ContingentFaculty

ContingentFaculty https://www.dailykos.com/news/ContingentFaculty News Community Action Copyright 2005 - Steal what you want Sun, 26 Jan 2020 13:21:44 +0000 Sun, 26 Jan 2020 13:21:44 +0000 Daily Kos rss@dailykos.com (Daily Kos) Daily Kos rss@dailykos.com (Daily Kos) Contingent Faculty and the Viability of Higher Education in the U.S. https://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/19/1434729/-Contingent-Faculty-and-the-Viability-of-Higher-Education-in-the-U-S (This is a report on the growing consensus among higher education scholars, including accrediting agencies and the Association of Governing Boards (AGB), that contingent faculty should not be contingent, they should be participatory.  The University of California administration is currently in negotiations with UC-AFT, which represents UC’s thousands of lecturers. The administration’s bargaining team is acting as if the working conditions of UC Lecturers are somehow not the teaching conditions of the university. This flies in the face of the facts on the ground, as well as the consensus of research and, now, policy on the role of faculty in higher education instruction.) * From its beginnings it has been accepted that the education part of higher education needs to be left to the experts (the practitioners), the faculty. The accrediting agencies, the gatekeepers of higher education quality in the U.S., have accepted this from the beginning. Over the last 20 years, as the percentage of tenure track faculty has declined significantly as they are replaced by “contingent” (adjunct, lecturers, part-time, temporary, etc.) faculty, there has been a debate about what this means for higher education. The debate is over.   So-called “contingent” faculty need to become participating (to use one accrediting agency’s term) teaching faculty in the full sense, to join tenure track teaching faculty and tenure track research-teaching faculty in the governance of colleges and universities. This means taking the contingency, the precariousness, out of the job as much as possible. A livable wage, security of employment (continuing appointments, seniority, regularized hiring and firing procedures), professional development support and a significant role in governance are needed to sustain (or restore) faculty control of educational decisions at U.S. colleges and universities. Otherwise, affordable, democratic, mass, academic education in the U.S. is not viable. This is now the consensus of accreditors, faculty organizations, disciplinary and field organizations, higher education researchers, organized higher education labor, and even the Association of Governing Boards (AGB), which includes the University of California Regents among its 1,900 members, the vast majority of U.S. college and university trustees and regents. In the past, the main accrediting agencies in the U.S. failed to take the status (and therefore their ability to contribute to their colleges and universities) of contingent faculty into account when evaluating colleges and universities for accreditation. This is now changing. Driven by years of reports and initiatives by disciplinary groups (which do their own important accrediting as well), faculty groups, and individual colleges and universities, a major policy shift has taken place. It is no longer defensible (intellectually or morally) to assume lecturing at the University of California is a temporary job for recent graduates or a simple class-by-class “at will” hire that can wait for the last minute, or something that graduate students, community professionals, or even undergraduates can step in and do in a pinch. The convenience of precarious employment for Deans and other middle management is meaningless in the face of the need for Lecturers to be participating faculty and afforded the opportunity to fully contribute to the educational mission of the University of California. An excellent overview of this new consensus is the recent article in Trusteeship Magazine, of the AGB, by the leading researchers Adrianna Kezar and Daniel Maxey. As it points out, better treatment of so-called “contingent” faculty is crucial for the future of higher education in the U.S. It goes into great detail about how better treatment/status of participating faculty is fundamental for the viability of colleges and universities, including better pay, more participation in governance, and more security of employment. The legal dangers Universities face if they fail in these reforms is among the surprising highlights. Particularly revealing are the <a href="http://agb.org/trusteeship/2013/5/changing-academic-workforce">principles that the Board of Regents of the University System of Maryland</a> has recently adopted. These principles are significantly better than many of the UC administration’s policies, calling for a 45-day advance hiring deadline, for example. <a href="http://agb.org/trusteeship/2013/5/changing-academic-workforce%20&nbsp;%20&nbsp;">The AGB’s recent report on the “Changing Academic Workforce”</a> by Kezar et al, fleshes this analysis out. A recent report by the Council of Higher Education Accreditors, <a href="http://www.chea.org/pdf/Examination_Changing_Faculty_2013.pdf">"An Examination of Changing Faculty"</a> urges more emphasis on adjunct faculty conditions in accreditation determinations, is described in Inside Higher Ed in the article <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/01/28/new-report-urges-more-emphasis-adjunct-faculty-conditions-accreditation">"New Report Urges More Emphasis on Adjunct Faculty Conditions in Accreditation."