Gumming the Hand that Feeds You: Academic Policy Statements
by Elizabeth J. Carter
A policy is a temporary creed liable to be changed, but while it holds good it has got to be pursued with apostolic zeal.—Mohandas Gandhi
The policy statements of academic associations such as the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), Modern Language Association (MLA) and Mathematical Association of America (MAA) have long served to distill and promulgate the views of their members on matters spanning academic freedom to hiring practices and distance education. They have never, though, served as engines of compelled change. Should they, though? Why, after all, do they exist?
As now drafted and implemented, policy statements have an essentially self-serving purpose. They summarize factual circumstances, articulate tenets of belief, and prescribe solutions—all without the slightest threat of punishment. At best, the statements do little more than heighten awareness and guide the already enlightened. At worst, they allow their authors to hide behind a façade or prescriptive self-righteousness while simultaneously ducking the higher (but much tougher) challenge of campaigning for a systematic overhaul of the way contingent faculty are hired, treated, and compensated.
I cringe when I read the policy statements of academic associations for much the same reason that I feel queasy when I hear that the United Nations General Assembly has “condemned” a country or party for a misdeed. Because I know that, most likely, the condemnation will not change a thing. It will punish no one. It is just a bite without teeth.
As an example of such innocuous denunciation, consider the AAUP’s statement on contingent faculty, adopted as policy in 2003. As policy statements go, it is impressive: full of gravity, benevolent concern, and an authoritative but unpretentious prose that expresses well the predicament of adjuncts and the damage caused by the academy’s excessive reliance on them:
“The dramatic increase in the number and proportion of contingent faculty…has created systemic problems for higher education. Student learning is diminished….Faculty governance is weakened by constant turnover….Inequities and physical distance among potential colleagues undermine [collegiality]…and hamper the effectiveness of academic decision making.”
The statement also takes the time to set forth a comprehensive list of recommendations to universities, including an exhortation to “stabilize the situation” by reducing dependency on part-time faculty: “Having made a commitment to reduce reliance on a contingent teaching force, institutions should avoid hiring new contingent faculty during the transition. New contingent appointments, if any, should be limited to candidates whose qualifications…are likely to meet the institution’s standards for tenure….”
And then there’s the MLA’s policy statement, which urges universities to convert part-time positions to full-time, and to fill the converted positions with contingents:
“[Non-tenure-track] faculty members should be considered for tenure-track jobs alongside new Ph.Ds whenever plausible and practicable. NTTs should additionally be given equal consideration for jobs at their home institution…whenever that institution converts NTT lines to tenure track.”
Both the AAUP’s and MLA’s policy statements are admirable in their recognition of the often-ignored realities of how contingent faculty are hired, taken advantage of, and confined to the professional periphery of academe. But what concrete effects do the recommendations have on the way universities use contingents? Neither of the statements asserts, or even suggests, that any negative consequences will attach to a university’s rejection of the recommendations. Instead, the prescriptions are given with an earnest—but ultimately toothless—bite.
Like the MLA and AAUP statements, the policy statements and briefs issued by Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), the American Sociological Association (ASA), the Association of Departments of English (ADE), and the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages (ADFL) never move above the level of benign summary and prescription without threat of consequence. Says the MAA in its Guidelines for Programs and Departments in Undergraduate Mathematical Sciences: “Many mathematical sciences programs today tend to have too large a percentage of part-time faculty, and, over time, should convert part-time positions into full-time positions.” (Section C.6) The MAA’s guidelines are “intended to be used by mathematical sciences programs in self-studies, planning, and assessment of their undergraduate programs….” (Section A)
Likewise, the ADE and ADFL statements (the texts of which are almost identical, leading me to imagine there must be a vending machine somewhere that dispenses these things for a dollar and a quarter) “offer” guidelines. And, in a similarly toothless vein, TESOL “urges” universities to implement its recommendations on part-time faculty.
Urges? When African-Americans had to sit on the back of the bus and drink from separate water fountains and attend segregated schools, did the NAACP “urge” change? Did it issue a politely worded statement articulating its disapproval? No. It organized demonstrations and rallies; it staged sit-ins; it lobbied government officials; at times, its members even risked personal injury. Couldn’t academic associations make similarly vigorous attempts to compel universities to change their treatment of contingent faculty? Couldn’t they, for example, forbid the tenure-track faculty and graduate students of universities who ignore the guidelines from presenting papers or interviewing for jobs at their annual conferences? Couldn’t they deny membership rights to those employed by offending universities? Couldn’t they, well, bite?
