Higher Ed’s Neo-liberal Model Is Not Sustainable

Policy Makers Need to Toss Away the Language of Austerity and Reset Their Priorities

Hank Kalet Dec 1 ∙ Preview

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Pie chart is from the American Federation of Teachers report, “An Army of Temps.”
Geoffrey Johnson is an adjunct instructor in California who has been active in the fight over adjunctification of the academy. I was pointed in his direction by other activists who said he could offer me useful context as I reported on the adjunct issue and expanded my own activism through the adjunct faculty union at Rutgers University.

Adjunctification, a word that many in the academic labor movement view as problematic, refers to a Neo-liberal structural reformation of higher education labor, with fewer and fewer tenured and tenure-track faculty being hired. Instead, two- and four-years colleges and universities are relying on contingent or “casual” faculty, or those without tenure protection. About seven in 10 instructors are now contingent — which includes adjuncts like Johnson and like me, as well as graduate students and non-tenure or contract instructors who work full-time but lack long-term protection.

The move, as Joe Berry and Helena Worthen pointed out to me, gives university administration “flexibility” they say is necessary to deal with enrollment shifts. Academia has move to a just-in-time model for instruction, one similar to what we see in manufacturing a sector in which companies cut back on inventory and produce only what is needed at any given point. This saves companies money on inventory, but leaves them vulnerable to supply chain disruptions — such as the ones we have witnessed over the last two years.

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Battling the Corporate University

A New Book Helps Frame the National Fight Against Precarity in Higher Education

Hank Kalet Nov 19 ∙ Preview

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Joe Berry and Helena Worthen are both academics and have spent years in the struggle to bring equity to the higher education work force. I talked with them recently as I was working on a story for The Progressive, because they have a new book — Power Despite Precarity — that offers a road map for activists on how to win better contracts for faculty and alter the balance of power on campuses.

We talked before the wave of strikes hit, before adjuncts won a historic contract at NYU and before adjuncts, who teach 90 percent of classes at The New School and the Parson’s School of Design, hit the picket line this week.

I teach at Rutgers University and serve on the executive board of the adjunct union. I also teach at two community colleges — Middlesex College and Brookdale Community College. This semester, I am teaching six classes — that is about 20 hours of work in the classroom (or on Zoom) and another 40 or so hours doing prep work and grading. It’s an unsustainable load, but I’m committed to doing so — to helping prepare young journalists (as I do at Rutgers) and helping students new to college develop basic writing skills (as I do at the community colleges). I teach at three locations because I have to, because Rutgers does not pay its adjuncts a fair wage and because the community colleges do not pay adjuncts anything close to a living wage.

This is unsustainable — not on a personal level, but for higher education as a whole. Colleges and universities have bought into a corporate mindset, one in which the goal is to increase revenue and build reserves and endowments, while spending as little as they can get away with without angering students or their parents.

Adjuncts, grad students, contract instructors — all of whom are contingent — are fighting back. They are striking — joining their exploited peers in the service industry (see Starbucks). And we are winning.

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