Contingent Faculty and the Remaking of Higher Education: A Labor History

Contingent faculty are a fixture in higher education today, with almost three-quarters of the people teaching in colleges and universities employed as adjuncts and non-tenure-track faculty. Like other gig economy workers, they face little job security, low pay, and few benefits. Contingent faculty also bear the wear-and-tear of professional and personal disrespect. Contingent Faculty: A Labor History uses the tools of labor history to examine how structural changes have heightened contingency in colleges and universities, how this precarity shapes day-to-day faculty experiences in academic workplaces, and how contingent faculty and their allies resist collectively in the face of this higher education crisis. As an interdisciplinary volume bringing together scholars of varying ranks and positions (from contingent faculty to tenure stream faculty to organizers and activists) from a range of institutions (from research universities and small colleges to unions), this book considers how contingency marginalizes teachers and scholars, degrades academic work, impinges on students’ education, and threatens even tenured faculty members’ security—all in the name of flexibility, austerity, and innovation. These essays also grapple with the gender, racial, and class inequities that permeate this history and contemporary challenges. Efforts to organize contingent faculty and graduate worker unions, while up against daunting odds, hold the potential to address job grievances, bolster security, contest the relentless corporatization of the university, and reclaim higher education’s public purpose.

Power Despite Precarity: Strategies for the Contingent Faculty Movement in Higher Education

Both internal and external factors have incited higher education institutions to reevaluate and restructure antiquated policies and practices that influence contingent faculty support systems and contingent faculty interpersonal relationships with their institutional community members. Higher education institutions now employ over a half million contingent faculty nationwide, with numbers of contingent faculty hiring continuing to grow (Maldonado & Riman, 2009). Currently, much of the research on contingent faculty stresses the use of contingent faculty and full-time faculty perceptions of contingent faculty at the community college level (Meixner, 2010; Tomanek, 2010; Wallin, 2004). Differences between full-time and contingent faculty are difficult to label because of the diversity of contingent faculty motivations (Gappa, Austin, & Trice, 2005; Wagoner, 2007). Therefore, depending on how researchers conduct their study questions contingent faculty either seem satisfied, vulnerable and disenfranchised, or somewhere in the middle which produces a confusing picture of contingent faculty experiences (Wagoner, 2007; Waltman et al., 2012). This qualitative study explores contingent faculty experiences at a single institution through their own voice. Focus on an interpretative phenomenological approach allows for rich, descriptive storytelling that communicates the uniqueness and distinctiveness of the contingent faculty's experiences, and their perceptions of how they identify and connect with their institutional support systems and institutional members. Such specificity also highlights the institution's cultural values and norms. While some shared experiences were similar among contingent faculty, there were also experiences unique to the individual. Exploration of contingent faculty voice is imperative in driving institutional platforms that aid in creating positive institutional support systems for contingent faculty.

<p>Both internal and external factors have incited higher education institutions to reevaluate and restructure antiquated policies and practices that influence contingent faculty support systems and contingent faculty interpersonal relationships with their institutional community members. Higher education institutions now employ over a half million contingent faculty nationwide, with numbers of contingent faculty hiring continuing to grow (Maldonado & Riman, 2009).</p><p>Currently, much of the research on contingent faculty stresses the use of contingent faculty and full-time faculty perceptions of contingent faculty at the community college level (Meixner, 2010; Tomanek, 2010; Wallin, 2004). Differences between full-time and contingent faculty are difficult to label because of the diversity of contingent faculty motivations (Gappa, Austin, & Trice, 2005; Wagoner, 2007). Therefore, depending on how researchers conduct their study questions contingent faculty either seem satisfied, vulnerable and disenfranchised, or somewhere in the middle which produces a confusing picture of contingent faculty experiences (Wagoner, 2007; Waltman et al., 2012). This qualitative study explores contingent faculty experiences at a single institution through their own voice. Focus on an interpretative phenomenological approach allows for rich, descriptive storytelling that communicates the uniqueness and distinctiveness of the contingent faculty’s experiences, and their perceptions of how they identify and connect with their institutional support systems and institutional members. Such specificity also highlights the institution’s cultural values and norms. While some shared experiences were similar among contingent faculty, there were also experiences unique to the individual. Exploration of contingent faculty voice is imperative in driving institutional platforms that aid in creating positive institutional support systems for contingent faculty. </p>

