AAUP Announces the publication of Volume 10 of the AAUP's Journal of Academic Freedom and Call for Papers--“Academic Freedom on the Managed Campus"

This from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP):

We are pleased to announce the publication of Volume 10 of the AAUP's Journal of Academic Freedom. The journal features recent scholarship on academic freedom and its relation to contemporary crises of austerity, shared governance, tenure, and collective bargaining. This year's contributors draw connections between the multiple frequencies of bullying present on our campuses and the principles and practice of academic freedom and shared governance.

The volume’s eleven essays address a wide range of topics, including the use of discourses of civility and student evaluations of teaching to bully faculty, threats from on and off campus to the academic freedom of faculty of color, and the troubling legacies of historical infringements on academic freedom and shared governance. Follow the links to each article in the table of contents below or access the complete volume at https://www.aaup.org/JAF10.

We are also excited to share a new call for papers, “Academic Freedom on the Managed Campus," for the eleventh volume of the journal, scheduled for publication in September 2020.
—Rachel Ida Buff, Faculty Editor

The Journal of Academic Freedom is supported by funding from the AAUP Foundation.

The table of Contents with links follows below.

Higher Education Trends for 2018: Relfections on " Saddle Up: 7 Trends Coming in 2018" Plus Six of My Own

(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2018 ("The Chariot" Visconti Tarot))

It has become something of a ritual for  people to engage in prediction--what I call the oracular function of influence or drivers--in virtually all sectors of production, including the higher education industry.   Prediction serves a variety of functions--it draws attention to specific issues; it helps order these issues into hierarchies of importance; it helps to frame the narrative, that is the way in which such issues are understood and discussed; it provides a window on the issues that those in control of the affected institutions are worried about--it reveals institutional fears;  and of course it enhances position of those in the business of prediction within the webs of influence in the sectors in which they are embedded (or through which they are trying to make a living). 

Julie A. Peterson and Lisa M. Rudgers (co-founders of Peterson Rudgers Group, a consulting firm focused on higher education strategy, leadership and brand) recently considered a set of important trends in the higher education business for 2018--"Saddle Up: 7 Trends Coming in 2018," Inside Higher Education (2 Jan. 2018). This complemented their oracular efforts of 2017 (trends coming for 2017).  Their predictions are worth considering carefully. They hit the mark in several important ways: (1) identification of key issues that university officials will likely confront; (2) the way in which such official will likely approach the issues and their "resolution"; and (3) the narrative around the issues from out of which an understanding of how to think about these issues are developed.  Identification, response, narrative control are the three key elements that will define  the administrative "to do" list and control the orthodox way of understanding, thinking about and speaking to those issues. 

This post briefly considers the seven issue identified by Peterson and Rudgers and then offers additional trends that will have a high impact on the education business in 2018. 

The Battle Over Graduate Student Labor

I am pleased to cross post a short blog essay I wrote for Academe Blog, the blog of Academe Magazine.

The post, entitled The Battle Over Graduate Student Labor, was originally posted HERE, and can also be found below.   

The full article to which it related may be found HERE. 

Just Published: The University in the Age of the Learning Factory: Dueling narratives in the culture war around higher education," which appeared in Academe (American Association of University Professors (Nov/Dec 2017))

I am happy to report the publication of my essay, "The University in the Age of the Learning Factory: Dueling narratives in the culture war around higher education," which appeared in Academe (the magazine of the American Association of University Professors) in its November/December issue. In it I suggest that the ideal of the university and its reality are in conflict, and everything from the future of graduate student unionization to the place of the university in American society is at stake.

The full text of the essay  follows along with  pix of the hard copy. It may be downloaded HERE.

