Professionals for Hire, But Not for Higher Education

Once I thought I had the fortitude to study and practice law, so I enrolled in a contracts course. The course was fine but I don’t have what it takes to be an attorney. I know this because I was married to one. We were together when she applied to law school, was called to the bar, and then practiced as an associate for a law firm. Where earning a living is concerned, I know the practice of law and the practice of higher education.

The course instructor was an attorney with a solo practice of mixed civil law. Such professor-professional hybrids exist in other fields of post-secondary education such as medicine, accounting, and business. This is an intersection of institutional faculty employee and independent professional practitioner, in one life, in one person, but two models. The clarity this juxtaposition offers is useful in addressing the challenges, crises and absurdities of the higher education institution model that we have inherited.

Saint Mary’s University was the institution where this professionally licensed, supported and disciplined attorney taught me contract law as an adjunct employee. But why – you might ask – does this professional not offer his teaching services to the public as he does his legal, as an independent provider and protector of a social good? Or put another way, what does the exclusive institutional employment of academics offer society that the exclusive professional licensure of academics does not?

At that point in my life, I had not yet fallen for my attorney wife and had not yet befriended professors of philosophy, Drs Peter March and Robert Ansel, of SMU, with whom the Professional Society of Academics (PSA) was created and developed. I believe the lawyer-lecturer was my first contact with a professor who was a professional, crossing paths as we did in an evening elective made mandatory by our day jobs.

As a metaphorical and literal observation, walking into the office of a Prof-Pro requires a choice, a conceptual categorization, made by me and by him. This choice of door is forced upon us by the assumed inheritance of an exclusive institutional employment model for higher education service and stewardship.

Behind one office door, the Professional can independently and gainfully practice law, with a level of intimacy and competency necessary for public consumption of a social good under the protection and direction of a legislated and associated profession. Behind the other door, the Professor cannot independently practice higher education, for recognized credit or credential, and so not for a living.

This is a serious problem for the university and college inheritance I disclaim with an alternative model that asks, what is the legal basis for this secernment in one's ability to exercise the right to earn a living (in service and stewardship to the social good, after a complex investment in self and society)? Why is there not a similar restriction on the practice of law and medicine, where people are executed and without hope, never mind enlightened and credentialed?

 

Don't Make the Mistake

Don’t think this unnecessary, unjustified restriction on the ability of academics to earn a living in higher education is a paper pylon. President Trump was fined $1 million by the state (of New York) for calling his namesake a university. Could you afford that sort of fine if your independent academic practice was caught offering credits toward a degree? Does such a question even make sense, legally or logically?

Don’t be too quick to characterize this professional possibility as a privatization, monetization, neoliberal, fascist ploy. Nothing could be further from the truth, while being perfectly consistent with that truth. PSA is designed without logical or logistical tether to economic, social or political positions, while recognizing that models must be constructed using exactly such input. There is nothing here of concern to PSA, because a brief dip into the institutional heritage reveals plenty of labour exploitation and fascism, not to mention murder, bribery, fraud, forgery, fornication, and much more for a spicy historical novel. A crude characterization of PSA is a model that can be used by liberals or conservatives for capitalist or socialist ends.

I prefer public higher education that leans socialist, with independent, gainful higher education practice that is more subtle but no less public. In creating the professional model, Peter, Robert and I were well aware of this rather lazy privatization criticism of PSA. In the aftermath of deconstructionism, we had no nefarious neoliberal aims but a healthy disdain for our forced inheritance of earning and learning. PSA is a product of common sense and experience that borrows from what came before. It is a passion of philosophy and responsibility. It is a piece of technology.

Suppose the contract law Prof-Pro rented office and classroom space from some university vendor. Suppose the Prof-Pro paid to use a public institution’s Registrar, library, laboratory, lavatory, etc. Suppose the Prof-Pro was paid directly by the students. How much would this facilitation of service and stewardship have to cost before the academic says, I can do most of this admin work for myself or more cheaply using another vendor? How much would an academic practice cost to operate, in your field, in your geography? How much would this professional have to charge for courses to earn a respectable living, as other professionals do in full, independent (not shared) control of their work?

Don’t be too quick to dispatch condolences to the professions, because PSA describes a new one, which is not the same as faculty employment that groups like the American Association of University Professors call a profession. Don’t fail to recognize that the legitimacy of professional practice depends on the work of faculty employees whose legitimacy in turn depends upon the legitimacy of the institutions that exclusively employ academics and deny them the ability to provide higher education as other professionals provide their equally valued social goods. Don’t think a professional model cannot facilitate at least as well as an institutional employer model. Don’t settle. Don’t assume.

PSA does not ignore the Alt-Ac movement, where PhD graduates earn in sectors other than higher education, where programs are developed specifically for post doctoral paths other than faculty employment. Obviously, we can’t all play in the NHL or the EPL, and some have no interest in the game. I have pointed to the irony in Post-Ac survival tactics. This professional model does not ignore the distinction between the accreditation of an institution and the licensure of an individual. It explicitly depends upon the distinction in arguing for the superiority of PSA over the inherited institutional middlemen. PSA also doesn’t ignore the bottleneck that exclusive institutional employment forms for all those who want to earn and learn in higher education but cannot be accommodated by the model.

Looking around, academics are in private corporate ownership, partnership, internship, employment, and other forms of earning. They earn in hybrid arrangements like a private practice attorney who also works as an adjunct employee at the local university. These Prof-Pros have a foot in two different models, one a real profession, the other a quasi-profession of people who have no choice but to be employees if they want to contribute to higher education.

Good luck trying to deny that a professional model can be used for provision and protection of higher education. You might find better luck in denying it should be used. But in either case, the academic, especially the faculty employee, has an obligation to explore alternatives to the institutions of our inheritance. It is part of our social contract for teaching, researching and community servicing. Care to join me in meeting our obligations?