by Chris Dorn
April 9th, 2015

It is a commonplace now that the proportion of contingent or “adjunct” faculty to full-time tenured and tenure track faculty teaching in American colleges and universities has increased dramatically in recent decades. According to the U.S. Department of Education, in 1970 only 22.2% of faculty at all higher education institutions was part-time employees, not including graduate assistants. In 2009, 49.3% of faculty was part-time employees. In more recent years movements to unionize have emerged in response to the real abuses to which this trend has given rise. But there is still work to be done. Contingent faculty continue in alarming numbers to teach classes part-time or on limited-term contracts, without permanent appointments, adequate compensation or appropriate professional support. Higher education researchers deplore this casualization of academic labor, which they argue persuasively results in an unstable workforce, impaired academic freedom, and diminished educational quality, among other things.

My contention here is that this trend, if not checked or reversed, will deprive the academic profession of its very status as a profession. By profession I understand a set of institutional arrangements whereby members of a profession rather than managers or consumers have the privilege of organizing and controlling their own work. In the case of the academic profession, its members have this privilege in the form of academic freedom, peer review, and shared governance. This privilege, however, extends only to members who have attained the rank of tenure. Contingent faculty are for the most part excluded. By hiring “off track,” then, colleges and universities effectively reduce the academic profession’s control over its own work. Again, if this is not checked and ultimately reversed, we will witness the de-professionalization of the academic profession.

How can the academic profession reclaim the ground it has lost in these past few decades? How can it resist the further advance of de-professionalization, and carve out a domain for itself in which it can reassert control over its own work? In this two-part essay I want to address these questions, which I suggest are fundamentally ethical. In the first part I consider briefly and then criticize the “professional ethics” that Neil W. Hamilton in his article “A Crisis of Ethic Proportion,” proposes in response to the casualization of academic labor (Inside Higher Education (June 12, 2009)). In the second part I develop my own ethics, which will appear as a more adequate framework within which to see and respond to the erosion of the academic profession.

Hamilton wants to reclaim for professors their role as trustees of socially important knowledge that contributes to the public good. But this means that the academic profession is obliged to make a convincing case to the public (and the governing boards representing the public) that its members are exercising this role in good faith, and are therefore justified in maintaining their privileged position. If it fails to meet this obligation, the predictable result during a time of rapid change in the marketplace is that society and employers will renegotiate the terms under which it performs it work according to a managerial or consumer logic typical for other occupations. This is precisely what has happened to the academic profession. Hamilton observes that this renegotiation is most evident in the increasing use of contingent faculty, in which managers rather than professors control academic work.

If transfer of control was the direct outcome of the profession’s failure to mount a strong public defense of its privileged position at a critical time, what recourse does it have now? Hamilton believes it is premature for the profession to resign itself to the trend toward casualization. But it cannot hope to reverse this trend until it recommits itself to the task of making this defense and diligently fulfilling the duties entrusted to it by the public. Hamilton suggests that the first step is to ensure that the profession’s members receive thorough instruction in professional ethics. If they succeed in understanding and internalizing standards of professional competence and ethical conduct, they will be prepared to make a credible case that the privileges they enjoy—academic freedom, peer review, and shared governance—best serve higher education’s mission.

Hamilton’s criticism of the academic profession merits close consideration. With few outstanding exceptions, professors have been missing in action as the academic workforce has undergone this restructuring around them. There are several possible reasons for this absence. One may be simple ignorance. Over a decade ago Gary Rhoades observed that most are “oblivious” to the “scope and significance” of what has been happening (Managed Professionals: Unionized Faculty and Restructuring Academic Labor). My experience in higher education institutions taught me that this has not changed appreciably. Another reason may be that many have concluded such changes are inevitable, that they have no real alternative than that of acquiescing to the decisions of administrators concerning faculty budget allowances. “After all, they control the money!” as one exasperated professor at the university where I did my graduate studies cried.

