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'Downsizing' and 'Reengineering' Go to School
TODAY'S COLLEGE TEACHERS: CHEAP AND TEMPORARY
-- by Jason Hecht
College teaching has traditionally been
portrayed as one of the better jobs to have in the
U.S. economy: it was possible to earn a decent
living, maybe obtain lifetime employment, and have
the autonomy of independent inquiry.
Unfortunately, over the last several years
things have changed for those who sought such
positions. Just as "downsizing" and
"reengineering" are being used by corporations to
eliminate jobs and reduce pay, college
administrators are employing similar methods to
rationalize their teaching staff.
That means fewer permanent positions, and more
part-time temporary ones filled largely from the
ranks of graduate students who have devoted years
of education to becoming a tenured college
professor. One scientist told Science magazine
that post-doctoral students "are rapidly becoming
the burger flippers of science; they're cheap,
temporary, and highly-trained laborers."
MORE PRODUCT PER PROF
In the face of stagnant and declining
enrollments, many managers of post-secondary
educational institutions have become fixated on
reducing labor costs and increasing the
"productivity" of professors. They say that greater
efficiencies can be achieved by operating
universities according to the same management
principles that govern Corporate America.
According to John Curry, administrative vice-
chancellor of the University of California at Los
Angeles in a recent article in Across the Board
magazine: "Can a university be run more like a
business? You bet it can...Most universities can do
a significant job of cutting costs through the same
reengineering of processes and work that have
characterized the best for-profit corporations."
The widespread use of part-time temporary
faculty to teach courses is one of the primary
tools used to enforce this new austerity. The
availability of unemployed and underemployed
Ph.D's, candidates for post-doctoral degrees ("post-
docs"), and graduate students provides universities
with a pliant, low-paid teaching and research
workforce.
A post-doctoral candidate remarked to Science
magazine, "Most of us never realized that one could
work hard, contribute to science, do all the
'right' things, and still end up unemployed before
turning thirty."
From the college's perspective, the economics of
using part-time faculty are quite compelling.
Suppose a part-timer is paid $3,000 to teach a
course to 25 students who have each paid $375 to
enroll in the class. The college covers the cost of
the instructor's salary after the eighth student,
and probably can fund any overhead costs after the
ninth or tenth student.
The cost-cutting seems to be working. A report
in the March-April 1992 issue of Academe, the AAUP
bulletin, notes that the average inflation-adjusted
academic salary in 1991-92 was about eight percent
less than it was in 1972-73.
The AAUP numbers strongly suggest that college
teachers have not "captured" the surplus dollars
generated from the unprecedented rise in college
tuition over the last decade. Rather, it appears
that those who run universities have diverted a
significant portion of their budgets away from the
hiring of full-time teachers, and toward the hiring
of administrators.
VIRTUAL EDUCATION
For example, economist Barbara Bergmann found
that over the last two decades, administrative
costs at colleges and universities have increased
at a faster rate than instructional costs.
"Informal laborers" in higher education help to
suppress the wage demands of full-time tenured
faculty. But colleges have implemented changes in
the terms and conditions of teaching employment
without much challenge from the unionized and
tenured faculty, who frequently make ten times the
pay of part-time college teachers.
Besides trying to directly reduce salaries and
benefits by hiring part-time teachers, college
administrators have also adopted more traditional
means of raising productivity.
For example, "video lecturing" for "distance
learning" is one way universities are capitalizing
the teaching process. College administrators can
distribute the salary of a single professor over
several hundred more students, who can "access" a
lecture rather than actually attending it. Whether
learning can take place in such an environment is
never questioned by university bureaucrats.
Many of those who have the highest educational
qualifications are on the margins of the workforce
just like those with less training. Unless the
ranks of the unionized teaching staff -- especially
at non-elite institutions -- act to reverse the
degradation of college teaching jobs, they too may
find themselves without much of a livelihood in the
coming years.
[Jason Hecht recently completed his Ph.D. in
economics and works as an adjunct lecturer in New
York City.]
>From Labor Notes, November 1994
Sid Shniad
