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STANLEY ARONOWITZ Should Academic Unions Get Involved in Governance? C I P O T D E THESTEADYCORPORATIZATIONof American the signs that some administrators are prepared R higher education has threatened to relegate to use political and ideological criteria in tenure U faculty governance, never strong, to the his- cases, and the thorny question of who owns T A torical archive. In the twentieth century, many the intellectual property generated by faculty E scholars—notably Thorstein Veblen, Robert S. innovations? In short, how can we defend the F Lynd, C. Wright Mills, and Richard Hofstadter— fragile institutions of academic freedom? The deplored the tendency conventional answer is faculty senates and for boards of trustees councils, of course. Didn’t the Harvard faculty and high-level administrators to concentrate succeed in driving its sitting president from The past quarter power in their own hands and for corporations office? Haven’t faculty assembliesand repre- and corporate foundations to play a more sentative bodies voted “no confidence” in errant century has prominent role in governance of some institu- and arrogant administrators who, when the witnessed a tions of higher learning. Nonetheless, this has pressure has been unbearable, occasionally powerful trend already come to pass. The past quarter century have chosen retirement or resignation rather toward the has witnessed a powerful trend toward the dis- than risking a costly and embarrassing struggle enfranchisement of faculty. The introduction to keep their jobs? disenfranchisement of online degrees in public and private colleges A close examination of these relatively rare of faculty and universities, the reshaping of curricula to instances of the exercise of faculty prerogatives meet particular corporate needs, the systematic through the senates’ collective action would starving of the liberal and fine arts amid the show that most of these occurred in research expansion of technical and business programs, universities and elite private colleges. But of and the increasing importance of competitive the more than four thousand institutions of sports are just some of the elements of the higher education in the United States, only vast transformation that has spared few insti- about three hundred fall into these categories. tutions. Added to these are the openly sanc- The rest are public colleges and universities tioned comparison between college presidents controlled directly by the state legislatures and corporate CEOs and the unembarrassed that appropriate budgets and must approve justification of paying academic presidents the appointment of all top administrators; high six-figure salaries. community colleges that often are subsumed Where are the forces that are prepared to under county legislatures, and sometimes are defend true higher learning? Who will address accountable to the state as well; and second- the new challenges to academic autonomy and third-tier private institutions that, in posed by proposals for periodic tenure review, some parts of the country, operate as fiefdoms often subject to the will of their respective STANLEY ARONOWITZ is Distinguished Professor boards of trustees and presidents. In these of Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City schools, academic freedom is sometimes a University of New York. state of being devoutly to be wished. 22 LIBERAL EDUCATION FALL 2006 Graduate Center of the City University of New York At the overwhelming At the overwhelming ma- majority of schools, often against departmental C I jority of schools, the problem the problem and campus-wide committees P of faculty governance is that recommend tenure and O of faculty governance T rooted in the institutional, promotion of the candidate, quasi-juridical limits of the is rooted in or seek to implementprogram D E powers of faculty senates. At the institutional, innovations. R best, they have a degree of quasi-juridical limits Underlying these conflicts U moral authority stemming from is the fact that in the private T of the powers A endangered tradition. On the academic sector boards of of faculty senates E whole, faculty councils and trustees and top administrators F senates are advisory bodiesto have absolute control of the the administration; they possess no formal budget. But there is another factor influencing institutional power and, in many cases, are the decline of faculty governance: so-called ex- controlled by administrators who sit on their ecutive pay plans set middle and top adminis- executive bodies on the fiction that they are trators’ pay and perks at levels significantly faculty on leave to perform the necessary tasks above those of faculty, creating an unbridge- of administration, but intend to return to the able gulf between faculty and administration. ranks. That senates and councils are elected Although it is still true that most institutions and appoint committees that review curricula recruit their top and middle administrators and tenure and promotion decisions barely from the ranks of faculty, once in positions disguises the reality that the president and her such as dean, provost,and president, few top or his administrations have final authority. administrators return to the ranks of the pro- Where once this authority was regarded as fessoriate after their term(s) of office. Instead, little more than a “rubber stamp” of decisions when their term is over, in preference to re- made by faculty, it is no longer uncommon for suming their duties as a professor they enter the president to overturn the decision of a the executive job market and trust their fu- professional and budget committee, sometimes tures to headhunting firms. Administration in behalf of an aggrieved candidate, but most becomes for most, if not all, a career that Graduate Center of the City University of New York 24 LIBERAL EDUCATION FALL 2006 brings with it substantial financial rewards professors in most of the leading private and C compared to faculty salaries. Broadly speaking public research universities, and private four- I P it may be argued that, in keeping with the