This dissertation examines the phenomenon of the growing ranks of contingent faculty in higher education from the perspective of the leaders of five elite adult and continuing education and professional studies institutions in the United States. Existing research reports two-thirds of all post-secondary instructors are now non-tenured or off-tenure track faculty, commonly referred to as contingent faculty. Yet, few colleges and universities have evolved their faculty work environments to respond to the challenges posed by the use of non-tenure track faculty. While there is significant literature about contingent faculty from the perspective of non-tenured faculty and their proponents, little or no literature explores this phenomenon from the perspective of the people most responsible for establishing contingent faculty work environments, the institutional leadership. Therefore, this qualitative research study applied interpretative phenomenological analysis focused on the beliefs of these institutional leaders about contingent faculty at their institutions to increase understanding of this phenomenon and give rise to questions that may help bridge the information gap to make greater meaning of this change. The primary question guiding this study asks what do institutional leaders believe about contingent faculty culture in higher education today? This study uses the theoretical framework of social constructionism to reveal the beliefs, understandings, insights, guidelines, and self-perceptions found in the social discourse of these institutional leaders to reveal how beliefs influence the establishment of contingent faculty identity, community, and culture at their institutions. Findings from this study suggest that by hiring discipline-specific professionals as scholar practitioners, by establishing relationships that are respectful and rewarding for faculty, and by embracing a culture that emphasizes teaching, discipline-specific professional relevance, and a community of scholar practitioners, it may possible to avoid the issues causing concern in the existing literature about the use of contingent faculty. These findings indicate that the leaders participating in this study embody a tangible allegiance to the core academic missions of their colleges by creating contingent faculty work environments from the context of what these leaders believe is necessary to meet the unique needs and expectations of their adult learning and professional studies students. Without such evidence, higher education may continue down the path of trial and error without the benefit of the lived experiences and experiential perspectives of expert leaders who have gone before them and are able to shed light on the intended and unintended consequences of the evolving contingent faculty phenomenon.

The “adjunctification” of higher education represents one of the most significant changes in U.S. postsecondary education. A growing number of part-time faculty increasingly seek full-time, permanent employment in an academic job market characterized by a surplus of qualified candidates competing for a shrinking number of tenure-track and permanent lecturer positions. While prior research provides a thorough understanding of the inequities in working conditions adjuncts face in their universities, further investigation is necessary to understand the factors influencing contingent faculty’s prospects for obtaining full-time positions within the academic job market. In this study, the authors employ a qualitative approach to examine how U.S. contingent faculty navigated the labor market in higher education and whether and how they perceived their adjunct experiences to hinder or augment their ability to secure permanent, full-time positions. Using semistructured, qualitative interviews with 30 contingent faculty across the United States, they discovered three themes. First, some contingent faculty believed adjuncting helped them garner employability tools necessary for navigating the academic job market. Second, most contingent faculty felt that adjuncting yielded diminishing returns in terms of securing full-time employment. Third, many expressed having experienced a bias against them for being an adjunct that rendered them less competitive than newly minted, younger PhDs or external candidates. The authors discuss the implications of their research for higher education institutions seeking to support and promote the advancement of contingent faculty.

PurposeThe faculty, as higher education's most valuable asset, is being dramatically altered. Changes in appointment status drive this alteration, resulting in the essential work of faculty being transformed. Given this change in faculty composition, this study seeks to examine how faculty appointments relate to the production of faculty work in teaching, research, and service. Faculty appointments affect faculty work and it implies that the function of higher education also is altered. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the rise of contingent faculty on the professoriate and higher education.Design/methodology/approachThe National Study of Postsecondary Faculty of 2004 provided data for analyses. There were faculty and instructional staff participants (26,110) from a sample of 980 institutions in the USA and the District of Columbia. The National Center for Education Statistics provides access to its Data Analysis System (DAS) for public use. Basic calculations can result in straight counts, percentages, means, correlation coefficients, and tables. Complex analytic capabilities include covariance using both weighted least squares regression and logistic regression. The DAS was used to examine how changes in faculty composition were related to teaching, research, and service.FindingsOverall, the results indicate that tenured and tenure‐track faculty out‐perform contingent faculty on all major items of teaching, research, and service. With few exceptions, contingent faculty can be viewed as less productive faculty members within the historical function of higher education to promote inquiry and advance the sum of human knowledge, provide general instruction to the students, and develop experts for various branches of the public. If faculty are the heart and health of colleges and universities, the future of higher education may be bleak if the reliance on contingent faculty continues to soar.Practical implicationsThe gap between performance levels of tenure/tenure‐track and contingent faculty in teaching, research, and service indicates the quality of higher education is rapidly eroding. This study indicated that the contributions to promoting inquiry and advancing the sum of human knowledge are diminished with increasing use of contingent faculty. It suggests that not only is the work of faculty threatened by a contingent faculty approach but the well‐being of higher education is threatened also.Social implicationsOverall, tenured and tenure‐track faculty out‐performed other types of faculty appointments according to essential values of faculty – teaching research, and service. Faculty appointments play a significant role in the overall performance of higher education. The function of higher education cannot help but be affected. Society relies on higher education for not only career training but an educated citizenry. If left to contract and part‐time help, it raises concern for the overall well being of society.Originality/valueAlthough there is literature discussing concerns about the influx of contingent faculty, there is little, if any, empirical evidence of its impact on the professoriate and its relationship to the overall health and well being of higher education. This study suggests that the traditional framework of faculty work – teaching, research, and service – is being dramatically altered.

