Linguistic sleight of hand is something of a hallmark of university life. It almost seems as if universities do their best to purposefully confuse outsiders. In Christ's Church, Cambridge, by tradition, a senior fellow, a professor, is called a “Student” (with a capital “S”). A tenure-stream faculty member begins as an assistant professor, although that does not mean anyone is being assisted. It means, as we explain to freshmen, “a regular professor,” not a TA – another confusing term since the “teaching assistant” these days is a graduate student who is the “teacher of record” for a course  – a teacher, not someone who is assisting another, and yet another source of cheap labor.

Misnomers aside, a particularly dangerous bit of eccentric language use found in academics is what is technically termed the synecdoche.

If anyone thinks that the issues of academic staffing and how contingent faculty are treated isn't part of the ongoing discussion about the future of higher education in this country, well, just go away for a couple of days to attend meetings and come back to what stories have been published in those few days.

• First, check out the story in U.S. News and World Report on the use of contingent faculty featuring FACE Talk's own Lila Harper.
• Of course, being part of the conversation doesn't always mean that working conditions are improving, as contingent faculty in Tennessee attest to in today's Inside Higher Ed.
• And this mode of staffing can lead to other problems as well, like accreditation-assuming colleges report accurate numbers.

And don't forget our brothers and sisters from CUPE 3903 out on the line up at York University.  You can send solidarity messages to them here so they know that they have support from the States.

Many times I have heard justifications for the heavy use of contingent contracts that are a mixture of blaming the victim-that's what you get for majoring in English, History, Philosophy, etc.--and handwaving over some undefined "market factors." Go get a degree in Business or Law we are told. Many adjuncts have actually internalized this particular argument. Now watching the current stock market upsets and bank investment firm failures has done little to convince me that the market is particularly knowledgeable about anything. If you'd like a nice history of the whole market argument, by the way, read chapter 6 of Marc Bousquet's How the University Works.

But I digress. These arguments come to mind because I had the opportunity to briefly check up on a long-time contingent faculty member here whom I was concerned about, an Accounting instructor. You would think that would be a safe area--teaching an employable nuts-and-bolts subject. And this faculty member was happy enough to be teaching, driving 45 minutes to one hour commute each way through mountainous, snowy conditions to meet his classes (sleeping in his car some nights) for 12 years. He was always cheerful, reliable, and appreciative. He even volunteered to work with student groups.

Last year, he went into discuss his next year's teaching schedule with his department chair in May and everything looked fine. Then in  June, he was called in and was told the department could not offer him any classes. And that was that. He wasn't alone; others were not continued, including a 30-plus year veteran. The classes were there, but newer people had been found with publishing records. I am happy to report that this instructor though is still among us. He was fortunate to find another department and is retraining himself to teach a new field. Retraining leave? Don't be silly. We just figure it out as we go.

What often gets forgotten in market factor justifications is that when we work in the classroom, we are teachers, not accountants, business executives, or computer scientists. Over the years, I've seen out-of-work lawyers, businessmen, programmers, physicists, geologists. No particular discipline is going to be a guarantee of permanent employment. Don't be fooled, we are all in this together.

Over in this part of the world, we are following the fascinating accounts of Provost Steven Hoch's career at Washington State University. I am not at this campus, so don't know the details (and if I was, it would not be safe for me to comment on it), but the situation is familiar, although the details are generally not made so public. After just coming to WSU, Hoch had to step down as Provost after one month on the job. A recent Seattle Times report gives the details. As typical now for administrators, he was hired with tenure and consultants did all the background checking. He apparently was not a good "fit" for the school. In such cases as administrative hirings, tenure acts as a golden parachute, allowing the individual to continue to pull an administrative salary, a reported $245,000 (a reduction from the full $300,000), while holding a faculty position. Tenure is not being used to protect academic freedom, as it was suppose to do, but to protect administrative incompetence. The department he is tenured in, in this case, History, now has to find classes for him and figure out how to cover his historically high salary.

Often, local journalists miss the point of such cases. Our local Ellensburg Daily Record asks, "is it possible to fire someone in the public sector rather than punish them by paying them a ridiculously high salary?" Tenure-stream faculty have to put in six years before tenure consideration and, even then, are often laid off because of budgetary reasons. Non-tenure track faculty have no access to any tenure. Among the faculty, tenure is not a sure thing even if it available and this status is becoming more and more rare. Yet, administrators are hired with tenure right off the bat and that tenure stays in place even if they are fired from an administrative position. So much for the idea of tenure protecting academic freedom. At this rate, the only people with tenure will be the administrators and former administrators.

