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From the General Secretary: More Oblige, Less Noblesse
By Roger Bowen
Even though we already knew the numbers—65 percent of all faculty members do not have tenure—reading the AAUP’s Contingent Faculty Index 2006, released last December, nevertheless produces shock. So few haves, so many have-nots! The situation reminds me of what (tenured) Middlebury College poet Jay Parini called “the great divide” in a July 1995 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education —and twelve years ago, the divide was not nearly so great as it is today: then less than half of all faculty lines were contingent (or off the tenure track).
What can be done? Parini may have been on target back in 1995. Then he suggested creating a “dual-track system for both tenured and untenured faculty members.” One track is “research,” the other “teaching.” In his scheme, the individual faculty member can select either track and receives the freedom to change tracks every five years or so after having assessed his or her strengths and weaknesses. Track one—research—permits a reduced teaching load but has high expectations for research and publication. Track two—teaching—requires a heavy teaching load and outstanding classroom performance. This track, Parini advises, should be chosen by young, untenured faculty because it is “notoriously difficult to adjust to college teaching while maintaining a vigorous scholarly life.”
A second approach, chronicled in the December 12, 2006, edition of Inside Higher Education, is offered by Georgia State University in Atlanta. Again, there are two tracks: one is the tenure track with less teaching and presumably higher expectations for research and publication; the other is the full-time non-tenure track with lots of teaching and little or no expectation of scholarly production. Georgia State has made a determined effort to reduce the number of part-time faculty by elevating them into “track-two” appointments —nontenured but full-time positions with many of the protections and benefits that those on the tenure track enjoy. This approach is better than what New York University did a few years ago when it created “professors of practice,” because Georgia State, unlike NYU, has also systematically reduced reliance on part-time faculty.
There are no doubt other variations on these adjustments being tried across the nation. Yet differentiation among faculty by ability, whether self-chosen in the Parini model or imposed by peers or administrators in the Georgia State model, still creates “tiers” and “tracks” that can wind up resembling “classes.” Having classes within our disciplinary tribes only fractures the academy further, of course, but may for that very reason make faculty criticism of the administration less likely. Divide, divide again, and, voilà, conquering is effortless.
What irks me, as it also irked Parini, is that mere excellence in teaching is inadequate to earn a faculty member tenure, yet it seems evident that every institution of higher learning depends on excellent teachers to retain the students that their reputations—often built atop the achievements of faculty “stars”—attracted in the first place. Good teaching has value but not enough to keep it from being undervalued as a means of production within the academy. Worker bees, to mix metaphors, are expendable; queen bees get the honey because they make the money.
The AAUP has for a long time argued that without tenure, intellectual and economic security for faculty is problematic if not impossible. What we have not argued as forthrightly is the unconscionable negligence of the tenured to champion the academic freedom rights and economic security of the untenured and never-to-be tenured. Yes, the AAUP has advocated and will continue to advocate on behalf of the “second track” and the “nontrack,” but our efforts to spur the “haves” to battle against the merging class system in the academy have been, at best, tepid.
So, what can be done? We need more oblige from the noblesse, and soon, before the 65–35 split becomes an 80–20 split. That is the direction the academy is going in today, and its course is not likely to be altered unless those in a position to insist on adopting a different direction actually take the trouble to insist.
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