So, out of the frying-pan into the fryer. At this point, I'll be lucky to retire with a pension, and I fear for my junior colleagues. It's such a weird experience to hear people opining about all our ill-gotten privileges. No one becomes an academic to get rich. In return for accepting token salaries, we expect--or expected--good benefits. Even those token salaries have fallen 40% behind national averages in the last decade. Now the neo-liberal technocrats want to get rid of tenure and academic freedom, hire yet more part-time instructors, start online ed (despite the huge initial investment and terrible completion rates) and set the curriculum (v. CUNY's admin's recent attempt to take over the faculty's right to design courses of study, and Idaho's ongoing suspension of the rights of its faculty government). Student fees are skyrocketing. These policies will wreck the public access to liberal arts education that once made us the most creative economy in the world. So why are we letting this happen? It's crazy. It's like Esau and the pottage.
Something that never ceases to amaze me is how many people misunderstand the actual *savings* to the government and taxpayers of the tenure system. In the so-called "real world," where one pretty much operates on a 100% merit-pay system, there would be no end to the promotions and raises I would be allowed to demand in direct proportion to my productivity [insert here: publications], or to my ingenuity [insert here: impact on one's field], or my ability to manage and direct other employees [insert here: university service], or my ability to impart information, skills, and inspire future innovations [insert here: teaching]. Now, with the tenure system, there are no promotions above the two to Assoc. and Full Professor [not counting moves into administrative posts which often mean the end of one's scholarly output, with the payoff being money or prestige or the satisfaction of effecting institutional progress or enhancing one's resume for a move elsewhere], and that means: no raises either beyond those two promotions, except for annual cost of living raises [at my institution that has been either 0% or 3% over the last 7 years], and in a few very rare places, annual merit raises [which are often also in the 2-5% range], ensuring moreover that our salaries almost never keep pace with inflation. So, for obvious reasons, the only way to really *reward* [as it were] university faculty is with so-called long-term job security, academic freedom, and some pension benefits [plus sabbatical release time]. State governments actually *benefit* economically from this state of affairs since they can, in effect, "freeze" salaries at certain levels and no matter how productive some faculty are, they can only gain additional benefits [such as release time] by seeking external sources of funding [or overly-compromised internal sources of funding, which often whimsically appear and disappear].
ReplyDelete[to be continued]
[continuing]
ReplyDeleteSo, this is just a long-winded way to say that those who think "tenure" is some sort of special, gaudy privilege for pampered faculty who are wasting the states' and taxpayers' money while "barely" working, are idiots, as in: stupid and ignorant about how university economics actually work. Likewise, the public sentiments, on the part of some, that faculty have too much time off in which we are supposedly "doing nothing," when most of us are working 7 days a week every single day of the year in order to *achieve* tenure in an increasingly overly competitive academic "market" [more PhDs combined with less tenure lines each year]. Most faculty, contrary to public opinion, are working extremely hard to keep their head above water as researchers and teachers, and increasingly, to keep pace with increasing layers of institutional and state oversight [assessment protocols, strategic planning, and the like]. It will be admitted that one of the attractions of a university faculty position is the non-9 to 5/non-cubicle/non-boss breathing down my neck structure of the academic work-day and the occasional stretches of time [for some, summers, but many work in the summer to supplement their meager incomes], but again, let us recall that this is simply a non-monetary surplus of what I would call time agency: I get to *direct* my own time/pace of work, but I'm still working, all the time, in a myriad of under-compensated ways.
The past 2 weeks alone, I worked on organizing a national conference, organized/proposed multiple conference sessions for 2 different conferences, wrote abstracts for several conference sessions, wrote abstracts for book chapters, wrote two NEH Fellowship recommendation letters, worked on a draft of an ACLS Fellowship application, wrote comments on 9 MA-seminar papers, taught 49 students in an online course on ancient Greek drama and Shakespeare, worked on an essay for a journal, Skype-conferenced with an MA student from last semester who wanted to discuss his seminar paper with me for further development, helped to copy-edit a special issue of a journal, and I could go on and on. And this is during my supposed "time off." And inbetween all of this, I tried to give whatever was left over to my family. Hello? In university life, there is no "time off." This is a SERVICE profession, and I would also say a VIRTUE profession where, pace Virgil, virtue is its own reward. We serve the public, we labor on its behalf, for its future, and we do it, for the most part, out of a crazy love of knowledge, not for its own sake, but for the public good, and for the well-being, intellectual and spiritual and otherwise, of the public.
