An educational crisis from its origins to present-day experiences In the United States today, almost three-quarters of the people teaching in two- and four-year colleges and universities work as contingent faculty. They share the hardships endemic in the gig economy: lack of job security and health care, professional disrespect, and poverty wages that require them to juggle multiple jobs.
This collection draws on a wide range of perspectives to examine the realities of the contingent faculty system through the lens of labor history. Essayists investigate structural changes that have caused the use of contingent faculty to skyrocket and illuminate how precarity shapes day-to-day experiences in the academic workplace. Other essays delve into the ways contingent faculty engage in collective action and other means to resist austerity measures, improve their working conditions, and instigate reforms in higher education. By challenging contingency, this volume issues a clear call to reclaim higher education’s public purpose.
Interdisciplinary in approach and multifaceted in perspective, Contingent Faculty and the Remaking of Higher Education surveys the adjunct system and its costs.
Contributors: Gwendolyn Alker, Diane Angell, Joe Berry, Sue Doe, Eric Fure-Slocum, Claire Goldstene, Trevor Griffey, Erin Hatton, William A. Herbert, Elizabeth Hohl, Miguel Juárez, Aimee Loiselle, Maria C. Maisto, Anne McLeer, Steven Parfitt, Jiyoon Park, Claire Raymond, Gary Rhoades, Jeff Schuhrke, Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, Steven Shulman, Joseph van der Naald, Anne Wiegard, Naomi R Williams, and Helena Worthen
Acknowledgments Framing Contingency in Higher Education Introduction A Labor History of Contingent Faculty Eric Fure-Slocum 1 From the Margins to the Center: Negotiating a New Academy Gary Rhoades Part I: The Making of a Contingent Faculty Majority 2 Framing Part I: R-E-S-P-E-C-T Elizabeth Hohl 3 “Those Who Don’t Accept This Don’t Last Long”: Two Centuries of Cost Cutting and Laboring in the US Higher Education Industry Elizabeth Tandy Shermer 4 Why Faculty Casualization? Its Origins and the Present Challenges of the Contingent Faculty Movement Joe Berry and Helena Worthen 5 Women’s Work: A Feminist Rethinking of Contingent Labor in the Academy Gwendolyn Alker 6 Contingency across Higher Education Sue Doe and Steven Shulman Part II: Contingency at Work and in the Workplace 7 Framing Part II: Multiple Contingencies Aimee Loiselle 8 Social Dirt, Liminality, and the Adjunct Predicament Claire Raymond 9 The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Being Contingent and Female in STEM Fields Diane Angell 10 Talking Back against Ableism, Ageism, and Contingency as a Latinx Instructor and First-Generation Scholar Miguel Juárez 11 Graduate Student Labor, Contingency, and Power Erin Hatton 12 Common Ground for the Common Good: What We Mean When We Say “Faculty Working Conditions Are Student Learning Conditions” Maria C. Maisto Part III: Challenging Precarity and Contingency in Higher Education 13 Framing Part III: “To Move Things Forward” Anne Wiegard 14 So Many Roads, So Much at Stake: The Composition of Faculty Bargaining Units William A. Herbert and Joseph van der Naald 15 Graduate Worker Organizing and the Challenges of Precarity in Higher Education Jeff Schuhrke 16 From Community of Interest to Imagined Communities: Organizing Academic Labor in the Washington, DC Area Anne McLeer 17 The “Army of Temps” in the House of Labor: How California’s Public Sector Labor Unions Struggle to Resist the De-Professionalization of College Teachers Trevor Griffey 18 Casualization in the United Kingdom: Causes, Scale, and Resistance Steven Parfitt Paths Forward for Academic Labor and Higher Education 19 Building Labor Solidarity across Tenure Lines Naomi R. Williams and Jiyoon Park 20 How the Isolation of Contingency Undermines the Public Good of Education Claire Goldstene Contributors Index
Eric Fure-Slocum is a non-tenure track associate professor of history at St. Olaf College. He is the coeditor of Civic Labors: Scholar Activism and Working-Class Studies. Claire Goldstene taught as a contingent faculty member at numerous universities. She is the author of The Struggle for America’s Promise: Equal Opportunity at the Dawn of Corporate Capital.
Reviews for Contingent Faculty and the Remaking of Higher Education: A Labor History
“Fure-Slocum and Goldstene chronicle the contingent faculty labor movement in all its creativity and diversity. This collection moves past mere description of the neoliberal academy and the plight of contingent campus workers to weave together analyses, personal narrative, and tactical guidance on organizing in the gig economy while calling for a renewed commitment to cross-rank and cross-campus solidarity among academic workers.”--Julie Schmid, Executive Director, American Association of University Professors “A book that we have long awaited and needed. Nothing else offers such a broad sweep of perspectives and such a deep historical appreciation of the struggles of contingent academic labor. Anyone interested in the future of higher education, the future of work and workers, or the future of our democracy should read this important book.”--Joseph A. McCartin, coeditor of Purple Power: The History and Global Impact of SEIU