Contingent faculty (full-time and part-time) who are not eligible for tenure or permanent employment provide a large portion of the instruction in U.S. higher education institutions, especially at the undergraduate level. However, in spite of the important functions contingent faculty perform, we know relatively little about their teaching practices or their impact on the educational environment of colleges and universities. This article uses data from the 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF-04) to determine if contingent faculty (full-time and part-time) and “permanent” (tenured and tenure-eligible) faculty differ in their use of subject-centered and learning-centered teaching strategies. Holland’s academic environments model was also used to examine the subject-centered and learning-centered teaching practices of permanent and contingent faculty within broad academic areas. Findings indicate that the teaching practices of part-time contingent faculty differ in important ways from their other faculty colleagues. In contrast, the teaching practices of full-time contingent faculty more closely parallel those of their tenured and tenure-eligible colleagues. Based on these findings, implications for policy, practice, and additional research on this growing segment of the U.S. professoriate are included.

Academic Capitalism, Contingency, and Preserving Privilege Contingent Faculty and the Remaking of Higher Education: A Labor History, edited by Fure-SlocumEricGoldsteneClaire. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2024. 296 pp. $28.00 paper. ISBN: 9780252087653.The Challenges of Minoritized Contingent Faculty in Higher Education, by ChunEdnaEvansAlvin. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2024. 218 pp. $24.99 paper. ISBN: 9781612498379.

This chapter examined the increasing reliance on contingent faculty in U.S. higher education as an administrative problem ripe for continued investigation. The specific purpose of this inquiry was to gain a better understanding of the impact of employing contingent faculty from the viewpoint of a departmental chair of a medium-sized Midwestern research university who routinely hired many contingent faculty. Within the context of these interviews, the chair discussed various aspects of his leadership style, his experiences and responsibilities in the job, his organizational philosophies, his departmental vision and his concerns related to the changing landscape of higher education. As Bolman and Deal's (2003) four-frames model suggests, effective leaders draw from all four frames to make the best decisions and to come to the most productive solutions. The results of this examination revealed this leader's propensity for leading with the human resource frame and then blending in the remaining frames when thinking and acting on issues related to contingent faculty.

Contingent Faculty and the Remaking of Higher Education: A Labor History

There is a new normal in higher educational institutions in the United States. The majority of instructors teaching college students are contingent faculty. This Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis study explored the perceptions and experiences of the career adaptability to teaching in the academe of six second-career contingent faculty at four-year public universities in the Northeast. The findings of the study showed that these accomplished professionals turned educators possessed the career adapt-abilities to successfully adapt to teaching in the academe. A metaphor of an Experienced Tour Guide was used to illustrate how the participants exhibited curiosity, concern, control, confidence and made significant contributions to their university, departments, and students. Participants did not exhibit a fifth career-adaptability of cooperation/commitment. Instead, they experienced a culture of competition that was exacerbated by a lack of time, resulting in roadblocks to their career adaptability. In addition, they noted several unexpected breakdowns in the higher education system that inhibited their ability to adapt to teaching in the academe such as a lack of support, recognition, status, power, and job security. Since the practice of using contingent faculty is commonplace and will continue, this study offered recommendations for both universities and department chairs to create a more inclusive, supportive culture for contingent faculty. Implications for practice include the development and implementation of leadership training programs for department chairs, adopting a new perspective and discourse on contingent faculty, implementing inclusive policies and practices, and providing opportunities for support, recognition, power, status, and job security for these accomplished professionals who now call themselves educators.

