TEXAS ACADEME

   Texas Conference

American Association of University Professors

                        Phone: (832) 692-2306                          www.ktcinet.com/aaup                       

National Office: 1012 Fourteenth Street, N. W., Suite 500, Washington, D.C. 2005

Phone   (202) 737-5900, Fax: (202) 737-5526, www.aaup.org

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                                                                                                            April 2007

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AAUP's purpose is to advance academic freedom and shared governance, to define fundamental professional values and standards for higher education, and to ensure higher education's contribution to the common good.

President’s Column: THE PRICE OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM

Lynn Tatum, President

Texas Conference of AAUP

            We in Texas dodged a bullet (with some fancy footwork by many of you in AAUP).  A national campaign to attack the Academy and to call for governmental monitoring of professorial views has been underway for several years.  Its primary spokesman has been David Horowitz, author of Indoctrination U.  The logic of Horowitz and his supporters goes something like this: professors are liberal, therefore they try to indoctrinate their students with liberal ideology, therefore students (and the few conservative professors that exist) need the government to help them to withstand the onslaught of the liberal professoriate.  Horowitz and his supporters have cleverly, but misleadingly, couched their ideological assaults on the Academy in high-sounding academic buzzwords and phrases: “Students for Academic Freedom,” “intellectual diversity,” “safeguarding religious freedom,” or most famously an “Academic Bill of Rights.”

Over the last several years the “Academic Bill of Rights” has been introduced in numerous state legislatures, but never successfully.  The most recent strategy has been to introduce a variety of legislative actions to insure “intellectual diversity” (read: get-people-who-agree-with-Horowitz-on-campus).  As an example, last week the Missouri General Assembly passed a bill (yet to be passed by the Senate) that calls on the state’s universities to insure “intellectual diversity” and then goes on to suggest that university guidelines specifically reference “the viewpoint that the Bible is inerrant” (http://www.house.mo.gov/bills071/biltxt/perf/HB0213P.HTM).

            Now to the bullet: in Texas, a Senate Concurrent Resolution was introduced (SCR 3), which calls on Texas universities to establish policies to "ensure" a certain "diversity of opinion" on our campuses.  Ominously, this resolution is concerned with both faculty AND student opinions and views.   And it chillingly adds that the resolution is concerned with opinions "not only in the classroom and campus, but beyond."   Wow!  Big Brother will be watching!!!  (http://www.legis.state.tx.us/tlodocs/80R/billtext/html/SC00003I.htm)

            We sent out a call to many AAUP activists to contact their senators to oppose this governmental monitoring of the views of faculty (and students).  AND IT WORKED!!!  I contacted the offices of numerous senators, and apparently you did too.  The final result: on two different occasions the Senate Higher Education Committee hearings on SCR 3 were postponed.  And I have now been assured by the chief of staff of that committee that he will recommend that the legislation not even be scheduled for a committee hearing.  He reported that he was surprised at the level of faculty concern about this resolution.  It appears that, at least for this session, SCR 3 is dead.  And you and AAUP did it!!!  But keep your ears and eyes open and let AAUP know if you hear of any new attacks on academic freedom.  To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson: the price of Academic freedom is eternal vigilance.

Newsletter to be Online

By Fred Stevens

The Texas Academe Newsletter will be posted from now on at http://ktcinet.com/aaup/. If you only received this email after someone forwarded it to you, send your email address to Fred Stevens (fstevens@schreiner.edu) and it will added to the distribution list.  If you have ideas for contributions to the Newsletter contact LadyJane Hickey (lhickey@austincollege.edu).

Survey of Changes in Faculty Retirement Policies 2007

This survey is a study of university and college retirement plans. It is concerned especially about early retirement incentive plans, phased retirement plans, and health insurance coverage for retirees. Its findings update The Survey of Changes in Faculty Retirement Policies, published in 2000. By Valerie Martin Conley

[From AAUP website, posted on 3/13] Available at: http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/issuesed/retirement/2007retsurv/default.htm

The New Academic Labor System

By Richard Moser, AAUP Associate Secretary

June, 2001

The exploitation of graduate students and the abuse and overuse of adjunct and non-tenure track faculty is the most prominent characteristic of a new employment strategy sometimes referred to as the two or multi tiered labor system. This new academic labor system has emerged over the past thirty years and is firmly established in higher education. It constitutes a threat to the teaching profession and if left unchecked will undermine the university’s status as an institution of higher learning. These new developments in academic labor are the most troubling expressions of the so-called corporatization of the university.

The only rational and effective response to this system is public education and collective action or what we might call academic citizenship. Academic citizenship exists both as an expression of a traditional ideal and as a possibility that draws on contemporary life.

See more of this article at the AAUP website: http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/issuesed/contingent/moserlabor.htm

Background Facts on Contingent Faculty

Reprinted in its entirety from the AAUP website.

The term “contingent faculty” includes both part- and full-time non-tenure-track faculty.

• Their common characteristic is that their institutions make little or no long-term commitment to them. 

Today, 46 percent of all faculty hold part-time appointments.

• Many faculty classified as “part-time” actually teach the equivalent of a full-time course load.
• To support themselves, part-time faculty often commute between institutions and prepare courses on a grueling timetable, making enormous sacrifices to maintain interaction with their students.
• Since faculty classified as part-time are typically paid by the course, without benefits, a sizeable number of college teachers lacks access to health insurance and retirement plans.

