From: Labor Notes Nov 1994 , via Red Rock Eaters Digest 'Downsizing' and 'Reengineering' Go to School TODAY'S COLLEGE TEACHERS: CHEAP AND TEMPORARY -- by Jason Hecht College teaching has traditionally been portrayed as one of the better jobs to have in the U.S. economy: it was possible to earn a decent living, maybe obtain lifetime employment, and have the autonomy of independent inquiry. Unfortunately, over the last several years things have changed for those who sought such positions. Just as "downsizing" and "reengineering" are being used by corporations to eliminate jobs and reduce pay, college administrators are employing similar methods to rationalize their teaching staff. That means fewer permanent positions, and more part-time temporary ones filled largely from the ranks of graduate students who have devoted years of education to becoming a tenured college professor. One scientist told Science magazine that post-doctoral students "are rapidly becoming the burger flippers of science; they're cheap, temporary, and highly-trained laborers." MORE PRODUCT PER PROF In the face of stagnant and declining enrollments, many managers of post-secondary educational institutions have become fixated on reducing labor costs and increasing the "productivity" of professors. They say that greater efficiencies can be achieved by operating universities according to the same management principles that govern Corporate America. According to John Curry, administrative vice- chancellor of the University of California at Los Angeles in a recent article in Across the Board magazine: "Can a university be run more like a business? You bet it can...Most universities can do a significant job of cutting costs through the same reengineering of processes and work that have characterized the best for-profit corporations." The widespread use of part-time temporary faculty to teach courses is one of the primary tools used to enforce this new austerity. The availability of unemployed and underemployed Ph.D's, candidates for post-doctoral degrees ("post- docs"), and graduate students provides universities with a pliant, low-paid teaching and research workforce. A post-doctoral candidate remarked to Science magazine, "Most of us never realized that one could work hard, contribute to science, do all the 'right' things, and still end up unemployed before turning thirty." From the college's perspective, the economics of using part-time faculty are quite compelling. Suppose a part-timer is paid $3,000 to teach a course to 25 students who have each paid $375 to enroll in the class. The college covers the cost of the instructor's salary after the eighth student, and probably can fund any overhead costs after the ninth or tenth student. The cost-cutting seems to be working. A report in the March-April 1992 issue of Academe, the AAUP bulletin, notes that the average inflation-adjusted academic salary in 1991-92 was about eight percent less than it was in 1972-73. The AAUP numbers strongly suggest that college teachers have not "captured" the surplus dollars generated from the unprecedented rise in college tuition over the last decade. Rather, it appears that those who run universities have diverted a significant portion of their budgets away from the hiring of full-time teachers, and toward the hiring of administrators. VIRTUAL EDUCATION For example, economist Barbara Bergmann found that over the last two decades, administrative costs at colleges and universities have increased at a faster rate than instructional costs. "Informal laborers" in higher education help to suppress the wage demands of full-time tenured faculty. But colleges have implemented changes in the terms and conditions of teaching employment without much challenge from the unionized and tenured faculty, who frequently make ten times the pay of part-time college teachers. Besides trying to directly reduce salaries and benefits by hiring part-time teachers, college administrators have also adopted more traditional means of raising productivity. For example, "video lecturing" for "distance learning" is one way universities are capitalizing the teaching process. College administrators can distribute the salary of a single professor over several hundred more students, who can "access" a lecture rather than actually attending it. Whether learning can take place in such an environment is never questioned by university bureaucrats. Many of those who have the highest educational qualifications are on the margins of the workforce just like those with less training. Unless the ranks of the unionized teaching staff -- especially at non-elite institutions -- act to reverse the degradation of college teaching jobs, they too may find themselves without much of a livelihood in the coming years. [Jason Hecht recently completed his Ph.D. in economics and works as an adjunct lecturer in New York City.]