I came to the realization then that professors like her may be implicitly aware that they are structurally in a vulnerable position with respect to their employers. Most professors specialize in disciplines that have no functional value in the broader economy and therefore must depend for their living on teaching in academic institutions. For this teaching these institutions recruit students, as well as provide physical plant, support personnel, and administrative staff. And in recent decades they have diverted a rapidly increasing share of their revenue into these operating costs while disinvesting in their instructional workforce. Computer labs, digitized libraries, licensing fees, software and software upgrades, not to mention the growing corps of infotech specialists who support this technology have contributed enormously to this shift. Parenthetically, this ongoing revolution in information technology is feared as a threat to the occupation of university professor for another reason. Traditional faculty roles are in danger of obsolescence through the mechanization and advances in technique afforded by this technology, which makes professors vulnerable to displacement by practitioners with lesser or different training. Still another reason may be that some faculty see “adjunctification” as a necessary evil for the sustaining of their own privileges. Funding for their salaries and benefits, sabbaticals, merit increases, reduced teaching loads, and other advantages depend on a cadre of under-compensated and overworked contingent faculty. The resulting bifurcation into two classes of academic laborers easily contributes to the breakdown of a felt sense of academic community that is part of the professoriate’s heritage, but sadly some may have decided that it is the necessary price to pay for the protection of their interests.

That actively resisting the adjunctification of academic labor is actually in the interest of full-time professors is a point on which I want to elaborate later. But now I return to Hamilton’s criticism to examine a premise that I think is problematic. Hamilton assumes a concept of professionalism to which our present political and economic climate is hardly hospitable. Note that the academic profession has been under attack in recent decades for what its critics have perceived to be its leftist tendencies and for neglecting its teaching duties in favor of estoreric scholarship. The general public has little patience for the defense of a research agenda oriented around an abstract value like the disinterested pursuit of knowledge. This patience is worn even thinner in a period of economic crisis where people are anxious about learning immediately applicable skills that qualify them for gainful employment in a job market that remains tough. Stephen Brint’s claim that we are living in an “age of experts” is apropos here. According to Brint, the ideal of the “social trustee professional”—which Hamilton’s argument assumes—is being displaced by the “expert professional,” a process that has accelerated since the 1960s (In An Age of Experts: The Changing Role of Professionals in Politics and Public Life). The social trustee professional subordinates her specialized knowledge and skills to the aim of sustaining social ideals. The expert professional, on the other hand, sees herself under no such obligation; her primary concern is with making money. In this regard, the latter speaks in a language that the public at large readily understands and accepts. “The master narrative—the way we think of our world—has abandoned the social for the economic,” observed the late historian Tony Judt (Ill Fares the Land). In this context, professors—even trained historians—would be hard pressed to mount a convincing public defense of their professional prerogatives when they cannot justify them with an appeal to the money their work makes. The problem then is that the defense Hamilton urges professors to make presupposes a model of professionalism that no longer has traction in the public he imagines.

The futility of staking a claim for itself on values on which there is no longer social consensus, however, does not excuse the academic profession from developing an ethics. But the focus of this program will be learning how to formulate new ethical questions, which will emerge from critical reflection on the changed relationships in which professors now stand with those with whom they work. I refer here especially to administrators, graduate students, and contingent faculty. But the list can be extended to include undergraduates, their parents, alumni, and state and federal legislators. What kind of ethics then is needed to guide this critical reflection? This is the question to which I devote the second part of this essay.

Teach for America (TFA) believes that “one day all children can have access to an excellent education.” The organization believes that through putting highly educated individuals into a teaching position for two years, the education systems in America can fundamentally change. On the surface, the plan seems fantastic. Young motivated people, teaching the youth of America to reach for their dreams, what could possibly go wrong?

As a 2012 Teach for America alumnus, I have been able to experience firsthand what I view as the major faults in the teacher program. Before I delve into the issues this program has, I need to make a disclaimer. I love where this program has taken me. The job I have now, and the fact that I get to do something I truly love everyday because of my teacher training, is all due to the Teach for America program. I was a lost senior in college, with a degree that I did not actually want to use. I realized too late that teaching was my calling. For people in my situation, non-traditional teaching programs are fantastic and help individuals achieve their dreams. However, this does not negate the fact there are flaws with the program that can, in turn, hurt the students they are trying to help. Here are three of the major issues I have seen as a former corps member in Teach for America:

1.Teach for America tends to lean pro charter schools.

