Another reason why the argument that today’s problems in the academic labor market are caused by the recession bothers me is that it simply isn’t true.
When I was a union organizer at Yale between 2003 and 2007, the main issue we were discussing and trying to fight was casualization of academic labor. Casualization means the destruction of tenure lines in favor of adjunct positions. And when I joined the union, that fight had already been going on for a while.
This is why it bothers me to see people buy into the egregious and dangerous lie that the current situation was caused by the recession. All the recession did was intensify a trend that had been developing for a while.
The excuse we keep being given for the destruction of tenure lines is that there is no money for them because of the crisis. That is a lie, people. There is money aplenty. None of it goes to people who teach and do research. This is the real problem, and it was not caused by the crisis.
It pains me to see intelligent, good people buy into this fiction of big, bad recession that is forcing college administrators to exploit adjuncts. Nobody forces the administrators to do that. If times are as tough as we are told, why don’t we get rid of half of our useless paper pushers with their “austerity exercises”, “diversity initiatives”, “5-minute networking sessions” and all the other crap they keep dishing out to conceal their extreme uselessness?
So let’s stop listening to these lies about the recession and start asking why the first and only answer to absolutely anything that happens in academia these days is to defraud students and educators.
As the protesters in Spain keep saying, “There is no crisis. The system is broken.”
Clarissa's Blog 
Observe (for example): http://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/publications/see-all/aaup-contingent-faculty-index-2006
Also: http://www.aaup.org/issues/contingent-faculty/resources-contingent-appointments
According to AAUP the rise in contingency has been sharpest in eras of prosperity. I cannot find that page right now but their site is really worth going through re contingency, they have a lot of material and it would be very useful for anyone who wanted to organize.
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Exactly! The crisis is nothing but an excuse and it slaughters me to see people repeating it as if their memory of what was happening pre-2007 has been wiped out.
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I think sometimes people buy the austerity line because they want to suffer. In Australia, we have had an economic boom — the only country not to succumb to the global recession, but we had to get rid of a female prime minister, who made us feel badly about ourselves, so we voted in a guy who will impose austerity measures so that we can all feel real again.
The need to suffer so as to feel real is probably as hold as humanity itself. It’s why rituals were invented. Their sadomasochism is not incidental. There’s a certain benefit in feeling the limits of one’s being, which can serve to reorient slightly more healthy people toward the world at large. But then there are the really sick, who just want to suffer, and don’t care about it so long as they get the chance to drag others down. Australia is filled with these sorts of people — Irish Catholics — as well.
So I think austerity often happens because we wilfully choose it, rather than as an externally imposed necessity. It also speaks to a failure of the imagination — one could choose to suffer, for instance, by trying to pass one’s next martial arts grading, or by writing a very difficult academic paper or by flying to the moon. Instead, one demands that one’s suffering be simple and imposed from the outside. This is the scourge required by people who are truly mediocre — and they require it for the rest of us as well.
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I guess this is so difficult for me to understand because I don’t suffer from this particular mental issue.
“It also speaks to a failure of the imagination — one could choose to suffer, for instance, by trying to pass one’s next martial arts grading, or by writing a very difficult academic paper or by flying to the moon. Instead, one demands that one’s suffering be simple and imposed from the outside. This is the scourge required by people who are truly mediocre — and they require it for the rest of us as well.”
– Jennifer, you are absolutely the most brilliant person I have ever met. And I’ve met many truly brilliant people. You take any issue and see straight to the core of it. I don’t know how you do it, it’s just bizarre.
I will be starting a file where I will keep quotes from you because this stuff deserves being preserved for a long time to come.
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Oh, because I trained under Nietzsche. I mean really. I took everything he said seriously and used it to reflect on my life and what I saw around me. So this is basically Nietzschean analysis through a contemporary lens.
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The austerity argument also often pits TT faculty against adjuncts by implying that there is no possibility of increasing the total salary pool. If colleges had to hire predominately full-time faculty to maintain their accreditations, I bet the salary pool would mysteriously increase.
For anyone who thinks that’s worth pursuing I have compiled links to the relevant US accreditation agencies, their accreditation criteria (with notes about which criteria are relevant to adjunctification), and their third-party comment systems and accreditation schedules. Folks can find it at my blog, http://raosyth.com/blog/?p=1056.