year liberal arts colleges, although clerical,pro- O corporate nature of the institution, academic fessional, and graduate student employees have T administrators have become a part of the pro- significant union density in these institutions. D fessional/managerial class. While it is still Prior to the 1980 Yeshiva decision of the E convenient to pay lip service to what is now Supreme Court, which ruled that college pro- R U termed “shared governance,” since the bound- fessors in private institutions were managers T ary between faculty and administration has because they participated in the governance A continued to harden, it is no longer in theirin- of the university or college and, for this reason, E F terest to empower faculty. were ineligible to receive the protections un- In public institutions, faculty disempower- der Labor Relations Act, union growth in the ment has been codified by law; legislatures, private academic sector was quite healthy. In the governor or county executive and their the 1960s and 1970s, faculty at Long Island staffs, or state boards of higher education re- University, St. John’s, Hofstra, Adelphi, and serve all rights, except those that have been other large universities won union recognition wrested by academic unions that, alone in the and continue to maintain their contracts. Un- academic community, still possess formal if til 2005, the National Labor Relations Board not substantive autonomy. The relative power- (NLRB) had ruled that graduate assistants at lessness of most faculty senates and the inde- private institutions of higher education were pendence of unions suggest that the time may not managers and that, in research and teach- be propitious to raise the possibility that, if ing tasks, they were employees, not students. unions choose on behalf of their members to Graduate assistants at Columbia, University become involved in governance issues, there of Pennsylvania, Brown, Yale, and New York is a chance to reverse the long-term trend University (NYU) joined thousands of gradu- toward faculty disempowerment. It is a long ate student employees in leading public uni- shot for a number of reasons, not the least of versities such as the Universities of California which is that private-sector faculty remain and Michigan to secure union organization. largely outside unions. Except for NYU, which initially recognized and bargained with the union, the other uni- The growth and consolidation versity administrations have declined to rec- of academic unionism ognize the graduate assistant unions, and have It is a little known fact that, since the 1970s, successfully resisted several strikes. But graduate academic unions have been among the few teaching and research assistant unionization sectors of the labor movement that have expe- suffered a blow in 2005 when the NLRBruled rienced significant growth. As large sectionsof that they were students and not employees, the unionized manufacturing workplaces dis- even though they taught a fairly sizeable por- appeared, academic labor began to stir and to tion of the undergraduate courses and were unionize. In the past thirty-five years, the three paid. In 2005–6, graduate assistants at NYU major academic unions—the National Educa- conducted a losing strike when the adminis- tion Association (NEA), the American Feder- tration took advantage of the NLRBruling ation of Teachers (AFT), and the American and refused to recognize the union unless it Association of University Professors (AAUP) forfeited most of the assistants’ rights. —have added more than 200,000 members During the period of growth and consolida- among the professoriate. Thousands of uni- tion, academic unionism faced a series of versity and college clerical and maintenance constraints dictated by state law and by its ac- employees have won union representation as ceptance of traditional trade union culture. well. Today, in terms of density—the propor- During the struggles for union recognition, tion of union members to the overall labor academic employees were obliged to accept a force—academic labor is among the highest deal written into the law of public labor rela- in the union movement. A third of the total tions according to which they forfeited their non-managerial academic labor force is repre- right to strike in return for the right to bargain sented by unions—most, but not all, in public over the terms and conditions of employment. institutions. Missing from the unionizedare One of the most onerous, New York’s Taylor FALL 2006 LIBERAL EDUCATION 25 Since the 1970s, Law, construes any concerted academic unions without proffering charges or C I action that results in the have been among the observing other due process P withdrawal of labor, even if protections for the accused. O few sectors of T not sanctioned by the union, Even those unions that are not the labor movement as a violation punishable by recognized by administrations D E heavy fines and possible im- that have experienced for the purpose of collective R prisonment if union leaders significant growth bargaining can publicize the U fail to order their members to effects of these actions— T A cease and desist. Moreover, which are typically unilateral E the law specifies the mandatory and non- or done in consultation with essentially power- F mandatory subjects of bargaining. New York less faculty senates dominated by administra- State and California have the highest concen- tors—and wage a campaign in the community, tration of unionized academics, accounting for on the media, and among studentsto reverse about a quarter of thenational total. Manage- them. Where unions do have bargaining ment must bargain with their employees over rights, they should consider broadening their salaries, benefits, and otherterms and condi- demands to include governance issues. tions of employment except those conditions not considered mandatory. Impediments Beyond the inevitable resistance of adminis- Governance trations, boards of trustees, and legislatures to Among the non-mandatory subjects is gover- this admittedly novel redefinition of the role nance. While all of the unions frequently of academic unions, there