Other features in the issue include the following:

FEATURES

10 THE UNIVERSITY IN THE AGE OF THE LEARNING FACTORY: Dueling narratives in the culture war around higher education. BY LARRY CATÁ BACKER

15 HOW OUR AAUP CHAPTER RESPONDED TO POSTELECTION VIOLENCE: When a student is attacked, how do we respond? BY AMY HAGOPIAN AND EVA CHERNIAVSKY

18 FOSTERING STUDENT ACTIVISM ON CAMPUS: Success must be measured by more than immediate results. BY RACHEL WATSON

21 BALANCING CLASSROOM CIVILITY AND FREE SPEECH: Lessons from a history classroom. BY CATHERINE NOLAN-FERRELL

27 CREATING A CIVIL CLASSROOM IN AN ERA OF INCIVILITY: Resources for teaching in a politically charged environment. BY LYNN C. LEWIS

30 FROM A CONTRACT FACULTY MEMBER TO HER COLLEAGUES: IT’S A FEMINIST ISSUE: Feminism helps us understand our collective future. BY GWENDOLYN ALKER

Rewriting the Faculty Handbook: Tales from the Trenches (online only)
A revision process proves the value of transparent engagement.
By Rebecca S. Linger and Ericka P. Zimmerman

Experiential Learning: Some Reservations (online only)
A skeptical perspective on forays into the "real world."
By John Fawell

AAUP Releases its "2016-17 Faculty Compensation Survey"

Universities, and faculty organizations like the American Association of University Professors and the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT), have published variations of faculty salary surveys for some time now.   I have been writing about faculty compensation and the underlying ideologies and management strategies (conscious and unconscious) for the presentation of "facts" (harvesting of data) and the extraction of inferences from the data (here, here, and here).  I have also suggested how these exercises do as much to veil "data" and avoid "inference" as it aid in their development and exposure (for a more theoretical discussion HERE).

These are meant to serve a useful purpose--as an important contribution to informational transparency.  This transparency, in turn is meant to paint a picture of the state of faculty earning that can be used, as an authoritative data set, to further  positions and negotiating strategies,  of university administrators, faculty, legislators and the like.  It is also a valuable mechanism for managing public opinion about the state of the university and the privilege (or lack thereof) of a key university stakeholder.

All of this is well and good, and fair game, in the context of the politics of university administration, public policy development, and the operation of wage labor markets for university faculty labor talent.  Yet, data is a relational as well as an objective measure.  For policymakers, and especially for engagement, the choice of relational elements--the way data is packaged and the choice of data types to place in relationship to each other--will have a profound impact on the way on which the data is read and understood. More importantly, if done with some calculation, the careful presentation of relationships among data (including some excluding others) can be used to manage conclusions as well. This no doubt is usually inadvertent, but perhaps not always so. (HERE)

With that in mind it is worth considering the AAUP's recent release of its 2016-17 Faculty Compensation Survey.  It provides data that supports what is becoming too obvious to ignore as the fundamental character of the academy changes: (1) part time employment continues to grow as the profession builds a segmented workforce with growing blue collar and seasonal segments; (2) cost cutting on the labor force side appears to have the inverse effect on administrative salaries that continue to grow (also here); and (3) the state has lost its taste for funding education. Still, the AAUP does try to put the best face of the data.  But you can decide for yourself. In any case there is one great value to this data--the more obvious it becomes that faculty are reduced to a mere fungible labor force the stronger the case for unionization.  The irony is, of course, that it will be the administration of the university, and its embrace of the new logic of university operation that more than anyone will be responsible for this movement.

The press Release with links follows.

The Conundrums of Rank and Title at the University: Faculty Solidarity Versus Consumer Protection

(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2017)

Universities worldwide have long dealt with the core issue of how an institution may convey information respecting individual faculty members.  The information that is conveyed relates to (1) rank, (2) status, and (3) function.  The information is usually embedded within what is commonly called the rank and titling of faculty within the university. Information conveyed by titling is directed to the community of academics and also to critical stakeholders (students, outside funding agencies, and others). 

This post considers briefly the complexities of titling faculty, revealing of the underlying issues that tend to make any real sort of principled construction of a coherent structure for titling faculty  unlikely.   It suggests that current efforts to reform issues of rank and title may not be able to avoid conflicts between principles of consumer protection and those of equity and solidarity among faculty workers.

Economic Determinism and the University--Considering Voluntary "Early Retirement Packages" to Tenured Faculty

(Pix LarryCatá Backer 2016)

It is something of a national trend among American universities to offer variations of a standard form of "early retirement program," loosely modeled on those quite common in industry. A recent article in University Business nicely lays out the context and the economic politics of the tactic:

It’s an increasingly common move by campus officials during challenging economic times: voluntary retirement. Offering these incentives to faculty and staff provides a ready means of reducing personnel costs while not being seen as severe and traumatic as layoffs, salary reductions, and furloughs tend to be.

