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Here is a thread to help people understand the growth of the #gigeconomy in #highereducation in the U.S., or what Kim Moody calls the “proletarianization” of college teachers.
1) Many people think tenure— a seniority system for hiring and retaining faculty that is run by faculty themselves— is normal for college instructors. It's not. The majority of college teachers in the U.S. are ineligible for tenure. This has been the case for almost 50 years.
2) Federal student loans & grants spurred the “massification” of higher education in the 1960s-70s, which dramatically increased access to college for ordinary Americans. Recessions and tax revolts in the 1970s-80s made maintaining access more difficult. web.stanford.edu/group/ncpi/doc…
3) College administrators responded to budget cuts by reducing costs more than enrollment. Since 1975, the majority of U.S. college teachers have been temps with titles like full-time and part-time “lecturer”, “adjunct” faculty, or “visiting” instructors. aaup.org/sites/default/…
4) Though the decline of tenure for college faculty is not new, the problem has gotten much worse. Since the 1970s, the percentage of faculty eligible for tenure has declined 50%. Today, over 70% of college instructors are now temps. lawcha.org/2016/09/02/dec…
5) Turning college teachers into temps has been most extreme at for-profit colleges, where tenure essentially does not exist. This is part of the for-profit business: use high tuition to channel students’ grants and loans to shareholders, not teachers. aacu.org/liberaleducati…
6) In non-profit #highereducation, which includes both public and private schools, community colleges have been the vanguard of the race to the bottom for college teachers. Across the U.S., between 65-80% of all community college teachers are temps. lawcha.org/2016/09/02/dec…
7) Nearly all community colleges and for-profit colleges around the U.S. pay their adjunct faculty poverty wages. It is not unusual for adjuncts at these schools to make $2-4k per 15-week course with minimal job security and no health benefits. lawcha.org/2016/09/02/dec…
8) The decline of college teaching as a profession is not limited to community colleges & for-profits. It touches all parts of the American higher education system. Most instructors at most kinds of U.S. colleges and universities are ineligible for tenure. aaup.org/sites/default/…
9) Not all non-tenure track faculty positions pay poorly, or are contract positions by term. Some (predominantly full-time) positions pay what could be considered living wages, and may come with multi-year contracts with regular renewal. These are the minority.
10) Whereas the majority of tenure track faculty are white men, the majority of non-tenure track faculty are white women. There is a larger percentage of Black and Latinx women who are off the tenure track than are on. nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/disp…
11) As with K-12 schools, low faculty pay & large class sizes reduce teaching quality. To earn a living, the majority of non-tenure track faculty must teach college on the side or teach too many classes to give students the attention they deserve. lawcha.org/2016/09/02/dec…
12) Many people incorrectly assume that the decline of college teaching is a natural result of an “oversupply” of people with PhDs. This ignores the ongoing high demand for college teachers, and the fact that most college teachers don’t have PhDs. lawcha.org/2017/01/09/dec…
13) As Marc Bousquet pointed out 15 years ago, academic associations ignored the decline of their professions for decades by defining the “job market” as synonymous with the number of job openings for tenure track faculty. This erasure still happens today. web.archive.org/web/2016062801…
14) Until recently, professors at prestigious colleges also ignored the decline of their professions. Pedigree bias in faculty hiring made it easier for them and the students they train to obtain tenure track jobs, making the problem seem less pressing. slate.com/human-interest…
15) The great recession increased popular awareness about the decline of the college teaching. Because instead of raising taxes on the wealthy, most state governments cut spending. Since college funding is “discretionary”, it suffered enormously. americanprogress.org/issues/educati…
16) Public schools responded to cuts by laying off of tens of thousands of adjuncts, and freezing the hiring of tenure track faculty. The lack of decent jobs for people with PhDs became much worse very quickly, such as shown here for history teachers. historians.org/publications-a…
17) It is ironic that tenure track faculty hiring freezes occurred during the great recession, just as millions of people responded to high unemployment by going to college for job (re)training. census.gov/library/storie…
18) After the faculty and staff layoffs and hiring freezes, administrators increased tuition, enrollment, & class size. As the recession thawed, they hired hundreds of thousands of adjuncts to teach for poverty wages, accelerating the decline of tenure.
19) The scale of tuition increases in 2009-15 has provoked a popular backlash. But the unacknowledged scandal is that for decades, public college and university students have been paying more money for less, as their tuition and fees go less and less to instruction.
20) Most college administrators are blind or numb to the negative consequences of hiring poorly paid temps as teachers. They care more about student enrollment, course completion, and degree graduation rates than they do about educational quality. utotherescue.blogspot.com/2019/02/how-la…
21) Labor unions have been fighting the race to the bottom in higher education for decades. But every time there’s a recession, gains that took a decade to achieve get wiped out by politicians’ short-sighted budget cuts. processhistory.org/unions-tenure/
22) This situation is ripe for rebellion. The #RedForEd movement in K-12 should inspire college teachers to take action not just for themselves, but for their students. And like K-12 teachers, faculty may need to challenge their unions to be more militant.
23) The “Corporate Campaign for the Corporate University” that Gordon Lafer called for over ten years ago, which brings together faculty, staff and students to resist commercialization and downsizing of higher education, is still “sorely needed.” jstor.org/stable/j.ctt14…