Teach for America opts to work with, and send many of its corps members to work in charter schools throughout the country. However, numerous teachers are sent to public school districts throughout the country through Teach for America as well.  During the two corps years, teachers in the program attend meetings where they relearn the values of Teach for America, many which align with charter school ideology. Oftentimes these values, while created with the best of intentions, do not always address the issues that some public schools face.

Personally, I taught both of my corps years at the same high school in a large southeastern Wisconsin public school district.  I would attend these day long meetings and often leave feeling unwanted and undervalued in the corp.  All the meetings, that were not at the Teach for America office, were held at charter schools, the majority of the teachers given recognition were charter school teachers, and most leaders that spoke were all from charter schools.  To me, it seemed that instead of addressing the issues that teachers in public schools were facing head on, Teacher for America hoped simply that focusing on the positive things charter schools were doing it would lead to change in all school. In order to fully embrace its mission of “one day all children,” Teach for America must remove the hidden fine print of “one day all children, that attend a charter school”

2. Teach for America unequally trains general educators and special educators.

Many corps across the country sends some of their teachers to special education positions.  However, during my summer training program, they did not address essential knowledge that special educators needed to learn. I was assigned to teach special education and was surprised when I got to my summer institute to find that I would be teaching middle school math. While I do believe that all teachers need to learn the same basics and fundamentals of teaching, special education teachers must enter their job with and entirely different tool kit than regular education teachers.  They need to know what different disabilities entail, how to handle extreme behaviors, and how to write an effective, meaningful, IEP.

For me, the issue of being ill prepared went much further beyond the summer institute.  Once I came back to my region, we had three more weeks of training and seminars to attend.  The majority of the seminars were content and grade level focused. However, never during this time, did the TFA staff offer my two other special education colleagues and myself a training session on our specific content area. Moreover, while all these sessions were happening with other corps members, in classrooms at a local university, they had the three special education teachers sit in the hallway and attempt to plan lessons without any staff help. Looking back, this just seems to perpetuate the special education stereotype of sticking the students in a hidden away classroom and forgetting about them. Special Education is often referred to as the “gap with in the gap,” referring to the educational gap between low income, minority students and white higher income students plus the gap in performance between general education and special education.  In order to meet the needs of all students, it is vital for Teach for America to find a new way to train special education teachers before they begin in the classroom. Recently, Teach for America has made gains in attempting to address the issues that special educators are facing. While there have been many positive changes, there is still a long way to go for all teachers to be trained efficiently.

3. Can two years in a school truly change students’ lives?

Teach for America requires its corps member to have a two year commitment in the classroom. During these two years, they believe that a teacher should be able to achieve transformational change in their students. This educational transformational change, to Teach for America, is the closing of the achievement gap between white suburban students and low income minority students. After the two year commitment, while many corps members stay in education, a large number leave the classroom to pursue other interests. Their website indicates at 64% of alumni are still in education, however it does not specify in which sense. This broad umbrella of education encompasses leadership, Teach for America staff, other teaching programs, policy, and advocacy. While these other facets of education are extremely important, when teachers leave to pursue these careers, there becomes a revolving door of teachers. In order to truly make and see change in schools, teachers needs to stay in those schools or districts for a longer period of time. Teach for America wants corps members that will affect change through different avenues when they leave the classroom. However, in order directly help students on a day to day basis, the organization needs to attempt to recruit more corps members that want to stay in the classroom as a career.

Teach for America is a very well-intentioned program that brings thousands of new teachers to the classroom each year. Without programs of this nature, there would be many more classrooms across the country that do not have teachers. These teacher programs do great things for many students. However, in order to make truly large changes to the educational system of America, there needs to be fundamental changes made to the program and the training methods used. There are many students, classrooms, and teachers that are simply being left out of the conversation. Moreover, people that enter into programs like Teach for America need to be dedicated to teaching and the students they serve. Transformational change can only come when there are highly trained teachers working for long periods of time in schools.

Sources

National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. (2015). Get the facts. Retrieved March 14, 2015, from http://www.publiccharters.org/get-the-facts/public-charter-schools/.