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Last year, we had to engage in “a budget-cutting exercise” where we had to imagine how we could cut our departmental budget by 25%. This meant firing people because we have nothing but salaries on our budget. What is very curious is that not even 0.00001% of the cuts were supposed to come from administrative budget. And what is even more curious, nobody really questioned why that was.
I think it’s a great idea to make accreditations dependent on this.
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Pat, don’t limit yourself to FTE, say tenure track. If we couldn’t fill our FTEs with low-paid MAs, the salary pool would have to increase.
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In NY, the argument against tenure positions is that teachers with tenure have less incentive to push themselves, and it’s harder to remove them.
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This is the favorite argument of ultra-conservatives and it drives me absolutely nuts. People who’d stop working if they had their jobs guaranteed project their own laziness and stupidity onto teachers.
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I’m with you. I don’t know any teachers that got into it looking to get rich.
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Firstly they have to get rid of academic tenure. It has long passed its usefulness. The only people who benefit from it are those with tenure: not the colleges/universities and certainly not the students. Getting rid of tenure will go a long way, I think, to improving the prospects of adjuncts and students alike.
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How exactly will students benefit from being taught by people who are terrified of doing and publishing research? Or do you believe that stopping all research will make this country more competitive on the world market?
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Tenure was originally developed to give academic freedom and to encourage diversity of thought. But in recent decades it has had the opposite effect: it encourages a rigid conformity of thought. That is why you see only a very small minority of tenured professors with anything but a hard left ideology (at least in the non-STEM departments). In addition, tenured professors (again mainly in non-STEM) have minimal interaction and involvement with undergraduates. And IMHO the “research” is usually more like paid vacations. What other industry has a guaranteed job for life no matter how much or little value you bring to the table? (OK, federal government employees – but that is another story – and those are not “official” guarantees.
If they did away with tenure I think the first thing you’d see is the pay and conditions for adjuncts immediately improve. Next I think you’d see more people with actual real world experience becoming adjuncts for a time and giving the students something of real value. I am a small business owner with real world experience. I have done the adjunct thing a couple of times, but honestly the financial rewards are so tiny that it amounts to charity work. And there is essentially zero support from the school administrations.
I have a couple of acquaintances who are tenured professors and I saw how incredibly political the tenure process is. Above all else, you have to have the “correct” thoughts.
No, I think all parties would benefit if academic tenure was relinquished to history.
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“That is why you see only a very small minority of tenured professors with anything but a hard left ideology (at least in the non-STEM departments). In addition, tenured professors (again mainly in non-STEM) have minimal interaction and involvement with undergraduates. And IMHO the “research” is usually more like paid vacations. ”
– You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
“What other industry has a guaranteed job for life no matter how much or little value you bring to the table?”
– You think that tenure guarantees one a job for life??? OK, I’m sorry I wasted time discussing anything with somebody so ignorant.
What is the point of chirping on subjects you know nothing about?
“I have a couple of acquaintances who are tenured professors and I saw how incredibly political the tenure process is. Above all else, you have to have the “correct” thoughts.”
– I don’t want to offend you, but just based on your comments here, a person of intelligence would not spend any time with you. You are incapable of a dialogue, every word you say is a boring platitude, you don’t have a single interesting idea, you are verbose, and your language skills are poor. Have you tried reading books? I recommend XIXth-century novels. They will expand your vocabulary and improve your language skills.
Good luck!
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May I ask how old you are? You respond like a spoiled child to someone you disagree with: with insults and invective. I’ve offered civil responses the challenge your world view, and you respond with insults and “no it isn’t” like a Monty Pythons argument clinic.
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And your people skills suck, too. You can’t even notice that you are being dismissed. Man, it’s like there is nothing at all going for you.
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If you are any older than 16 then you should be embarrassed by your reactions. I am older than you (based on your responses) more mature than you and have seen much more of life and the world than you. I own a small business and have been a producer and a taxpayer for more years than you have been alive: basically the kind of person who makes the lives of parasites such as you possible. When people like me stop participating, who will fund your leftist utopia? Certainly not people like you who produce nothing of value. And as long as this is a public forum I will choose when or when not to participate. If you want to make sure that people who challenge your world view do not participate you will have to ban me.
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“And as long as this is a public forum I will choose when or when not to participate.”
– No, sweetie pie, this is not how this works. 🙂 You are allowed to chirp as long as you entertain me. When you become obnoxious, I kick your silly ass off my blog. Got it?
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