To find out more about what academic associations want their policy statements to achieve, I called the AAUP. Dr. Robert Kreiser, Associate Secretary of the AAUP’s Department of Academic Freedom and Governance, explained to me that the association’s policy statements are not designed to be vehicles for punishment. Rather, they are intended to set forth academic standards that the AAUP hopes universities will adopt.
“We have no way of forcing institutions [to comply],” said Kreiser, although he noted that “egregious departures” from recommended policy may lead to investigation and even censure. When asked if the AAUP had ever considered putting teeth into its policy statements by barring the faculty of disobedient universities from participating in AAUP events, Kreiser said, “We would never dream of doing that.”
Kreiser’s thoughts were echoed by Tina Straley, Executive Director of the MAA, who said of her organization’s statements: “We intend these to be recommendations….[W]e would love universities to follow them.”
Straley explained that the MAA’s statements are regularly used by university administrators to guide them in their implementation of policy changes. As to the question of how the guidelines are enforced, Straley observed that the MAA is not an accrediting body with the power to force institutional compliance by withdrawing or withholding accreditation. And, unlike the AAUP, the MAA does not have a censure list.
“We want to be open and welcoming” with universities, said Straley, and rejected the idea of punishing universities who ignore the guidelines by prohibiting their faculty from participating in association conferences and events. “We would never want to punish faculty,” she said.
Like Kreiser and Straley, Dr. Rosemary Feal, Executive Director of the MLA, emphasized that “the MLA is not an investigatory or regulatory agency, and we therefore have no authority to impose consequences. When we hear about situations of concern, we bring them to the attention of the council and/or appropriate committees. We report on trends and discuss issues with department chairs.”
Representatives of the ASA and TESOL confirmed that their research briefs and statements are designed primarily as tools for facilitating change. Both noted the importance of the statements in helping dissatisfied faculty lobby for change to senior administrators.
All of these explanations are well intentioned and reflective of a genuine concern for the exploitation of contingent faculty. So why am I still cringing? I’m cringing because the statements not only have no bite, their authors don’t want them to have bite—seem, in fact, to believe that no authority, power, or precedent exists for putting bite into the statements.
But is this really so? As mentioned earlier, there are a number of things academic associations could do to compel compliance with policy recommendations. They could, for example, bar from their conferences the tenure-track faculty and graduate students of universities who continue to ignore their policy-statement recommendations. They could censure universities more frequently, and attach greater negative consequences to censure. They could work with the media more intensively to build public support for change. University administrators are, like their for-profit corporate cousins, notoriously responsive to which way the winds are blowing.
To some, putting teeth into policy statements in the above-mentioned ways might seem an unwarranted punishment of the innocent. But it’s not. The full-time, tenure-track faculty who attend association conferences are hardly innocent. They participate in the governance of their universities, thereby contributing to the conditions deplored by the academic associations to which they belong. They benefit greatly from the continued use of adjuncts and other contingent faculty. Contingents are the ones, after all, who get stuck teaching the introductory courses with as many students as you’d find at a football game. Contingents often teach heavier course loads, making it possible for the tenure-trackers to get their research done. And when tenured faculty refuse to retire at age 65 or even 70, they prevent tenure-track positions from opening up, thus making it harder for contingents to obtain the secure positions that could save them from continued professional instability.
Although graduate students do not benefit from adjunct labor in the way that tenure-track and tenured faculty do, including them in the punitive scheme could cause such grave injury to the financial foundation of the programs they belong to that offending universities would be compelled to bring their policies in line with the recommendations of the AAUP, MLA, et al. If prohibited from participating in job interviews held at conferences, for example, graduate students might well choose to leave their institutions and continue their educations at policy-compliant universities. Likewise, prospective graduate students would steer clear of the noncompliant universities, thereby depleting their programs of revenue. The long-term consequences of such an exodus could, potentially, trigger substantive change.
One thing seems almost certain: until academic associations incorporate the threat of real consequence into their policy statements, they will continue only to enlighten the enlightened and guide the persuaded. And that is not, one suspects, what Gandhi meant by “apostolic zeal.”
