POSTED BY KELLY HAND
Announcing the AAUP’s endorsement of the College for All Act introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Pramila Jayapal in April, AAUP President Rudy Fichtenbaum said “The College for All Act reaffirms our commitment to quality, public higher education as a right for all Americans. It would expand access to higher education and would help former students already saddled with large student debt to refinance at rates that are offered for new student loans. It would cut down on the abuse of adjunct labor and strengthen academic freedom protections by increasing the percentage of tenured and tenure-track faculty. The AAUP is proud to endorse the College for All Act.” Please add your name.
It seems to me that this bill may well ADD to the abuse of adjunct faculty, especially those in private colleges whose viability is threatened by free public colleges. I am a member of AAUP, but what I am seeing is that it is mainly advocating for adjunct faculty positions to be replaced by tenure-lines. They have guidelines for conversion, but at my institution, those guidelines are publicly denigrated. Instead, new tenure lines have been hired to replace older long-term and highly committed adjunct faculty. It is disingenuous to gather support for this bill based on promises to cut the abuse of adjunct faculty without explaining how that will happen. My opinion is that the guidelines for conversion from adjunct to tenure-line should be more aggressively asserted by AAUP at both public and private institutions, with sanctions when they are not followed. When those protections are in place, then it would make sense to say that this bill will help adjunct faculty.