2016 AAUP Updates

After two faculty bargaining units were certified last week, the University of Illinois at Chicago administration has indicated it will stop fighting recognition and proceed to bargaining. 

As the AAUP has documented time and time again, the proportion of faculty appointments that are “contingent”—lacking the benefits and protections of tenure and a planned long-term relationship with an institution—has increased dramatically over the past few decades. By 2009—the latest year for which national data are available—75 percent of US faculty appointments were off the tenure track, and 60 percent were part-time.

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 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. 

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.