This subject, as might be obvious right now, really works me into a lather.
I once explained something like this (not nearly so evolved, I'm sure) to an attorney in town who was teasing me about working 7 hours a week. (I pointed out, among other things, that the ratio between class time and preparation was probably not very different from that between litigation time and preparation.) After I itemized a few activities, he then said: "Why would anybody work that hard for the kind of pay you get?" There's something about the argument (we're the best deal around, bar none) that CAN'T be made successfully, which leads me to believe, as I'm sure it does you, that the bottom line isn't really the bottom line, as in fact it never is. But this doesn't relieve us of the responsibility of explaining, as best we can, how the voodoo accounting of the Academy works. (The California Senate just passed a bill demanding more budget transparency from UC--which, should the bill even pass, will be like trying to audit the Vatican.) For example, most public universities, UC included, have already "privatized" extensively, and raised student fees (with special verve over the last decade or so). We rely less and less on state funds and more and more on "other sources." The classic example is Novartis representation on Berkeley research committees. Are we still, in fact, a public university? Since most private colleges and universities also take a lot of FEDERAL funding? If we aren't, why are we still being "governed" by (in CA) the governor's appointees--primarily "de-regulation specialists" who have substantial holdings in online schooling as well as the defense industry? Many of whom got degrees from UC when it was free, but have no problem with jacking up student fees every time they have a meeting? I just mean to draw attention to the fact that, where income and assets are concerned, the distinction between public and private university is wobblier than ever these days; I don't mean that I would ever want to back away from the public good. I revere the idea of the "commonwealth." Just to point out that, academic governance structures being what they are, our ability to work for the common weal is under constant threat.
ReplyDeleteYour points regarding the increasingly "wobbly" distinction between the university as "public" and "private" are well-taken. Although I have had a few fantasies about extra-institutional universities and rogue universities and underground universities and therefore also "private-but-for-the-public" universities, I also think too heavy of a reliance upon endowments, corporate monies, and tuition fees puts the institution at great risk of ultimate bankruptcy [not to mention various compromised determinations of content, research practices, etc.]. These resources will always need to be tapped on some level [although the ideal situation would be a *free* education for students at the baccalaureate level], but I think we need states and the federal government to be involved at very committed levels--up to a point, of course. I mean, I'm not sure every single state in the US can continue to support every single flagship/R1 public universities *and* all of the smaller regional public institutions *and* all of the community colleges at full funding levels. But it seems to me that there has to be some sort of public mandate through which the funding of higher education is a top priority into perpetuity. I think some of us should also be looking at radicalizing what *could* be meant by more privatized public universities--which is to say, run by faculty.
ReplyDeleteI also dream of non-profit "co-op" universities run by faculty. "Shared governance" is completely at the mercy of higher administrations and Boards of Trustees. Until now, those bodies have at least left the academic mission to the faculty. But as we know this is now changing--and even so, it's too bald a statement. And it is changing for ideological reasons. Language departments are under threat and have famously been closed at SUNY Albany, tenured professors and all scattered to the winds; this in a time of globalization. Then, we have right-wingers of various sorts arguing that English is the global language and so a focus on monolingual competence is even more important. Could there be a connection? It is argued that enrollments are falling in language departments, so we can't afford them; but there are many more students who want to take German at UCSB than faculty to serve them. It's hard to drive up your enrollment figures when your faculty numbers have been kept artificially low--no free market there. Top-down attempts to determine curriculum violate established faculty "privilege" and free market principles as well (of course one must squint at the idea in the first place; when has there ever been a "free" market, etc.?). Students WANT to study the arts and humanities; they still sign up in droves, even in the Great Recession. Tant pis, apparently. I still think we can't afford NOT to make funding public education a top priority; but you raise an interesting question. Are research universities necessarily our goal? Because what that means, primarily, is the sciences, engineering, the professional schools--the folks who barely teach (1-2 courses a year), who sign away to corporations proprietary rights on research also funded by taxpayers, and who don't (for the most part--there are many exceptions, like Damasio) want their students wasting their time studying different cultures or poetry. Are those people reachable? A lot of the time I think they are a big part of the problem and not the solution.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIn my humble opinion, Aranye Fradenburg should be the chancellor of the entire UC system. That wouldn't be anything but good. But it would cut into the martini hour.
