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.

Progress Toward Free Higher Education: City College of San Francisco

In the latest state attempt to salvage the California higher education social contract, bill SB 520 indicates that 85% of California Community Colleges (CCC) reported having waiting lists for their fall 2012 course sections, with a statewide average of more than 7,000 students on waiting lists per college.  This figure of nearly 500,000 individuals does not include those for whom such a salient fact discourages pursuit of higher education – be it a child entering high school or an adult entering retirement.

These individuals are not only denied access to higher education, they are left vulnerable to exploitation by venture and “philanthrocapitalists” chomping at the bit to get a piece of the SB 520 online solution.

This circumstance is particularly offensive since the affected have a right to free higher education, as ratified by the United States in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights [here after, International Covenant].  Article 13, sections 2 (c) and (e) read:

(c) Higher education shall be made equally accessible to all, on the basis of capacity, by every appropriate means, and in particular by the progressive introduction of free education; and (e) The development of a system of schools at all levels shall be actively pursued, an adequate fellowship system shall be established, and the material conditions of teaching [academic] staff shall be continuously improved.[Emphasis added]

Because California colleges have missions specifying open admission, access to higher education is not restricted based on age, race, sex, scholastic or physical ability; though it is restricted based on economic means and available institutional resources - what the International Covenant calls the “basis of capacity."

The largest such open mission is held by City College of San Francisco (CCSF), which this July stands to lose its institutional accreditation.  This will significantly further reduce access to higher education – not to mention its impact on the material conditions, fellowship system and right to earn a living of academic staff.

My First MOOC: Helping Me Better See Features and Redesign of Higher Education

NOTE: This post was generated in response to Cathy’s N Davidson’s November 23^rd HASTAC post and its “Evolving, Collaborative Template of Open-Ended Questions.”  There was posted today a revised version of these questions, with considerable conceptual distinction. Nevertheless, I think the response I offer to the first version is instructive, so I have posted it. I have stopped work in light of the revised focus on credentials, but have managed to cover the following shared topics/headings: 1) About our university/What we value; 2) Comparables; 3) Costs; and 4) Students/Learners.  As for my thoughts on the professional model and credentials please see: 1) The Inmates Should Be Running Higher Education and 2) Badge Movements and the Professional Higher Education Model.

As part of the crowd contributing to an evolving document in Cathy N Davidson’s Coursera MOOC, “The History and Future of (Mostly) Higher Education,” I offer response to the exploratory questions posed by Cathy - see excerpt below from her November 23^rd blog post on HASTAC.

Designing Higher Education From Scratch

#FutureEd

Posted by Cathy N. Davidson

November 23, 2013

HASTAC (hastac.org)

PUBLIC DRAFT

COMMENTS WELCOME

If you were creating an institution of higher learning from scratch, what would it look like? Would it be a “fix” or a radical reshaping? U.S. model or other? Research university, liberal arts college, community college, vocational--or are there exciting new ways to erase those distinctions? Publicly funded, private, for profit? Residential? How many of these elements do MOOCs (hailed in the hype as the “future” of higher learning) address? Until we “see” the features of higher education at present, it’s hard to think about change.  Below…are some template questions to get us started on this thought experiment designed to inspire innovation. What are we missing?  Please make additions, suggestions, comments.  (This project will last until May 2014 and maybe beyond.  This is just a start.)

I believe the entrepreneurial higher education models I am developing are viable alternatives to the current institutional model of: 1) university and college principal service providers; 2) public funding and 3) union labour representation.  I refer to this institutional model as the triad.  The response below is restricted to the professional model – though a co-operative model also offers promising response. The headings and numbered questions in black are Cathy’s, while my responses are in blue.

I have enrolled in the MOOC.  I hope something like this gets assigned as homework…