Although the details of such plans vary from one college to the next, they all rest on the potential for shrinking the workforce during times of static or declining budgets.

Even where employees will be replaced, costs may be lowered by using part-timers or hiring less experienced full-time personnel. New employees may also come with less expensive benefit packages than those negotiated in earlier eras. (Mark Rowh, Retiring Minds Want to Know How institutions are making voluntary retirement programs work  University Business (July/August 2012))

 This post considers the trend from the perspective of its collateral effects--first on the way this tactic is used increasingly to systematize fundamental changes in institutional character and operation, and and second on the faculty tempted to take the university up on its offer (academic freedom, and political rights). The "bottom line" is simple enough to state and implicit in the University Business article: the voluntary retirement device is an excellent way for administrators to avoid responsibility for significant change (furthering the "blame the system" mentality that has become standardized in university administrative cultures), but in a way that presents significant traps for the faculty tempted to take the university up on its usually much less valuable than advertised benefit. Faculty should be wary about accepting such "benefits", university faculty senate's should take a more aggressive position in examining the institutional effects of these programs, and university administrators should be held to a higher degree of account for using this indirect lever to remake the institution in a manner to their liking.

Central Planning and the University: What is So Bad About Administrative Management of Knowledge Production and Dissemination?

(Pix source here)

I have been studying the approaches of Marxist Leninist societies--businesses and governments--especially in the way in which institutions founded on Leninist principles with Marxist objectives relate to markets.  The traditional view of  such systems viewed markets with suspicion and sought to substitute an objectives based central planning apparatus--driven by a well trained and motivated bureaucracy--for the choice and efficiency structures of the market.  The idea was that better choices would be made and more efficient use of productive forces could be sustained.  But at its foundation was the Leninist notion that market driven choices were inherently ideologically tainted against which a bureaucracy of planners was necessary to avoid the errors of popular choice in the service of the construction (or preservation ) of a Marxist society.

That approach was transformed in the decades since the breakup of the old Soviet Union. Over the last 40 years two distinct approaches have arisen.  The more traditional Central Planning Marxist-Leninism continues to embrace at its core an anti-markets principle and the object of the state is to remake individuals to better suit the needs of central planning.  The other, Markets Marxism, increasingly embraces markets and markets based mechanisms as a means of social, economic and political progress compatible with the state's long term objectives.  In that case markets are the means used to achieve objects, as opposed to the traditional Marxism in which the objective was to avoid the market. (Discussed HERE).

Yet, one might ask, why would a site focused on university governance have any interest in Leninism and market ideologies? Because, it seems, universities in the West (and large western multinational enterprises) appear in the early 21st century to be the heirs and most vigorous centers of anti-market, central planning ideologies in both their operation and in the institutional cultures that they advance. The result, of course, is highly ironic where these institutions are meant to serve as the knowledge production foundation of political-economies founded on both principles of representative democracy and of markets.  But irony is the stuff of dinner parties.  There is real effect as well--internal central  planning in the knowledge production and dissemination industry substantially determines who decides what one learns, how on studies and what knowledge is produced. The power over those decisions has been shifting from individuals and from the stakeholders within the university, to bureaucracies asserting managerial controls through the exercise of administrative discretion. In centrally planned economies, the result is usually a substantial loss of productivity, a shifting of the focus of productive capability, and the loss of innovation.   Have American universities now adopted cultures of central planning or Markets Marxism as the basis for their operations? 

Retaliatory Governance and the University: Considering Hypothetical Questions on the Discretionary Authority of Deans and their Effects

(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2015)

To what extent do unit administrators contribute to rising cultures of retaliation in the contemporary public university?  To what extent  are faculty protected against the sometimes subtle use of discretionary authority to coerce behavior?  These are questions that are increasingly asked by faculty but rarely answered by senior administrators.