</a>" If one wants to look at this debate historically, a good place to start is with the history of the attempts by writing and English teachers and their professional associations to improve the status of “contingent” faculty. Published in 2011, in a special issue of College English dedicated to Contingent Faculty, Mike Palmquist and Sue Doe <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/23052344?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">describe in detail</a> how groups like the NCTE, the Conference on College Composition and Communication, the Modern Language Association, the American Studies Association and the American Historical Association, among others, have been campaigning for, in some cases, 25 years, to improve higher education by improving the conditions of non-tenure track faculty. Another good reference, is the prescient Association of American University Professors (AAUP) 2007 report: <a href="http://www.aaup.org/report/looking-other-way-accreditation-standards-and-part-time-faculty">"Looking the Other Way: Accreditation Standards and Part-time Faculty."</a> In the accompanying Bibliography, these and other reports and analysis are listed. Once the bureaucrats "catch up" with the educators and the students and the workers--we can all work toward participatory faculty status for the precarious. It will be a big step toward more democratic, and more viable, universities and colleges across North America. Chris Hables Gray, Ph.D., Lecturer, Crown College, University of California at Santa Cruz Member, UC-AFT and Vice-President for Organizing, but this is not an official statement of the union. Bibliography American Anthropology Association (2010) <a href="http://sunta.org/files/2010/12/Resolution-on-Contingent-Part-time-Academic-Labor.-.pdf">“Resolution on Contingent Part-time Academic Labor.”</a> American Federation of Teachers (2014) <a href="http://www.aft.org/position/academic-staffing/accreditation-standards-academic-staffing">"Accreditation standards for academic staffing."</a> American Historical Association (2014) <a href="https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/february-2014/the-aha-ad-hoc-committee-on-contingent-faculty">"Charge for the Committee on Contingent Faculty."</a> American Psychology Association (2007) <a href="http://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2007/01/cover-expansion.aspx">"The expansion of contingent faculty."</a>   American Sociology Association <a href="http://www.asanet.org/images/asa/docs/pdf/Task%20Force%20on%20Contingent%20and%20Part%20Time%20Faculty.pdf">"Academic Relations: The Use of Supplementary Faculty."</a> Association of American University Professors (2007) <a href="http://www.aaup.org/report/looking-other-way-accreditation-standards-and-part-time-faculty">"Looking the Other Way?Accreditation Standards and Part-Time Faculty."</a> Association of Governing Boards (AGB) (2013) <a href="http://agb.org/trusteeship/2013/5/changing-academic-workforce">"The Changing Academic Workforce"</a> Cross, John G. and Edie N. Goldenberg (2011) Off-Track Profs: Nontenured Teachers in Higher Education, MIT Press. Council of Higher Education Accreditors (2014) <a href="http://www.chea.org/pdf/Examination_Changing_Faculty_2013.pdf">“An Examination of the Changing Faculty: Ensuring Institutional Quality and Achieving Desired Student Learning Outcomes”</a> (led by Adrianna Kezar, co-director of USC’s Pullias Center for Higher Education).   The Delphi Project/Pullias Center for Higher Education  <a href="http://thechangingfaculty.org/">The Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success</a>. Flaherty, Colleen (2014) <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/01/28/new-report-urges-more-emphasis-adjunct-faculty-conditions-accreditation">“Focus on Faculty,”</a> Inside Higher Ed, January 28. Kezar, Adrianna (2012) Embracing Non-Tenure-Track Faculty, Routledge. Kezar, Adrianna and Daniel Maxey (2013) “The Changing Academic Workplace, Trusteeship Magazine, May/June. Kezar, Adrianna and Cecile Sam (2010) Understanding the New Majority: Contingent Faculty in Higher Ed, Volume I and II, Jossey-Bass. Palmquist, Mike and Sue Doe (2011)<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/23052344?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">“Contingent Faculty: Introduction"</a> College English, vol. 73/no. 4, March, pp. 353-55. Society for Classical Studies (2014) <a href="https://contingentlaborinclassics.wordpress.com/">"Contingent Labor in the Classics: The New Faculty Majority?"