Irony and Absurdity in the AAUP – Part 1

The former editor of Academe and current member of Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, Ellen Schrecker, claims, “the AAUP is not to blame for [the] deplorable situation” in higher education. She is mistaken. Like other supposed champions of the academy, the AAUP has failed the individuals that depend upon higher education (HE).

In her Academe piece, Political Repression and the AAUP from 1915 to Present, Schrecker notes in passing that:

Unlike their equally well-educated peers in law and medicine who had the power to delineate the parameters of their professions, the distinguished academics who established the AAUP did not have complete control over their work lives. They [faculty] were salaried workers, subject to the authority of boards of trustees, whose members included some of the most powerful industrialists in the United States. 

PSA Takes Its Liberalism with a Dash of Neo

This latest explication of the Professional Society of Academics (PSA) model for the provision of higher education (HE) responds to a common charge pressed by individuals and organizations like Scholars for a New Deal for Higher Education (SFNDHE), the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the California Faculty Association (CFA), that seek to address substantial problems in the higher education institutional (HEI) model of universities and colleges. As the Plaintiffs in this case, they tend to respond as SFNDHE did when offered links to exposition of PSA:

Who’s Ready to Take Risks for the Rewards of PSA?

Dr Lisa Corrigan of the University of Arkansas is doing what is expected of an academic. She is using her experience and expertise to engage with periods of deep social change. She has a vision of what higher education (HE) should be, including how it is meant to impact and be impacted by people. Given that HE is an important pillar of modern societies, the affected people are arguably every member of society. The battleground of social change in question is located in West Virginia, where its flagship R1 university has cut 28 programs from across its 355 majors and 143 of its 6,000+ full and part-time faculty. She is not alone in condemning what the consultants and administrators call, “rightsizing” the higher education institution (HEI). A wide audience has been following the case of West Virginia University (WVU), with many joining the local chorus of condemnation that includes: students, faculty, politicians, unions, taxpayers, even a notable from my neck of the woods, author Margret Atwood.

Monopolistic Universities and Colleges Violate Rights

Within the higher education institutional (HEI) model of universities and colleges, labor rights and anti-trust issues conspire to hinder mitigation of the problems that plague higher education (HE). Under the HEI model some problems are obvious like rising student tuition and falling faculty compensation, while others are more subtle like the vocationalization of HE purpose and limitation of faculty mobility. We need to remove these hinderances and introduce a better model for the provision of HE.

CFA Is No Match for PSA: Professional Society vs Union Representation

Faculty of the California State University (CSU) system are once again fighting for a new employment contract. Not surprisingly, negotiations have not gone as hoped and so they are now moving to third-party mediation. Their union representative California Faculty Association (CFA) seeks a 12% general salary increase, better defined workloads, improved paid leave, and improved campus safety. From the point of view of faculty within the higher education institutional (HEI) model of university and college employment, the CFA has been doing much to improve compensation and working conditions.

This post goes through a 3-minute promotional video capturing and commenting on the various claims in support of CFA efforts, while providing links to PSA blog posts that elaborate the commentary. The principal source of testimonials is CSU employees classified as lecturers, who earn an income of between $62,016 and $83,352 on 12-month contracts and constitute at least 45% of the faculty staff, though they have very little say in the shared governance of the CSU system, which has no where near the number of faculty necessary to meet the general demand for HE.