Both part- and full-time non-tenure-track appointments are continuing to increase, with the most rapid growth occurring in full-time non-tenure-track positions.

• Between 1998 and 2001, the number of full-time non-tenure-track positions grew by 35.5 percent.
• Since the 1990s, the majority of all new full-time hires have been off the tenure track.
• In contrast, only 3.3 percent of full-time faculty appointments were off the tenure track in 1969.
• Non-tenure-track positions of all types now account for 65 percent of all faculty appointments in American higher education.
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The majority of contingent faculty do not have professional careers outside of academe, and most teach basic core courses rather than narrow specialties.

• While a small percentage of part-time faculty are specialists or practitioners of a profession such as law or architecture and teach a class on the side, this situation is the exception rather than the norm.

The excessive use of, and inadequate compensation and professional support for, contingent faculty exploits these colleagues.

• Positions that require comparable work, responsibilities, and qualifications should be comparably compensated.
• As the Association recommended in 1993, compensation for part-time appointments should be the applicable fraction of the compensation (including benefits) for a comparable full-time position. 

The turn towards cheaper contingent labor is largely a matter of priorities rather than economic necessity.

• While many institutions are currently suffering budget cuts, the greatest growth in contingent appointments occurred during times of economic prosperity.
• Many institutions have invested heavily in facilities and technology while cutting instructional spending.
• Though incoming students may find finer facilities, they are also likely to find fewer full-time faculty with adequate time, professional support, and resources available for their instruction.

Excessive use of contingent faculty has costs.

• It damages student learning, faculty governance, and academic freedom. Each of these is an educational cost that institutions incur when they choose not to invest adequately in their instructional missions.

Many contingent faculty members are excellent teachers and scholars.

• But no matter how qualified and dedicated, contingent faculty members are hobbled in the performance of their duties by a lack of professional treatment and support.
• Many lack access to such basics as offices, computer support, and photocopying services.

Heavy reliance on contingent faculty hurts students.

• Contingent faculty are typically paid only for the hours they spend in the classroom, and they are often hired on the spur of the moment with little evaluation.
• The high turnover among contingent faculty members mean that some students may never have the same teacher twice, or may be unable to find an instructor who knows them well enough to write a letter of recommendation.

Overuse of contingent faculty hurts all faculty.

• The integrity of faculty work is threatened as parts of the whole are divided and assigned piecemeal to instructors, lecturers, graduate students, specialists, researchers, and administrators.
• Proportionally fewer tenure-track faculty means fewer people to divide up the work of advising students, setting curriculum, and serving on college-wide committees.

Academic freedom is weakened when a majority of the faculty lack the protections of tenure.

• The insecure relationship between contingent faculty members and their institutions can chill the climate for academic freedom, which is is essential to the common good of a free society.
• Contingent faculty may be less likely to take risks in the classroom or in scholarly and service work.
• The free exchange of ideas may be hampered by the fear of dismissal for unpopular utterances, so students may be deprived of the debate essential to citizenship.
• They may also be deprived of rigorous and honest evaluations of their work.

The use of non-tenure-track appointments should be limited to specialized fields and emergency situations.

• While it recognizes that current patterns of faculty appointment depart substantially from the ideal, the Association affirms its 1980 and 1993 recommendations that no more than 15 percent of the total instruction within an institution, and no more than 25 percent of the total instruction within any department, should be provided by faculty with non-tenure-track appointments.

Shared governance responsibilities should be shared among all faculty, including those appointed to part-time positions.

• Curricular and other academic decisions benefit from the participation of all faculty, especially those who teach core courses.
• Faculty and administrators should together determine the appropriate modes and levels of participation in governance for part-time faculty, considering issues such as voting rights, representation, and inclusion in committees and governance bodies.

When contingent appointments are used, they should include job security and due process protections. Contingent faculty appointments, like all faculty appointments, should include:

• the full range of faculty responsibilities (teaching, scholarship, service);
• comparable compensation for comparable work;
• assurance of continuing employment after a reasonable opportunity for successive reviews;
• inclusion in institutional governance structures; and
• appointment and review processes that involve faculty peers and follow accepted academic due process.

The proportion of faculty appointments that are on the tenure line should be increased. This can be done by:

• Changing the status of faculty members currently holding non-tenure-track appointments. Individuals holding contingent appointments are offered tenure-eligible reappointments.
• Creating new tenure-line appointments. New tenure-line positions are created and open searches are held for candidates to fill them.
• In both cases, transition to a higher proportion of tenured faculty should be accomplished primarily through attrition, retirements, and, where appropriate “grandfathering” of currently contingent faculty into tenured positions. Faculty in contingent positions should not bear the cost of transition.

Texas Academe editor is LadyJane Hickey.  Manuscript submissions may be sent to lhickey@austincollege.edu or mailed to her at Austin College, 900 N. Grand Ave, 6L, Sherman, TX 75092.  903-813-2237.

Texas Conference AAUP Officers and Contact Information

Texas Conference AAUP Website: http://www.ktcinet.com/aaup

                                    National AAUP web site: http://www.aaup.org