</a> Trower, Cathy A. (2012) <a href="http://agb.org/trusteeship/2012/11/academic-tenure-and-traditional-assumptions-boards-should-question">“Academic Tenure and the Traditional Assumptions Boards Should Question.”</a> Trusteeship, November/December. Trower, Cathy (2013) and Barbara Gitenstein, <a href="http://agb.org/store/what-board-members-need-know-about-faculty">What Board Members Need to Know About Faculty</a>, AGB Press.   rss@dailykos.com (Crystal Ray) AmericanFederationofTeachers ContingentFaculty Culture Education HigherEducation Labor UniversityofCalifornia _1434729 Mon, 19 Oct 2015 16:42:31 +0000 U. of California vs. Lecturers: The fight to go from precarious to participatory https://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/20/1427990/-U-of-California-vs-Lecturers-The-fight-to-go-from-precarious-to-participatory <div class="dkimg-c"><img src="http://images.dailykos.com/images/171046/large/justice.jpg?1445278148" alt="" width="550" height="413" /></div> This coming Halloween, the contract between the University of California and its thousands of lecturers, represented by the University Council of the American Federation of Teachers (UC-AFT, who also represent UC librarians), will expire. For over a year the two sides have been locked in negotiations over the expiring contract, which has already been extended once. The administration considers lecturers "at will" employees (like McDonalds workers!) and has refused to accept that the precarious working conditions of lecturers now is not just unfair to them, but is also bad for the University. It is also in opposition to <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/blog/Crystal%20Ray">the consensus in higher education academic policy circles that the precarious employment of contingent faculty (adjuncts, lecturers, never-to-be-tenured professors, visiting appointments that last decades, and graduate students) has to come to an end</a>. The working conditions of all these precarious faculty, the majority of those teaching at US and Canadian universities and colleges, are the learning conditions of almost every college student in North America. And what is behind the resistance of higher education administrators to regularizing and valuing the work of the majority of their instructors? Are there any academic studies that show that underpaid highly trained professional university and college teachers do a better job than those that are well compensated? Are there new results from higher education scholarship that demonstrates that the very faculty who are evaluated on their teaching (as opposed to mainly their research) should be part-time, at-will, temporary parts of their communities, marginalized and encouraged to move-on after a few years of paid-by-the-class piece-work? Have middle-level Deans and other bureaucrats shown that underpaying, disempowering, and churning trained university instructors with advanced degrees and excellent evaluations really does save money and yet keeps instructional quality high? Of course not. There are no such studies. The relentless pressure to keep contingent teachers precarious comes from the short sighted desire of small minded academic officials who want to keep all possible power in their hands. Consider the latest in a long line of teaching and financial scandals at the University of California at Berkeley (UCB). <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/10/13/popular-lecturer-berkeley-will-lose-job-despite-strong-record-promoting-student">The Math Department there has decided to fire  (they'd say "not rehire") their best teacher for teaching too well!</a> Alexander Coward has been the best teacher in Math at UCB since he started, as is revealed by their own metrics. Not only do his students out perform all others in end-of-term calculus testing, but they love him. Almost 3,000 have promised to come to a protest when the University reviews its firing. Coward been teaching at UCB for several years but remains four years away from a continuing appointment. In 2003, UC lecturers won one of the very best adjunct contracts in the US, after a massive campaign that included rallies, marches, strikes and incredible support from students, other faculty, alumni and many elected officials. It not only included some of the highest pay ever for such teaching, but also some job security for a minority of lecturers (continuing appointments after six years probation) and some other protections. But that was 12 years ago. Since then those protections have been eroded by a relentless campaign by parts of the administration to weaken the union through taking many grievances all the way to arbitration (UC-AFT almost always wins, but has to pay half the costs anyway), churning (firing excellent lecturers before they can achieve continuing status, as with Alexander Coward), creating fake job titles to keep people out of the union, and undemocratic academic practices, even purges of teaching artists and musicians --such as the campaign to eliminate practicing arts and performance at UC Santa Cruz because of one Dean's idea of what the U. of California should do... and it doesn't include doing art, actually dancing, or