The usual discourse of accountability and constraints on administrative discretion tends to focus on senior administrators. But accountability issues at most public universities ought to extend beyond senior administrators. Though senior administrative organs adhere to formal policies that appear to constrain the behaviors of unit administrators (deans, chancellors, and other middle managers with direct supervision of faculties), it sometimes appears that they also seek to advance a blank-check governance policy for their unit heads (including deans, department heads and chancellors of campus organizations), in fact if not in form.  One might think that these de facto policy choices might well violate university ethics codes and they certainly diffuse accountability to the point where it is formally well structured but functionally dead. Yet the principal effect of these rules may be cover for protecting rising cultures of retaliation whose principal characteristic is tolerating substantially unconstrained discretion by unit administrators with respect to the management of their unit bounded only by complex whistle blower related anti retaliation provisions that do little to soften the retaliatory effects of lower level administrative decision making.

In many cases issues of accountability, transparency, complicity, retaliation and ethics are tied closely together. Nowhere is the connection between these stronger, perhaps, than when deans interact with their faculties, faculties that retain (at least formally) some shared governance responsibilities.

This post considers these issues in the context of a hypothetical that might be posed by university faculty organizations to their senior administrators.  It suggests the answers that these senior administrators ought to give, and, lamentably, those that they are likely to make.

Question 1) Can the Dean prevent us from asking questions of a department head candidate without administrative surveillance?

Question 2) a) Is it appropriate for a Dean to send out an e-mail encouraging faculty to sign a public letter/petition? b) Should a Dean be engaged in activism when it could alienate many faculty and stakeholders, c) Should a Dean be encouraging faculty to sign petitions, which that Dean can see and then, potentially, hold against faculty who did not sign the petition?

Unionization of Fixed Term/Contingent Faculty and the Abandonment of Shared Governance--The View From the University of Chicago

(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2015)

I have been suggesting that shared governance in the modern American university is failing. That failure is a function of fundamental changes in social expectations of universities, in the effect of the changes in the composition of university faculties (introducing a class element to labor structures), in the reactionary response of faculties unreasonably holding on to past ideals now effectively abandoned, and to university administrators eager to reject the classical model of collaborative governance in favor of the (more efficient) hierarchical corporate model of diffused governance in which accountability becomes easier to avoid.

These changes appear to move the university to the adoption of 20th century corporate factory models of administration and operation.    And the consequence of the adoption of that form will have an inevitable consequence for labor--the move toward unionization of a "deprofessionalized" cadres of knowledge workers seeking to protect their interests against exploitation by the operators of learning factories.  These effects are now quite visible among the most elite American universities.  The contingent and fixed term faculty at the University of Chicago have now begun a process that might lead to the unionization of their ranks (Maudlyne Ihejirika, University of Chicago's nontenured faculty file to unionize, Chicago Sun-Times, Oct. 29, 2015) (portions reproduced below).    

This post considers the inevitable move toward unionization and suggests that it may point to a radical change in the nature of the university and its abandonment of a collaborative for an adversarial model of governance. It suggests the way these changes may point to the need to restructure the operations and objectives of faculty governance institutions  in this new administrative and operational climate.

AAUP Reports on Four Cases of Investigations on Academic Freedom and Tenure: Mass Terminations, Tenure, and Social Media

The Association of American University Professors (AAUP) has recently announced publication of four (4) of its Academic Freedom and Tenure Investigative Reports:

University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Felician College (New Jersey)
University of Southern Maine

One of the cases, that of Professor Salaita is quite well know.  (See here and here). 

Another (Southern Maine) deserves substantially more attention than it has gotten--the increasing use of mass layoffs through program closures as an effective means of short circuiting the traditional protections designed into the "financial exigency" standards that had served as a common basis of action for several generations.  What had started after Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana Universities (see, e.g., here) now looks to have evolved into a mechanism for relatively easy faculty terminations.  Effectively, the movement seems to be to a standard in which the financial deficiencies of a single program now appear enough to trigger university financial exigency sufficient to support the termination of faculty in the targeted program. For universities, this is a way around the protections of tenure at a time when universities are moving to a very different model for delivering education "product", one in which faculty protected by tenure are increasingly painted as "in the way."  

The other two follow--in a world in which faculty are increasingly viewed, like copy paper, as consumables in the manufacture of education products, tenure is increasingly viewed as an impediment to efficient production.  Its only value, increasingly limited, is as a means of revenue raising (by grant funded faculty) and in the competition within prestige markets that, it is believed, increases the quality of students harvested for income production and consumption of education. For universities this presents a problem, and the two cases suggest current experimentation: is there a way of retaining the revenue raising and prestige enhancing benefits of tenure without actually providing the security that makes such objectives attainable?   

