Resisting the Exploitation of Contingent Faculty Labor in the Neoliberal University: The Challenge of Building Solidarity between Tenured and Non-Tenured Faculty

Abstract

This article explores why tenured faculty, particularly at major public and private research universities, often have failed to engage in collective resistance to the rise of the neoliberal university and the exploitation of “casualized” academic labor. Thirty years of steady federal and state cuts in the funding of higher education have led to the quasi-privatization of public higher education, with both public and private universities viewing themselves as corporate entities that must maximize student tuition and corporate and philanthropic revenues while minimizing costs. This has led to a massive increase in the number of exploited contingent faculty whose precarious working conditions are akin to those of low-wage, temporary workers in the rest of the economy. This article explores various reasons behind the failure of most tenured faculty—particularly the eighty percent not in faculty unions—to engage in overt, sustained protest at the radical expansion in casualized faculty labor. The article also examines the rise of professional administrators as the new governing class of neoliberal universities which compete for “student customers” on the basis of amenities and “student life” rather than on the basis of educational quality. These administrators' drive for “measurable metrics” has contributed to an increase in self-interested behavior on the part of a tenured faculty who are increasingly rewarded on the basis of “research productivity.” While in the short run such a retreat from public life by tenured faculty may be rational, in the long run such behavior threatens the future existence of tenure, except in the most prestigious and well-endowed of private and public institutions. Thus those remaining tenured faculty committed to higher education providing a quality intellectual experience for all students must work politically to ensure that all faculty have humane and secure working conditions and manageable teaching loads. In short, tenured faculty committed to a future for democratic public education must take up the challenge of building solidarity across faculty rank and status.