ReplyDeleteTo a certain extent, I think the system we have in place [if imperfectly] where each state has at least one [if not more] flagship research university, several regional M.A.-granting institutions, and several community colleges [with, of course, private universities--both R1 and small liberal arts colleges thrown in there], is a good system. There is, of course, some duplication and there are too many so-called "regional" institutions in many states that are too close to each other, geographically, to justify fully funding similar programs of study [undergrad. and grad.] at all of them--this, I think, is one place where we could think about re-allocating resources. A very difficult question has to be asked: are ALL colleges and universities currently existing, that have public funding, equally and fully deserving of getting all the funding they need/want? But we have to have fairly large-ish and "open" public R1 universities that would have some sort of carte blanche to pursue "pure" research in all areas of the sciences, humanities, social sciences, and arts and where faculty would "drive" the whole system, hopefully with some sort of mutual understanding that all of the disciplines are worthy of progressive, futural development.
ReplyDeleteThis is where gen, ed. comes in as well because, at some level, we need stronger and not weaker gen. ed. curricula in which all of the disciplines are equally valued and play a vital role in the core undergrad. curricula [what I have seen happening at my and other institutions is a *weakening* of gen. ed. curricula: less versus more credit hours, more freedom of choice for students--which isn't necessarily bad, but also allows administration more leeway to defund foreign languages and the like]. I have a Chancellor at my institution who --god love him, we have had NO cuts in salary, travel funding, or really ANYTHING due to recent economic meltdowns--has this obsession with students finishing in 4 years and has been a strong advocate of reducing the number of gen. ed. credit hours required. How to counter this?
[to be continued]
[continuing]
ReplyDeleteI personally would like to see more required team-taught courses at the undergrad. level, that would cross departments, allow students to get in *more* disciplinary diversity within what is sometimes an overly restrictive and minimalist set of required gen. ed. credit hours [thereby forcing students to choose anthropology over sociology, French over film studies, etc.], and also allowing faculty to see how thought is developed in different disciplinary paradigms. Team-teaching, also, does not necessarily mean cross- or inter-disciplinary "accommodation" or "merging"--it can be an invaluable opportunity to sharpen the [valuable] differences between disciplines in conversation with the students who then to get to see those differences in action *as well as* the valuable ways in which different paths of thinking/work can be placed alongside each other [I'm thinking here of Bill Readings's plea, especially, to work within the ruined university "without belief but with a commitment to Thought" and "a certain rhythm of disciplinary attachment and detachment" and where the QUESTION of the "disciplinary form that can be given to knowledges" becomes THE question, played out in the team-taught classroom]. As to administrators' concerns about funding these courses, make them large. I love teaching large classes: done well, they can be invigorating and exciting and very student-centered. Also: put even MORE teachers together in bigger first-year courses that would be "introductory" to certain disciplines but would also focus on pressing contemporary concerns/issues [i.e., human rights, war, economic meltdown, identity, sexuality, will/intentionality, cognition, etc.] to which the different faculty would have entirely different "approaches" and even "answers," as it were. The first-year gen. ed, course, then, as a laboratory of disciplinary difference, yet also of common [global] concerns. Disciplinarity itself then becomes one of the central pedagogical concerns of a faculty who come together as a community "of dissensus that presupposes nothing in common," and that "would seek to make its heteronomy, its differences, more complex" [Readings]. Disciplinarity itself would become the question par excellence of the R1 university.
This, btw, is also the theme of BABEL's next biennial conference in Boston in Sep. 2012.