2012 AAUP Updates

Today, the Coalition on the Academic Workforce, of which the AAUP is a member, released the results of its highly anticipated survey of contingent faculty. The survey, which received nearly 30,000 responses, provides a detailed look at the working conditions associated with contingent faculty appointments—an appointment type that now constitutes the majority of faculty jobs. This initial survey report focuses on findings pertaining to faculty in part-time positions and suggests that, even as colleges and universities rely more and more on faculty in part-time positions, the salaries, benefits, and working conditions of those faculty members stagnates.

The summary dismissal of a contingent faculty member at Texas A & M University-San Antonio (TAMUS) raises serious concerns for the AAUP.  A letter was sent to the TAMUS administration yesterday conveying these concerns. Read the AAUP's letter (.pdf)

The AAUP is proud to announce that Mark G. Pearce, the chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, will be speaking to our Annual Conference on Saturday, June 16. His address will be titled "NLRB: from the Attic to the Kitchen" and will happen as part of a special plenary presentation at 2:00 p. m.

The AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom is an online journal that seeks to develop international discussion of academic freedom and related issues. It focuses on scholarship on academic freedom and its relation to shared governance, tenure, the structure of the academy, and collective bargaining.

On May 7, the Rhode Island Board of Governors for Higher Education voted down contracts for faculty and graduate assistants at the University of Rhode Island. Agreements on the contracts were reached nearly two months ago by negotiators for the board and the University of Rhode Island faculty union and graduate student union, both chapters of the AAUP. The contracts were the result of over eight months of difficult negotiations, in which both sides made concessions. The board's about face came after Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee publicly criticized the financial aspects of the contract, 3 percent raises each year for three years, as being too generous.

Members of the California Faculty Association, an AAUP affiliate, overwhelmingly approved unprecedented system-wide strikes. The vote came after two years of unsuccessful bargaining with the California State University administration, where administrators are pushing for draconian cuts to the instructional budget. Ninety-five percent of members voted to authorize CSU’s instructional faculty, librarians, counselors, and coaches to initiate rolling walkouts if the administration continues to demand concessions.

Wright State University professor Rudy Fichtenbaum has been elected president of the AAUP. Fichtenbaum, a long time AAUP leader and faculty unionist, will take office in June. Below, he is pictured at the AAUP Governance Conference. 

Should Michigan residents be concerned that the state’s legislators will enact legislation denying public university students their academic freedom? AAUP president Cary Nelson issued this statement on April 16, 2012.