The fall issue of the Modern Language Association newsletter is now out and is online for MLA members. Of particular interest is Resolution 2007-1, which calls for the MLA to "publicly support state legislation aimed at ensuring fair pay and job security with full due-process protections for contingent faculty members and at establishing a higher proportion of full-time faculty members, as developed in part, by the AFT-led campaign for Faculty and College Excellence (FACE)." MLA is to be congratulated on recognizing the importance of FACE for the profession, especially for faculty in English and Languages, the disciplines which has seen the most employment abuse. MLA members can now comment on the resolution in the members-only area of the MLA website until Oct. 31. As a member of MLA's Part-Time and Contingent Labor discussion group and having been an MLA member for over 20 years, I view this resolution with hope because it means that the major professional organization in language and literature study is listening to and paying attention to the working conditions of most of the faculty in the field. We will vote on ratifying this resolution from Nov. 1 to Dec. 10. I am looking forward to my ballot.

This is a story of two worlds, two realities on one campus.

An opinion piece in a local newspaper, The Yakima Herald published Sept 11, 2008, reported on our outgoing university president's new “president emerita” status, an outgoing pay of $160,000 plus a $3,500 monthly housing stipend. The reporting somehow left readers with an impression that faculty automatically gain emeritus status when they retire and that such status comes with a nice paycheck. However, those of us here on the factory floor/classroom have lives quite different than our CEOs/administration. And actually, emeritus status is granted by the board of trustees—we contingent faculty usually just don't get rehired—and it only means free parking if you are lucky. After all, our parking fees are now $200/year. (Yes, we pay to park at our place of employment.)

The start of the fall classes approaches and I am trying desperately to motivate myself to begin structuring my courses. I remember as a student that my professors walked in and sorted out the course week-by-week, announcing dates of exams and deadlines of papers as they went. No more. Now we are required to have the entire term mapped out in advance, not only the exam dates but each class day's reading coverage. This can be daunting. As a general education instructor at a 4-year school, I do not teach anything near my research area, but I have taught the gen. ed. classes for over 20 years and have a good sense of where students should be at the end of the term. At the same time, I have a sense of how far I can move them in 10 weeks while still keeping my student evaluations good, but not too good, and simultaneously avoiding grade inflation. This balancing act is necessary for rehiring.

The first week of August is a time when I can take a breath and try to figure what lies ahead for the coming academic year before my family drags me away from the computer. The youngest child is distracted with a series of craft activities in town right now, the oldest is preoccupied with his master's thesis, the spouse with his textbook, and the grandparent with a new pile of mysteries. Campus is quiet with the end of the first summer session and the graduate students have some time before the next deadline, which will bring another pile of graduate theses I have to read (my summer job). My co-editor is back from vacation and has taken on the task now of arguing with thesis committee chairs over the state of their students' theses.

Oftentimes I have doubts about how important the use of contingent faculty really is in the larger social context. After all, the general public seems completely unaware of what is happening on our colleges and we are working in an environment that has been portrayed in our culture as monastic, isolated, and separated from the larger community. And then this past June, I read in my local newspaper (the Ellensburg Daily Record) a piece by a retiring professor of Communications, Corwin King, comparing the faculty make up today and 30 years ago. And this got me thinking about how much money the city and county might be losing as the use of contingent faculty increases. Losses that should make local politicians take notice.

A point made by letter-writer Walter Marquardt in today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer is worthy of some thought. The Seattle paper had run an article on the economic impact of the increasing cost of gas on students' commutes. In response, Marquardt makes that point that the people who are going to get hit particularly hard are the contingent faculty freeway flyers in metropolitan areas.

Most of the teaching load in community colleges in Seattle is carried by faculty who are forced to teach part-time at multiple campuses, not because there is a staffing need for part-timers, but because employing lots of part-time faculty costs less than employing people fulltime (with fulltime benefits). This cost-saving technique for colleges puts an enormous financial and physical burden on the faculty member trying to somehow bunch together enough campuses to make 20 credits and, hopefully, a living. The practice also, of course, contributes to our environmental mess. Now the cost of that commute is going up and up. Marquardt predicts, "When the colleges can no longer find enough part-time instructors because commute costs make it impractical, they'll start looking at changing hiring practices." However, I bet a lot of campuses are going to suddenly wonder just where all the part-timers went when everyone starts figuring out they can no longer afford to teach.

UPDATE: The Chronicle has a piece today (subscription) on the tough choices being faced by adjunct faculty due to high gas prices.