Teach for America. (2015). Our mission. Retrieved March 14, 2015, from https://www.teachforamerica.org/.

Photo:
Ohstrom, K. 2013, June 24. Spring Garden School NO. 1. Philadelphia, PA: Huffington Post.

What a fun, sexy time for you. This is not what it looks like. It looks like you’re tweaking her nipples through a chain-link fence. I’m going to buy you the single healthiest call girl this town has ever seen. There’s a girl in my soup! A flower in my garden, a mystery in my panties. [sniffs hand] Oh, God. I’m going to run this through again on “pots and pans.” After all, why should you go to jail for a crime somebody else noticed? Can’t a guy call his mother pretty without it seeming strange? Amen. And how about that little piece of tail on her? Cute!

Stop it, stop it. This objectification of women has to stop. It’s just Mom and whores. He… she… what’s the difference? Oh hear, hear. In the dark, it all looks the same. There’s a new daddy in town. A discipline daddy. He’s a regular Freddie Wilson, that one. Are you sure this isn’t her sister? Mrs Veal: What a lovely thing to say.Michael: That’s an awful thing to say. Hey, look at that – you’re mean sober, too.

Te quiero. English, please. I love you! Great, now I’m late. Mr. Zuckerkorn, you’ve been warned about touching. Barry: You said spanking. I’ve always been deeply passionate about nature. Perhaps you remember Neuterfest? I’ll never forget your wedding.

Daddy horny, Michael. If this were a Lifetime Moment of Truth movie, this would be our act break. But it wasn’t.

I was once called the worst audience participant Cirque du Soleil ever had. I was set up. By the Brits. A group of British builders operating outside the O.C. We all need to pick a day to try and make trend. I’m a scholar. I enjoy scholarly pursuits. Suddenly playing with yourself is a scholarly pursuit? Either I zip down, or he zips up, and that is a mighty long zipper on Mother’s Cher jumpsuit. If I wanted something your thumb touched, I’d eat the inside of your ear. I shall hide behind the couch. (Guy’s a pro.)

Oh, yeah. The guy in the $4,000 suit is holding the elevator for a guy who doesn’t make that in three months. COME ON! First I blow him, then I poke him. For there’s a man inside me, and only when he’s finally out, can I walk free of pain. Never once touched my per diem. I’d go to Craft Service, get some raw veggies, bacon, Cup-A-Soup…baby, I got a stew goin’. Ah coodle doodle doo, ah coodle doodle doo. Stop licking my hand, you horse’s ass! Her lawyers are claiming the seal is worth $250,000. And that’s not even including Buster’s Swatch.

Do you guys know where I could get one of those gold necklaces with the T on it? That’s a cross. Across from where? Yeah, I invited her. You said you wanted to spend time some with her. You said I was being an Ann hog. Butterscotch! Want a lick? They want to break his legs. It’s a good thing he’s already got that little scooter. I’ll have a vodka rocks. (Mom, it’s breakfast time.) And a piece of toast. She’s not ‘that Mexican’, Mom. She’s my Mexican. And she’s Colombian or something. Oh, I don’t have any drugs for sale, unless… did you want me to follow you to your car? The only thing I found in the fridge was a dead dove in a bag. Gob: You didn’t eat that, did you?

It’s a jetpack, Michael. What could go wrong? Don’t worry, these young beauties have been nowhere near the bananas. Please refrain from discussing or engaging in any sort of interoffice [bleep] or [bleep] or finger[bleep] or [bleep]sting or [bleep] or even [bleep]. ♪♪ It ain’t easy being white… ♪♪ Sorry, some of my students are arguing the significance of the shankbone on the seder plate. But we do not – NOT wag our genitals at one another to make a point.

Waiting for the Emmys. BTW did you know won 6 Emmys and was still canceled early by Fox? COME ON. After all, why should you go to jail for a crime somebody else noticed? Bob Loblaw Lobs Law Bomb. Now, do you wanna steer, or are you too old to sit on your Pop’s lap and drive?

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Oh. You need a little dummy text for your mockup? How quaint.

I bet you’re still using Bootstrap too…