making music. But theory about art, dancing and music is fine. So much for praxis. The bigger picture isn't any better. Because of the recession and declining support from the State of California, the UC has gone through a traumatic time the last dozen years, that has included cut backs, sell-outs (especially of California students), sell-offs (of research to corporations) and speed-ups--not just of the work of lecturers and librarians, but for everyone except the higher administration, which continues to grow despite everything. Inevitably, tenure track faculty numbers have declined and contingent faculty have been increased to fill the gap. This kind of thing is happening all across North America. Some places it is even worse, with direct political attacks on great public universities in Wisconsin and North Carolina, for example. But the University of California should not just be "not as bad" as North Carolina. It needs to do much better. It should lead the way toward regularizing so-called contingent faculty because that is the only way to sustainable excellence. <div class="dkimg-r"><img src="http://images.dailykos.com/images/171045/small/1.jpg?1445278130" alt="" width="118" height="166" /></div> Yet, instead of agreeing to stop churning, to give new lecturers excellence reviews (why are they against documenting and rewarding excellent teaching?), to give lecturers stable hiring processes, to cut the probationary period of continuing appointments from six (!) to four years, to stop increasing workload, and to give lecturers a real voice in academic decisions, they so far are offering nothing. Pretty much nothing. But the point is, as UC-AFT struggles for a better contract for Lecturers at the University of California, it is important to remember that UC-AFT is not just trying to improve the situation of UC Lecturers. Their professional treatment directly impacts the mission of the University of California, the people’s university, established in the Constitution of the State of California. The UC administration has, under UC-AFT pressure, given lecturers a half-way decent wage (now in need of adjustment) and has created a professional development fund. But it is especially derelict in its duty when it resists attempts to shorten the Lecturer probation period (from the outrageous six years) and deal in other serious ways with job security, grievance procedures, churning, and other crucial conditions of lecturer work. A while ago in Italy contingent workers, all those workers without secure and sustainable employment (almost everyone these days), started carrying around their invented saint, Saint Precaria, a saint for precarious workers. Lecturers, adjunct faculty, part-timers, freeway flyers, the frontline teachers at the universities and colleges of North America now also call on St. Precaria for succor. After all, she is the saint of those fighting for more democracy, justice, to educate the next generations well, and to honor the work of the mind. And above all, she is the saint of those who help themselves. Chris Hables Gray is a continuing lecturer at Crown College of the University of California at Santa Cruz and a probationary lecturer at College 10 and for the writing program, also at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is the elected Vice-President for Organizing of UC-AFT. This is not an official UC-AFT statement. <a rel="lightbox" href="http://images.dailykos.com/images/171049/lightbox/IMG_0124.jpg?1445278708"><img src="http://images.dailykos.com/images/171049/large/IMG_0124.jpg?1445278708" alt="" width="550" height="413" /></a> St. Precaria protesting at UC Santa Cruz rss@dailykos.com (Crystal Ray) AFT California casuallabor ContingentFaculty duallabor Education Exploitation HigherEducation Labor StPrecaria UC-AFT UniversityofCalifornia _1427990 Tue, 20 Oct 2015 17:43:25 +0000 Taking the Austerity Bait Will Shatter Obama's Plans For Higher Ed https://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/12/4/669445/-Taking-the-Austerity-Bait-Will-Shatter-Obama-s-Plans-For-Higher-Ed cross-posted from <a href="http://howtheuniversityworks.com/wordpress/">howtheuniversityworks.com</a> and the <a href="http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/bousquet/taking-the-austerity-bait-will-shatter-obamas-plans-for-higher-ed">Chronicle of Higher Education</a> Without federal leadership, the crumbling faculty infrastructure will remain disproportionately white and male in the best-paying and most secure positions. With everyone else getting bailed out, higher education is at an absolutely critical juncture, with profound implications for academic actors at all institution types, and their ambitions to serve racial and economic justice. On the one hand, yesterday's major AFT report on the permatemping of the faculty urges the necessity of <a href="http://www.aftface.org/storage/face/documents/reversing_course.pdf">reversing course</a> on academic staffing. rss@dailykos.com (Marc Bousquet) AAUP Class ContingentFaculty Faculty HigherEducation Obama Race _669445 Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:27:55 +0000