Faculty Federation Pushes Legislative Campaign to Increase Share of Full-Time, Tenure-Track Professors
Chronicle of Higher Education 4/2/07
The legislative effort, which has been under way for just a couple of months, is called the Faculty and College Excellence campaign, and it constitutes a state-by-state stab at correcting what union leaders call the "staffing crisis" in academe.
After decades of falling state appropriations for public higher education, the union says, only 30 percent of professors in America work full time, on the tenure track or with tenure. Many of the rest are left to piece together work from course to course, semester to semester, and campus to campus -- a precarious employment situation that limits their academic freedom, the union says, and often renders giving attention to students outside the classroom a logistical impossibility.
Through its model legislation, the union is asking legislators to commit money to establish, within five years, a very different staffing ratio: three full-time, tenure-track professors for every part-time professor at public universities. (Some state bills phrase this by asking that 75 percent of courses be taught by full-time, tenure-track professors.)
The campaign also asks state elected officials to appropriate money over the same five-year time frame specifically for raising the pay of part-timers until it is equal, course for course, to that of full timers.
How much will all this cost? A lot, admits Barbara E. Bowen, a vice president of the union and an associate professor of English at Queens College of the City University of New York. However, she says, "the real cost is the cost of not addressing the academic staffing crisis."
The campaign, known as FACE, has its critics, even among part-time professors. Keith Hoeller, an activist for adjunct professors in Washington State, says the campaign's model legislation does not adequately ensure that adjuncts will be first in line for any new full-time jobs, and he fears that some part-time instructors will lose work.
Some teaching assistants who attended the conference also said that, although they support the campaign, they have some anxieties about what effect the legislation, if it succeeds, would have on them.
If the cost of hiring part-time professors goes up, they say, graduate students could become "the last exploitable group." And if future iterations of the bill add provisions to improve the pay of teaching assistants, then universities could respond by offering fewer teaching assistantships -- and hence less financing for graduate school.
The legislation has been introduced in 10 states: California, Connecticut, Florida, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia. The union plans to eventually have it introduced in several more states.
The American Federation of Teachers represents about 160,000 professors, professional staff, and teaching assistants within higher education across the country.
Union leaders at the meeting also devoted much of their attention to another legislative campaign that is making its way across the nation's statehouses this legislative session -- that of David Horowitz's "academic bill of rights" -- a set of principles that he says will make universities more intellectually diverse and more tolerant of conservative viewpoints.
"We're playing defense," said William E. Scheuerman, a vice president of the American Federation of Teachers. The union has been busy sending groups of professors and students to statehouses to testify against legislation based on Mr. Horowitz's proposal.
According to Ms. Bowen, the two legislative campaigns give warring portrayals of the crisis in higher education. In her view, Mr. Horowitz's version of the crisis is inaccurate -- and a diversion.
"The crisis is not a lack of conservative viewpoints or the lack of biology professors who don't believe in evolution," said Ms. Bowen. "It is the long-term, systematic withdrawal of funds from higher education."
It remains to be seen which version of the crisis, if any, motivates legislators to act: During this legislative session here in Oregon, versions of the "academic bill of rights" and versions of the FACE campaign's legislation have both been introduced in the statehouse.