Links to the reports and summaries follow:

At the 2015 AAUP Annual Conference: Remarks, "Undermining Academic Freedom from the Inside: On the Adverse Effects of Administrative Techniques and Neutral Principles" and PowerPoint of Presentation "Developing Social Media Policies for Universities: Best Practices and Pitfalls"

The 2015 American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Annual Conference, held in Washington, D.C., June 10-14, had as its theme, "100 Years of Defending Academic Freedom" to mark the AAUP's centennial.

My remarks, Undermining Academic Freedom from the Inside: On the Adverse Effects of Administrative Techniques and Neutral Principles,  may  be accessed HERE.  IT IS ALSO REPRODUCED BELOW.  The text flows the remarks delivered but it has been expanded slightly, and links and references to additional texts that might be of interest have been included. 

My presentation PowerPoints, "Developing Social Media Policies for Universities: Best Practices and Pitfalls," highlighted the social media policies of US universities" may be accessed here.  A summary of the presentation may be accessed here.

The Rising Price of Speech on Campus

 (Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

Americans appear to have developed a quite distinct but two sided vision of what we like to call "free" speech on campuses.  On the one hand, we have embraced the idea of universities as a place of deep and sometimes fractious open discourse, where students and faculty work diligently in the pursuit of knowledge, wherever it may take them, and for its dissemination through instruction that is meant to challenge and train. On the other hand, we have increasingly come, again, to view faculty the way aristocrats once thought of the tutors for their children-- as staff that ought to be careful about their place and their role.

These views are irreconcilable and both are deeply held.  Their interaction tends to work tolerably well in times of relative social calm.  But when there are substantial social and political rifts, the contradictions become more plainly visible.  The resolution of that incompatibility tends to formally embrace  the "open discourse" premise while creating functional systems that strip "open discourse" to a quite precise meaning the control of which is no longer in the hands of faculty.  And indeed, at times of the greatest social and political rifts, it tends to be the faculty that bears a substantial amount of the brunt of this exercise of control--faculty are after all, charged with the care of the progeny of  adults deeply divided in their politics and social and economic stations.  And many of these adults (and the children they have produced and proffered up to the university for "finishing") prefer to keep it that way.

The move toward models of servant or teacher, or perhaps servant-teacher, appears to be the thrust of recent trends in academic disciplining of faculty--that is, of the construction of the rules within which one can distinguish between appropriate and naughty conduct in an institution where free thinking (within bounds of course) must be permitted for the edification of those being prepared to assume their stations within society's social, economic and political hierarchies, but where that free thinking and its challenge must be well managed within the bounds of propriety and the sensibilities of those at the apex of power structures. This is the ancient aristocratic tutor model now dressed up in democratic garb, where the aristocrat has given way to the think tank, media authorities, and the usual array of institutional leaders.  Within it, "smart" is purchased but to be applied in ways that may be appropriate to the expectation of training suitable for the social and economic station expected to be assumed by the students who are sorted into institutions that are themselves ranked and constituted to serve the various levels of American social, economic and political organization.

The use of social media has been the current focus of efforts to discipline and regulate faculty speech.  It is an easy target because it is new and because it tends to leverage faculty voices enough to make them more important than other conventional forms of expression.  Faculty publications and lectures, however provocative, tend to have a fairly narrow audience in most cases.  Social media tends to permit faculty voices to be heard more "loudly" and thus to compete for a role in managing mass culture with traditional social culture leaders. The contentious nature of debates about faculty behavior on special media--and who may control it--has produced some reaction.  The AAUP's Draft Report: Academic Freedom and Electronic Communications (Nov. 2013) may be accessed HERE.  It has also produced some study.  E.g., Mike Moran, Jeff Seaman, and Hester Tinti-Kane, Teaching, Learning, and Sharing: How Today’s Higher Education Faculty Use Social Media, Pearson Learning Solutions and Babson Survey Research Group (April 2011).

