Stifling the Economy of Ideas
Sometimes data and statistics fail us. I work in the humanities so I’m not entirely surprised to say this, but I was shocked when I saw the data released in a recent report by the American Association of University Professors on the Economic Status of the Profession. Swimming in charts and graphs, it looked as if academics were faring fairly well: salaries were up and it initially appeared that tenured, tenure-track, and contingent faculty were doing all right.
I don’t interpret data, and taking the graphs and charts at face value made it difficult for me to reconcile our current subjective situation and the numbers. Fortunately, the AAUP did interpret their statistics, and the situation is as grim as it appears in our own minds and lived experiences.
The economy is hardly stable, which is a large part of the reason that we cannot rely on overall averages to tell us the whole story. Energy costs at the beginning of the 2007-2008 academic year were at an all-time high. These costs then rapidly fell for any number of reasons. This explains why transit costs are the only cost of living expenses that show a decline during the past academic year. (This may seem particularly ironic to New Yorkers, who are faced with balancing the MTA budget on their own backs–with a 20 percent increase in the cost of a monthly Metrocard.)
Even with energy costs decreasing, the cost of everything else was, and continues to be, on the rise. There may have been, as the AAUP states, a "one-time bump in average salaries" from the 2006-2007 academic year, but when adjusted for inflation, full-time faculty salaries in 2007-2008 are only 1.2 percent higher than they were in 2001-2002. The actual inflation-adjusted increase is lower for employees of public school systems such as CUNY. The cost of housing, over the past year alone, was up 2.4 percent, food was up 5.8 percent, and health care was up 3 percent. It’s no wonder, then, that even those in the highest echelons of academia are finding it more and more difficult to maintain their lifestyles.
Clearly the nation is facing an economic crisis, and it is carrying over into our education system. According to the AAUP, "in some states, public college and university faculty members are subject to the same salary and hiring freezes, benefit cuts, dismissals, and furloughs that are being applied to other state employees as governors and legislatures struggle to balance budgets in the face of revenue shortfalls. The problem with this shortsighted approach is that it treats faculty members and other higher education workers only as a "cost" to the state, rather than as the engine for growth they really represent."
This statement is interesting for many reasons, not least of which is that the public and academics themselves often view academia as an island, one that has very little impact on the real world. Think what you will of your own and your colleagues’ research (and what a dim view of it that is), we are also in the business of educating people. Time and time again during economic downturns, we see the public returning to school, either because they were laid off or they see further education as a means to advance their career. The public isn’t wrong: "data reported by the U.S. Census Bureau show that, on average, a person who had completed a bachelor’s degree earned almost twice the income of a person with only a high school diploma in 2007. Going on to earn a master’s degree raises income again by more than 20 percent, and obtaining a professional degree doubles the salary of a four-year college graduate." As applications increase and faculty members are asked to teach more and larger classes, they are actually aiding in our nation’s economic growth.
But budgets need to be balanced, and colleges and universities have been asked to take the hit. It’s ironic that as enrollment increases in both two- and four-year colleges, budgets are being scaled back and tuition raised. It’s not accidental–here at CUNY only 20 percent of the tuition hike is being turned back over to the university system. The remaining 80 percent will be used to balance the state budget. It’s also important to note that CUNY officials are pleased that we are getting such a large amount back; that’s a much larger number than has been seen in past tuition increases.
Obviously, increased enrollment has an impact on tenured and tenure-track faculty. They are asked to teach more and larger classes and are often asked to sacrifice some of their specialty courses to teach the basics. Sometimes it’s hard for contingent employees to feel sympathy for full-time faculty, but these are real issues. It impacts our own future as potential tenured professors, and it also means that contingent workers are being let go at higher rates.
There seem to be two paradoxical strategies to dealing with rising enrollment in universities when it comes to contingent workers. The first is to hire more of them. In 1975, only 30 percent of university faculty nationwide was part-time. In 2007, the number reached just over 50 percent. This number doesn’t come as a surprise. At CUNY, over 60 percent of the teaching faculty are contingent. The second strategy is to, as the AAUP so neatly puts it, rely heavily on the "contingent aspect of contingent appointments" and let contingent employees go without cause or recourse. This provides university systems with a "highly flexible" workforce, which is really just a euphemism for paying less money for people with equal education and skills.
Contingent workers in universities aren’t all the same. When I was out doing class visits for Campus Equity last month I repeatedly asked classes "What is an adjunct?" Inevitably, the first (and often only) answer that came up was that an adjunct is a graduate student, someone still working on getting her PhD, often overworked from that particular set of responsibilities. I think that graduate students are the most visible of the contingent teaching faculty at CUNY. We often talk about our experiences in school and classes, and, as one student said, "tend to act all crazy and tired all the time." I gently explained to all of these classes that adjuncts can be graduate students, but they also can be people with the same education and professional accomplishments as full-time faculty. Additionally, they can also be people out working in their own fields and professions and bringing that experience back to the classroom.
Following a corporate model, it’s nice to have all those options. But education isn’t a corporation and it becomes impossible to sustain any level of academic freedom within this model. While we often discuss the economic consequences of being so heavily reliant on contingent workers, we gloss over this crucial idea: it damages the university community and the ideal of the university when over 50 percent of teaching faculty do not have academic freedom. Academic freedom has been sacred to the academy, and the use of contingent faculty is a seamless and almost invisible way to erode this fundamental principle.
The AAUP’s 2008 release "Looking the Other Way? Accreditation Standards and Part-Time Faculty," argues that there are no sustained and systemic ways of protecting the academic freedom of contingent workers. Four of the seven large accrediting commissions make no mention of protecting part-time faculty in standards, and the remaining three, Middle States included, vary greatly. Most of these statements are broad; Middle States has the most specific: "Academic freedom, intellectual freedom, and freedom of expression are central to the academic enterprise [and] should be extended to all members of the institution’s community (i.e., full-time faculty, adjunct, visiting, or part-time faculty)." Without specific definition of any of the three protected categories, this statement becomes useless. Allowing for such broad interpretation affords universities the opportunity to use statements made by contingent faculty within and outside of the classroom as reasons for dismissal (when they don’t even need a reason to dismiss!)
Academic freedom can be profoundly misunderstood. It is often touted in the conservative media as something awful, nearly always citing some single controversial statement made by a politically unpopular professor somewhere. While professors in these instances deserve the fullest protection afforded them, academic freedom goes beyond this. It allows full-time faculty, graduate students, and (hopefully) contingent workers the ability to pursue their own research and political interests without retribution. Without it, academics might not have the opportunity to change from someone who studies Renaissance Italy to someone who studies Colonial Mexico. That might seem trite, but without the ability to make these changes scholars become stagnant and the academy begins to lack fresh ideas and new insight. If scholars cannot pursue their own academic and teaching interests (and cannot speak their minds) an atmosphere of fear develops within institutions and the ability of professors to add to the body of knowledge becomes severely limited.
Given the state of higher education both locally and nationwide, we often focus on questions of the economy. But what becomes of our own economy of ideas and idea exchange when colleges and universities rely too heavily on unprotected classes of workers? In order to maintain a truly flexible workforce, if that is how academics will be considered in our current world, universities must recognize that protecting academic freedom affords individuals opportunities for growth and flexibility, and protects them when someone better, or cheaper, comes along.
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