The nation's first Summit on Academic Staffing in Higher Education took place in Columbus, Ohio last week. Its intent was to bring together important stakeholders, movers and shakers to apply themselves to the challenge of finding solutions to the problem that is slowly eroding excellence in colleges and universities: the decreasing appointments of full-time, tenure-track faculty and the increasing reliance on exploited contingent academic labor.

In that goal, it succeeded. On hand were state leaders and members affiliated with the three national faculty organizations, the AFT, NEA and AAUP.  They were joined by  state legislators and  emissaries from the Ohio Board of Regents who fielded questions about the State's Strategic Plan for Higher Education which calls for Ohio to enroll 230,000 more students and raise its graduation rate by 20 percent by 2017. Finally, the management perspective was represented by an administrator who made keen suggestions about what he and his colleagues could do to rebuild the faculty.

For some in the room, the revelations of the day even delivered a few hallelujah moments. 

Amy Hubbard addresses summit participants. (photo by Jeff Bates)

Hubbard told of the noncompetitive stipends and pay that have caused local food bank workers to note a surge of OSU grad students as clients in recent years. She described inconsistent and unpredictable work assignments, with, at times, as little as three days' notice for a graduate assistant to prepare to teach a new course. She noted such a dearth of supplies, that GTAs pay for copying and other instructional essentials out of their own pockets. She asserted that the old model of graduate students serving as apprentices has been replaced by a new model of graduate students as a source of cheap, casualized labor.

"In this new model everyone loses," she said. "Undergraduates taking the class lose the experience that they gain from a more seasoned full-time professor and graduate students lose out on the time needed to cultivate their skills and learn more about their chosen field."

Equally eye-opening for some were the experiences shared by Maria Maisto, who spoke both as a part-time/adjunct and as one of the co-founders of a new organization called the New Faculty Majority.

Maisto described how adjuncts live one step away from being working poor..    "Hiring standards guarantee that people are hired not because they're qualified to do the job," she said, "but because they can afford to do the job. So you lose a lot of qualified educators who can't afford to do the job."

Maisto’s description of the hiring practices she has encountered as a contingent faculty member reveal another way in which institutions fail to include contingent faculty as professionals in the life of the institution. "In spite of these working conditions," Maisto noted, "most of those who remain teaching are not only qualified, but also end up making enormous personal sacrifices out of a real commitment to education."

The day-long summit began with a presentation of national trends and an overview of what's happening in Ohio. John B. Lee, a Washington, D.C.-based consultant, quickly explained that the increasing use of contingent faculty is a long-term trend. "We estimate that contingent faculty members and instructors teach the majority of undergraduate courses," he said.

He made two significant points: Contrary to what many college presidents profess, the use of adjuncts does not correspond to a loss of revenue for instruction.  In fact, during periodic recessions, state support for higher education has declined, but tuition increases have more than made up for the losses. No: institutions have shifted money away from instruction to other things; their hands are not forced to move to a contingent workforce.

A number of presenters pointed to Ohio's lack of collective bargaining rights for contingent faculty and instructors as a major part of the problem.  State Representative Tracy Heard, who is assistant majority floor leader, agreed that as a legislator-and as Jane Citizen-she is behind the right of part-time faculty members and graduate employees to be represented by a union.

The summit ended with participants committing to continuing the momentum of the summit. They enthusiastically called out a list of next steps:

• replicating the summit model on their campuses to raise the consciousness of those who haven't focused on the staffing crisis in their midst;
• mobilizing colleagues to support and work for passage of S.B. 129 that would grant part-time faculty members and graduate employees the right to collectively bargain;
• forming a working group of faculty, policy-makers and administrators to continue the dialogue and move the issue forward;
• advocating for transparent and regular data reports on the staffing situation.

Finally, all in the room agreed of the importance of working together to get results. "To make the changes we need to see happen," said Ohio Federation of Teachers president Sue Taylor, "our organizations need to keep working together.  This is for the sake of students and the state of Ohio."