To ensure that necessary disciplining, the modern American academy has deployed two old approaches to governance.  The first include regulatory systems that vest discretion in university administrators (and important outside stakeholders) to set the proper boundaries for faculty speech.  The second involve the invocation of social norms so that these regulatory constraints might be better internalized--to avoid the bother of monitoring and enforcing command based rules. I have touched on these themes recently: (1) A Malediction for Academia--The Kansas Regents and the New Social Media Policy--Docility and Servility Against Academic Freedom and the Need for Contractual Protection (Dec. 29, 2013); (2) "Sandusky's Ghost" and the Weaponizing of Scandal--Administrative Disciplining of Faculty at the University of Colorado (Dec. 24, 2014).

Both governance approaches are much in evidence in two recent reports from the Chronicle of Higher Education each described briefly below. On the regulatory aspects of managing faculty speech:  Peter Schmidt,  Colleges Are Divided on Need for New Speech Policies, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 10, 2014.  On the invocation of social norms to inculcate appropriate internalization of speech boundaries in faculty: Peter Schmidt, One Email, Much Outrage, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 10, 2014. 

Each provides a glimpse of an aspect of the rising forms of the management of faculty speech.  Together they serve to illustrate the evolving social system within which faculty are better taught to understand their place.   Added to evidence the governance effects of these trends is the current and proposed rewritten policy on social media use drafted for approval by the Kansas Board of Regents.  Available HERE: Social Media Work Group Draft Policy ( .PDF ). 

The Wellness Wars at Universities Opens a Student Front

The University's administrators and its stakeholders have been engaged in a relatively one sided conversation about wellness and the state of benefits at Penn State since the summer of 2013 when, without substantial engagement, the University rolled out what proved to be quite controversial changes to its benefits programs for faculty and staff.  (The Wellness Wars Continue--A Task Force is Constituted and the Institutional Role of the Faculty is Reduced in Function).

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

Penn State is not unique--most large universities have, perhaps on the theory of "benchmarking strength in numbers", have coordinated loosely (though I have no idea whether it was intentional or instrumentally managed) on similar approaches at roughly the same time. I have chronicled some of this engagement (e.g., The "Narrative Advantage": The Two Faces of Wellness Programs at Penn State and the Importance of Control Its Master Narrative; The Next Round in the Wellness Wars-- A Response From Faculty Representatives).

Now the university, again probably not unlike others, has opened a new front in its wellness wars.  This time the objects are students. Penn State, like many other public universities, is moving to substantially constrict benefits for its graduate and student assistants without any decrease in working conditions and obligations. It intends to substantially increase premiums and benefits costs to students. The move is necessary, from the university's perspective, to preserve fiscal integrity and the viability of its benefits programs (e.g., Peter Schmidt, College Leaders and Labor Organizers Spar Over Possible Graduate Student Unionization, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 24, 2012).   The move is unwelcome, from the student perspective, because of the precariousness of their existence now made harder by these moves (e.g., Sean Flynn, EDITORIAL: Grad students give more than they get, Voices, March 5, 2013). 

This move may have consequences.  Already there is a strong movement toward unionization of graduate students (Christy Thornton, Opinion: "Why NYU Grad Students Fought to Unionize," Al-Jazeera, Dec. 16, 2013).

Graduate student unionization is very much in the news these days, with the National Labor Relations Board expected to rule soon on whether graduate assistants may unionize at private universities. . . .

Currently, there are no private universities with graduate student unions. But many public universities have them, and the authors of a paper released this year surveyed similar graduate students at universities with and without unions about pay and also the student-faculty relationship. The study found unionized graduate students earn more, on average. And on various measures of student-faculty relations, the survey found either no difference or (in some cases) better relations at unionized campuses.

The paper (abstract available here [and below]) appears in ILR Review, published by Cornell University. (Scott Jaschik, Union Impact and Non-Impact, Inside Higher Education, October 2013)

Indeed, even within the CIC, a trade organization of mostly state and state assisted universities in mid-Atlantic and Midwestern regions of the United States, the issues are looming larger. "Legislation that aimed to stop University of Michigan graduate student researchers from unionizing is unconstitutional, according to a ruling Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Mark A. Goldsmith. The decision by Goldsmith, an appointee of President Barack Obama, follows a years-long struggle by the graduate student research assistants to form a collective bargaining unit. The group represents 2,200 graduate students employed by U-M professors to assist in research projects involving lab work, data analysis or some other task that is not related to teaching." (Kim Kozlowski, Federal judge strikes down state law banning unionization of graduate students, The Detroit News, Feb. 5, 2014).