Twenty years ago, LAWCHA started to come together. The field of labor history had been operating for decades without a professional organization in part because of the many state and regional labor history associations already active. But the times demanded something more. The AFL-CIO had made a left turn, and many scholars were looking for ways to bring activism and labor history together. A meeting was called for the October 1998 North American Labor History Conference in Detroit, which approved a constitution and bylaws that had been drafted by Roger Horowitz and Cecilia Bucki. An organizing committee set to work, and a year later LAWCHA held its first official conference and elected officers led by President Jacquelyn Hall and Vice President Joe Trotter.I have a couple of reasons for flagging this approaching anniversary. First, LAWCHA now has an official archive. The Reuther Library in Detroit is processing the first donation of records, covering our early years. I hope those who have saved correspondence and other relevant materials will contact Tom Klug about adding to the collection. Second, the twentieth anniversary is a good time to take stock and think about what has been accomplished and where we want to go next. Our website features a brief history of LAWCHA by Shel Stromquist and Bucki. I am borrowing from it.The past twenty years have been complicated both for labor movements and for academia, the two institutional complexes we represent; but LAWCHA has more than proved the wisdom behind its foundation. The founding mothers and fathers made key commitments that made the organization different in tone and reach from other historical societies. They defined the field broadly, understanding that labor and working-class history encompasses so much more than the history of unions. They adopted a strategy of collaborating with regional labor history organizations and supporting their conferences. And they made special efforts to support graduate students and young scholars, understanding that the future unfolds with them.Other decisions strengthened the organization. In 2004 this journal was founded by Leon Fink and others, and Labor quickly established a reputation for publishing top-quality articles and field-defining forums. In 2008 we began awarding the Herbert Gutman dissertation prize, and Cornell ILR School asked LAWCHA to cosponsor the Phillip Taft book award. After David Montgomery’s death in 2011, LAWCHA members raised the endowment funds for a second labor history book prize in his name that is cosponsored with the Organization of American Historians (OAH). Meanwhile, our website had become a scholarly and organizing resource featuring Rosemary Feuer’s Labor History Links bibliography and resources for teaching labor history in the schools. In 2012 Ryan Poe and Feuer began remaking our communication systems, adding the dynamic blog LaborOnline and a Facebook page and expanding listserv capacities.LAWCHA’s reach extends far beyond its membership, thanks to the culture of activism that has been our secret sauce since the beginning. Hundreds of labor historians make their voices heard both through scholarship and through public service. We are active in the OAH, the American Historical Association, the Urban History Association, Western and Southern History Associations, African American Intellectual History Society, and other professional organizations. We are active online, producing public labor history resources that are used by millions. We are active in our communities, writing op-eds and working on social justice initiatives. And we are active on our campuses, fighting to preserve workplace rights, academic freedom, and a model of liberal education that is a cornerstone of democratic societies.The dual scholar-activist model was sharply apparent this year when LAWCHA members collected a basketful of book and distinguished scholar prizes at OAH in addition to LAWCHA’s own awards. The list of prizes shows how their work has won the respect of scholars in multiple fields of history and rises to the very pinnacle of professional accomplishment. Congratulations to Eileen Boris, Linda Gordon, LaShawn Harris, Max Krochmal, Nelson Lichtenstein, Ryan Patrick Murphy, Heather Thompson, and Katherine Turk.LAWCHA has much to celebrate as the twentieth anniversary approaches and much to do. New initiatives by the Contingent Faculty Committee and the ad hoc committee working with independent scholars will be important. As will the Global Affairs Initiative and our evolving relationship with the International Association of Labour History Institutions. I write this in August, six months before you are reading it, so I have no idea what new challenges the Age of Trump will bring. But I do know that we will be busy doing what LAWCHA was designed to do: bringing past and present, scholarship and activism together, understanding that the struggles of working people in the past and around the world can be a guide and inspiration as we meet the challenges of the present.

The existing literature on non-tenure-track (ntt ) faculty focuses largely on whether relying on contingent faculty is harmful to students. However, studies rarely survey contingent faculty or explore how to increase ntt faculty participation in outcomes assessment, even though contingent faculty teach most general education courses. Our survey of ntt faculty at California higher education institutions finds that (1) community colleges are conveying accreditation concerns, rather than pedagogical benefits, to ntt faculty; (2) contingent faculty training has not sufficiently emphasized the purpose of assessment; and (3) ntt faculty should be included in meetings and training on assessment.

The number of contingent or non‐tenure‐track faculty at colleges and universities in the United States has been growing over the past several decades; they now constitute nearly 70% of the non‐student academic workforce. A significant fraction of contingent faculty teaches in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). As an initiative of the Ecological Society of America (ESA), contingent faculty in ecology were surveyed and the results were compared with a survey of STEM faculty conducted by the Coalition for the Academic Workforce (CAW). Most respondents to the ESA survey were employed in research or research and teaching activities at doctorate‐granting institutions, whereas in the CAW sample, most were engaged in teaching at associate's and master's degree‐granting institutions. The ESA sample was almost evenly divided between women and men; women outnumbered men in the younger age classes, whereas men outnumbered women in the older age classes. The respondents to the CAW survey were older than the ESA respondents, with more men in computer sciences, engineering, and physical sciences, more women in the biological and health sciences, and a balanced gender ratio in mathematics. The ESA survey asked respondents to rank possible activities that ESA could undertake to support contingent faculty. The highest ranked activities included reduced fees for membership, page charges, and meeting registrations, followed closely by small grants for travel and research. The lowest ranked was the formation of an ESA section for contingent faculty. The causes and implications of contingency are analyzed in light of other recent surveys. Academic institutions and professional societies such as the ESA can reduce the loss of qualified individuals from the scientific community by recognizing and legitimizing contingency as an academic career stage and by offering professional development to support the careers of contingent faculty.