargaining teams (and the collective bargaining protocols and processes) are made up of and serve the interests of FTF, by a factor of , say, 9 to 1. Even if there is PTF representation at the table, it is a minor and deliberately weakened voice and that voice is often hand picked for docility. So representation is weak in collective bargaining because of a rupture in how the “community of interest logic” plays out on the ground. I think it is safe to say there is a very, very weak “community of interest” in a mixed unit. A PT or contingent only unit has the problem of minimal leverage–with the exception of the California state/university systems). In terms of lobbying (the expenditures made on behalf of members and agency fee payers largely at the state level) , FTF controlled lobbying priorities (I am thinking of CFT in California, the largest union representing PTF in the state community college system) not only fails to promote and carry forward PT-positive legislation, but works to defeat things like 1) raising the teaching load cap–currently by statute it is 67% of a FT load, 2) putting limits on FTF overloads, a significant drain on courses available for PTF to teach, especially in contraction cycles , and 3) meaningful job security/evaluation and seniority system for PTF. In all three cases the major unions in California recently and actively campaigned AGAINST those three initiatives, watering down the job security / seniority language last year, and putting the kabosh on an effort to raise the statutory load limit to 80% for PTF, and the bill that attempted to put reasonable limits on FTF overloads. DUES problems (Follow the money): The national level is also problematic: the national gets full per caps (in the case of AFT at least) , when the PTF pay goes up to $18,500 so it has no financial incentive to push the pay beyond that, AFT gets the highest tier of membership affiliation tax (around $350-400 or so a year as I remember) whether the faculty member earns $18,500 or $180,000,) .The state level of most unions has a similar low threshold for “full per caps”–$26,500 per year in California, (CFT) for instance. That means the state union apparatus has, generally, no “financial incentive” to push for gains beyond the “full per cap” threshold. They are going to get exactly the same 11 million a year, or whatever it is, whether the PTF in the state average $26,501 or $86,000. So these structural problems are not necessarily due to, or because of, bad administration policies or decisions. These are “in our own house” and need remedy. The (poor) representation PTF have received (and in some cases active working against PTF interests) from their unions in the last 30 years throughout the US actually constitutes an actionable violation, in my view. It is way beyond exploitation. It is a scam. In non-unionized environments, however, I think the focus can and should be, as others have emphasized, on the administration and perhaps the so-called conversion pathways, however that might be obtained–Frankly I do not know how policy is set and wages are set and conversion is set up in a non-union environment… but however it is done, the tenured faculty in those environments have a strong obligation to “negotiate” if that is what they do, in order to devise a “fairer” system than what is currently in place. I don’t think anyone seriously questions the “exploitation” of PTF and other contingent faculty, so I am not going to address that comment (prove exploitation).
Margaret, can you say more about what you mean that tenured faculty have an obligation to negotiate a fairer system? What is that obligation? My sense is that they don’t feel any obligation, and you can’t negotiate morality. It seems to me that they have to be convinced that is in their own best interests to do so. That is why I would lobby AAUP to act, to show tenure-line faculty that they must step up with their contingent colleagues or there will be consequences that affect them all.
Unfortunately, many tenured faculty see their adjunct and contingent colleagues as unqualified tenure scabs. Solidarity is a foreign concept.
And some professional associations do not even tolerate adjuncts unless they’re well-behaved and obedient. No badjuncts or madjuncts allowed. (Yet you need anger to truly change things.) Catch 22.