Read more from original sources below.

Fixed Term Faculty At Penn State--A State of Incoherence Veiling a De Facto Policy That Avoids Faculty Engagement in the Adoption of Formal Policy

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

One of the most frustrating forms of engagement at public universities is the increasing tendency towards an engaged passivity by senior administrators that help mask the move toward policy decisions that avoid the need for the traditional engagement with university stakeholders, especially faculty. This strategic passivity reaches its most popular and pernicious form when the "market" is invoked as an "invisible hand" that directs action for which policy is unnecessary but which effectively produces policy in function if not in form.

Nowhere is this form of strategic passivity more in evidence than in the context of the attack on tenure from policies that produce an increasing willingness to hire fixed term faculty. Here both the budgetary needs of administration, and perhaps more, the move toward "made to market" education (e.g., Made to Market Education and Professionalization in University Education) has pushed administrators to view tenure and a permanent faculty as an impediment toward quick and responsive programmatic changes in education delivery to serve its new masters: wage labor markets and student demand. Not that these ought not to be important, but when they become the excuse that veils administrative decision making undertaken without strong consultation with faculty, then they exert a perverse effect not merely on shared governance but on the quality of education delivered. 

The Penn State Faculty Senate Intra University Relations Committee has undertaken a long term engagement with the issue of fixed term faculty as part of a new mix of faculty at public universities. The engagement has sometimes strained relations with the administration, and sometimes sought to mollify it. Now comes a new Intra University Committee Report that is well worth reading for what it has to say about the way in which university administrations have confronted the issue fo fixed term faculty. A recent report produced by this Committee follows. Your reactions are solicited.

Implementing the Affordable Care Act at Penn State, Employer Responsibility and the Part Time Employee; The AAUP Speaks, the IRS Regulations Are Released

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) ― also known as the Affordable CareAct or ACA ― is the health reform legislation passed by the 111th Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in March 2010. The so-called employer responsibility provision of ACA (ACA § 1511 et seq.) must be implemented by all large employers, including Penn State, in 2014. The employer responsibility provisions primarily affect part-time faculty and staff. Employer penalties will be assessed if Penn State does not offer affordable health care to 95% of its employee population who meet the "full time" employee criteria of ACA.

The issue of calculating hours for part time employees, and the determinaiton of the provision (or no provisions) of benefits for part time employees remains very much a work in progress at Penn State, as it does for most large educational institutions across the nation. Penn State, in concert with its sister universities have chosen to adopt similar approaches for the determination of part time status, and for the benefits no longer available to that class of employee.

In the spirit of shared governance, university administrators determined that it would be useful and appropriate to solicit the input of faculty and others affected by the policy determinations that Penn State would be making with respect to these ACA requirements. The Penn State University faculty Senate obliged with a forensic discussion at its January, 2014 meeting (Implementing the Affordable Care Act at Penn State--Employer Responsibility Provisions and the Part Time Employee).

Here is a link to last month's Senate Record of the forensic discussion, conducted by Profs Larry Backer (previous Chair of the Senate) and Ira Ropson (Chair of Faculty Benefits Committee). The session may be accessed here: http://senate.psu.edu/record/13-14/012814/012814record1.pdf

At session's end, all interested stakeholder were urged to contact our Human Resources personnel and the Senate Faculty Benefits Committee to provide necessary inpiut to help guide the administraiton in choosing the approach it would take, within the limits of its discretion under the ACA, with respect to Part Time Employees.

Among those important stakeholders who have sought to contribute to the discussion has been the Penn State Chapter of the AAUP. This post includes the letter sent by Brian A. Curran, Professor fo Art History at the University Park campus, and president of the new AAUP chapter to Lori Miraldi, Lecturer in Communication Arts and Sciences, and forwarded to Dr. Ropson.

It also includes the gist of the new Treasury Regulations that permit much harsher treatment of part time faculty employees.

If the University chooses the easy path, it might wrap itself in the protections of the Treasury regulations and  create a substantial class of exploitable academics who would contribute to better operating margins for the benefits of students being outfitted for maximizing their value to wage labor markets.  But it might be possible for the University to protect its financial position and deliver quality sustainable instruction without the need for the sort of exploitation the state now would permit. It is to be hoped that Ms. Susan Basso, Penn State Vice President for Human Resources,  and her colleagues at other large public institutions, would take the higher road.  But that remains to be seen.

