From Motor City to Mind City: Combining Union, Professional and Co-operative Association in Michigan Higher Education

Nation of Change published a piece this month by Matt Stannard, entitled, “Organized Labor, Public Banks and Grassroots: Keys to A Worker-Owned Economy,” that includes several observations I consider consistent with the aims of my alternative higher education model (a.k.a. PSA): a paradigm shift away from the current employer/employee capitalist labour arrangement in favour of labour arrangements more common to entrepreneurialism and the social economy.

First, from my perspective on higher education reform Stannard’s piece offers a constructive rather than complicit role for unions.  Second, his piece mitres nicely with one of the strategies I have been developing to put the PSA model into action.

Unions Are Complicit In Harm To Adjuncts and Higher Education

Unionization is not an effective response to the crisis in higher education. In fact it is a mistake that harms higher education and academic labour. This is so for at least five reasons that are obvious from my perspective:

1) Unionization participates in and so perpetuates the use of the expensive, unnecessary institutional model and its nexus of unsustainable higher education institutions (HEIs). Unions only make sense where there are employers - in this case HEIs. As I argue on this blog, universities and colleges are not higher education - they merely facilitate the education service relationship between academics and students – and they are not the only or best means of facilitating that service. Among other drawbacks, HEIs necessarily limit the access that academics and students have to one another because they are subject to real limitations on the available staff, faculty and space they can employ in their capacity as facilitators, while at the same time they are highly susceptible to the changing tides of political policy and global economics.
2) Unionization increases the cost to provide higher education under the already expensive current institutional model. If as union-represented institutional employees adjuncts manage to secure increases in pay, benefits, job security and the like, then necessarily institutional labour expenses will increase and so in turn will the total cost to provide higher education - an increase that will have to be covered by appropriations and tuition. This increase would siphon public tax dollars and private disposable income from other areas of social responsibility (e.g., health care) and the economy (e.g., home or auto purchases).

3) Unionization is only a partial solution to the labour crisis in higher education. Labour unions by definition represent those academics that manage to get hired/employed by the limited number and capacity of universities and colleges. This is a fraction of the available qualified academics that want to earn a living providing higher education service. This necessarily means that unionization only partially addresses the labour and material conditions of academics, by excluding those who do not secure institutional employment.

4) Unionization is a short-term ultimately impotent solution to the labour crisis in higher education. Technology in the hands of HEIs will continue to displace the need for academics. From MOOCs to computer grading to artificial intelligence the number of academics required under the institutional model will decline as universities and colleges seek to control their labour costs through the use of technology. Higher education is not the first sector to go through this transition and like the auto or mail carrier labour forces union representation is impotent to stop the replacement of human with technological capital.


5) Unionization is myopic and obscures the existence of other alternatives to the (labour) crisis in higher education. Because the current institutional model is assumed and entails unionization, other options for labour organization can gain no traction. There are in fact two other options that should be part of the national dialogue on higher education reform: professional and co-operative association. Both of these have their advantages over the current push for union representation. If unionization were properly seen as only one option, academics might learn they favour the details of private professional practice or co-operative association over institutional employ.

The solution(s) I develop and present on this blog can avoid these union shortcomings.

In the current atmosphere of frenzied support for unionization and universal assumption of the institutional model it is vitally important that I make myself clear.  I am not a union buster or a shill for oppressive capitalist elites, or otherwise against academic labour and the public value of higher education merely because I claim unionization is not the correct response to the troubles that now plague higher education.

Instead, the claim is an implication of the larger claim I make that the whole institutional model is unnecessary and detrimental to academics, students and society.  Clearly, if the institutional model and its principal service providers (HEIs) were replaced as I advocate, then the question of unionization would become moot.  In this sense pursuit of unionization is a mistake insofar as the institutional model is a mistake.

This is the perspective from which I must be understood.  It is the perspective of a paradigm shift that ultimately favours individuals over institutions.

As always, I invite collaboration and criticism.

PSA vs F2CO

In a recently released Lumina Foundation policy paper, Sara Goldrick-Rab and Nancy Kendall reveal their plan to give Americans a free 2 year college option (F2CO).  That is, the 13^th and 14^th years of (postsecondary) education at community college would be free, which under F2CO means:

“…students will not face any costs for tuition, fees, books or supplies, and will receive a stipend and guaranteed employment at a living wage to cover their living expenses. Unsubsidized, dischargeable loans of a small amount will also be available for those who need them.”

In a number of important ways, this plan is inferior to the professional model for higher education that I propose: the Professional Society of Academics (PSA). Having made this claim in a tweet to Sara Goldrick-Rab, her reply was that PSA is:

“…not adjusted for increases in enrollment and persistence rates; would result in declining per student $ over time.”

Academics as Vendors for Universities and Colleges

The piece below was published on The Evolllution.com and discusses the possibility of a new relationship between academics and HEIs.  This disruptive innovation presents academics as vendors for universities and colleges in much the same way that administrative and food services are increasingly outsourced by institutions as a cost-saving measure.

The interested parties of higher education have in common a complex goal of reducing costs while improving access to quality education provided in the absence of labour exploitation.

Even so tradition has prioritized the interests of universities and colleges over those of academics, students and society, placing an institutional slant on any attempt at improvement.

From this position HEIs have turned to casual labour, technology and vendor partnerships in order to fulfil their middleman functions with greater economy and scale.  I am developing an alternative higher education model that makes use of these institution-oriented strategies.

Universities and Colleges as Vendors for Professional Academic Practices

The topic of outsourcing or vendor partnerships is important if your interest is in maintaining the current institutional model for higher education – a triad consisting of university/college service providers, public funding and union labour representation. I am not.

The editors of January's issue of Evolllution note that the cost of delivering higher education is skyrocketing as institutional operating budgets continue to decline. I believe the institutional model is simply not sustainable, nor does it adequately serve the needs of life long learners and non-traditional students.

I think it is time for radical change - a completely different perspective.

From the perspective of the professional model for higher education I am developing, universities and colleges are the vendors and professionally licensed academics in private practice their customers. Students directly hire academics for their services – as they would a physician, accountant, veterinarian or psychiatrist - while academics hire universities and colleges for services they determine are relevant in the operation of their practice.