are practical imped- invokethe traditional AAUPprinciple of iments. Coded as a “non-economic” demand, “shared governance,” itself a compromise from expanding the right to bargain over issues that the premodern concept that higher education are reserved for administrations will encounter was constituted as a community of scholars membership concern that economic issues that shared administrative as well as instruc- might be sacrificed in the bargain. Moreover, tional duties, the reality is that almost nowhere even more than salary and benefit gains, the in the public sector do faculty have a legal or demand for power in the governance of the institutionally sanctioned right to negotiate institution is likely to become a strike issue, over issues of governance, whether through especially if the other side takes the position unions or faculty senates. In the case of the that they will “never agree” to such an impu- latter, the senate has, at best, advisory status, dentdemand. It would take a serious educa- but unions are barred from addressing this tion campaign among faculty, union as well as question at the bargaining table. In the case of non-union, who either retain confidence in the prohibitions of the Taylor Law, the ques- the faculty senate to address these issues or tion of what constitutes “terms and conditions have been habituated to considering the union of employment” is becoming a hot topic. as they consider an insurance company: the Unions may be in the best position to take bargaining committee and the leadership are a stand when administrations devise protocols responsible for “delivering the goods,” princi- regarding intellectual property; close down a pally salaries, health, and pension benefits. program, such as library science and geography And there will be problems with those in the at Columbia in the 1990s; institute an online union leadership who share the members’ pre- bachelor’s degree, as the City University of dispositions or, if they grasp what is at stake in New York (CUNY) has done; raise “academic making these radical demands, lack confidence standards” for admission that result in declining that the members will go to the barricades to enrollments of blacks and individuals from win genuine participation in governance. underrepresented ethnic groups; institute a In public institutions, the fight would by five-year tenure review for all faculty over the necessity have to be waged on several fronts, objections of faculty organizations, a “reform” including state legislatures that are unlikely to that is already in effect on dozens of campuses in receive the request for broadening faculty pow- the private and public sectors; or undertake dis- ers with sympathy. In order to achieve this goal, missal proceedings for dissenting professors or unions of professional staff, clericals, graduate those suspected of cooperating with “terrorists” students, and maintenance employees would 26 LIBERAL EDUCATION FALL 2006 have to be recruited to the fight. But these Graduate Center of C unions and their members might actually be- the City University I P lieve that shared governance is none of their of New York O business. To convince them, faculty would be T required to alter their own attitudes and hierar- D chical values. Why should a registrar, a pro- E gram assistant, an adjunct, or a maintenance R U mechanic be interested in governance? One re- T ply is that, in this era of relentless cost cutting A and budget shortfalls, the entire community is E F affected by planned downsizing, by weakening faculty and staff power, and by the structural changes that occur more frequently. Another is that, if working in the university is not just a job but a career choice for most employees, being concerned with broader policy issues may be a vital matter, not just for faculty but for all. Prior to accepting an appointment at CUNY’s Graduate Center, I worked at two major research universities—the University of California–Irvine (UCI) and Columbia. UCI has a very weak faculty union with no bargain- ingrights, but graduate assistants, clerical workers, and some administrative employees are unionized. Similarly, Columbia underwent a fierce struggle to organize maintenance workers in the 1940s and, twenty years later, clerical employees joined the ranks of orga- nized labor. But, in the main, faculty remain convinced that their interests are best served by relying on their individual merit. They sincerely believe that collective action may be appropriate for manual and white-collar workers, but as members of the informal academic elite, they are well advised to stay away I have no illusions that the most privileged from unions. among the professoriate are prepared as yet to In the past twenty years, however, faculty at recognize that they are really employees whose UCI, a public university, have been subject to powers within the institution are limited.Yet several budget crises that have affected their if academic unions were to raise the ante on salaries, but more to the point, occasionally the terms and conditions of academic employ- restricted access to research resources. Their ment to include questions of governance, more senate seems powerless to address these issues than salaries and benefits, they might begin to effectively. As a private institution, faculty at persuade even the most individualistic of the Columbia have few levers to restrain adminis- faculty that there is a chance for faculty and trative decisions to shut down, alter, or differ- staff empowerment. In any case, in public col- entially support various programs or to impose leges and universities, pursuing this perspective their own tenure recommendations on an is more than desirable: it is imperative. ■■ administration whose major goal is to restrict tenure to senior scholars recruited from the To respond to this article, e-mail [email protected], outside. Like other Ivy League schools, Colum- with the author’s name on the subject line. bia regularly denies tenure to accomplished junior faculty on the theory that they should prove themselves elsewhere and come back as mature scholars. FALL 2006 LIBERAL EDUCATION 27