Interview on the Senate Forensic at Penn State: Implementing the Affordable Care Act (ACA)

The University Faculty Senate at Penn State will be conducting a forensic session on aspects of Penn State's compliance with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The forensic documents can be accessed at Implementing the Affordable Care Act at Penn State--Employer Responsibility Provisions and the Part Time Employee. 

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

 

The folks at the University's student newspaper, the Daily Collegian, will be covering the forensic.  They were kind enough to ask my views on the session.  This post includes the gist of the interview questions and answers for the Collegian.

Implementing the Affordable Care Act at Penn State--Employer Responsibility Provisions and the Part Time Employee

 (Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) ― also known as the Affordable CareAct or ACA ― is the health reform legislation passed by the 111th Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in March 2010. The so-called employer responsibility provision of ACA (ACA § 1511 et seq.) must be implemented by all large employers, including Penn State, in 2014. The employer responsibility provisions primarily affect part-time faculty and staff. Employer penalties will be assessed if Penn State does not offer affordable health care to 95% of its employee population who meet the "full time" employee criteria of ACA.

But this requires defining part time employees. This is a straightforward exercise for hourly employees (assuming hours are fairly and completely counted, something of an open question in some institutions given working time assumptions). It becomes more difficult where hours are not counted directly, especially for example for teaching staff. As such, the determination of part time employment may in reality involve policy choices, and produce consequences, well beyond the extent to which the university is compelled by law, or obliged through the constraints of the social norms within which it operates, to provide benefits. And as an "industry leader", the choices Penn State makes will have some substantial influence of the approach generally adopted by other universities. As such, consideration of Penn State's ACA requirements has national dimensions.

Though it already appears to have moved to implement these provisions as it sees fit, Penn State has also nodded, if only as a matter of empty courtesy, in the direction of consultation with affected stakeholders, including the university faculty Senate. Originally that "transparency" effort was to be presented in the form of an "informational report" funneled through the Senate Faculty Benefits Committee. After sustained discussion about its form and content, I agreed to sponsor, in its place, a forensic discussion about the university's approach to ACA compliance (at least in this respect) as originally set out in that draft report.

This post includes the Forensic materials: Implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) at Penn State: Employer Responsibility Provisions; Part Time Benefits and High Deductible Plans.
Feedback and comments on the university's implementation approaches as described below would be most welcome. 

Stress Points and Structural Challenges for the Continued Viability of the University Faculty Senate: Remarks Delivered To Past Chairs of the Penn State University Faculty Senate

It was great honor to address the former chairs of the Penn State University Faculty Senate at a luncheon in their honor held at the Nittany Lion Inn.

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2013)

This post includes the transcript of my remarks, Stress Points and Structural Challenges for the Continued Viability of the University Faculty Senate.

The PowerPoints of the presentation may be accessed HERE.

Rethinking the Economics of On-Line Education; Considering Three Different Models of Faculty Involvement in Emerging On-Line Education

One of the most interesting aspects of the move toward on-line education is its financial aspects. Universities are buying in certainly because they tend to like to follow demand and they perceive student comfort with this form of knowledge delivery.  But what makes accommodation to taste more compelling is the financial aspects--on-line education provides  a means of substantially increasing income margins for universities as they leverage their teaching staffs per student.

 

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2013)

Yet it may be that the leveraging potential of on-line education may be far smaller than theory might suggest.  The reason is simple--while synchronous knowledge delivery has great leverage potential, the move toward student centered and assessment/outcomes based education methodologies cuts deeply in the opposite direction.  These models are grounded int he idea of constant supervision and management of student involvement in course work.  That requires a greater rather than a lesser involvement of faculty in the conduct of classes.  Where on line classes can leverage lecture contact hours per faculty members, the requirements of surveillance and assessment/outcomes based  education requires substantially greater numbers of faculty to mind the students enrolled in these on-line courses. 

This post considers three distinct "approaches" to this problem that have been proposed or that will likely be influential in determining the emerging structures and expectations of on-line education and the reconstruction of the role of faculty within universities.