Community College Faculty: At Work in the New Economy

by John S. Levin, Susan Kater and Richard L. Wagoner
Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2006. 299 pp. $23.50

reviewed by Mark J. Drozdowski

I’ve never worked or taught at a community college. After reading this book, I don’t want to. Community college faculty, it turns out, are oppressed, though they may not know it. That’s essentially the conclusion of this slim volume—some 142 pages, minus endnotes—and the authors sling plenty of isms to buttress their argument.

These faculty, who suffer from “low status” and are “questionably legitimate,” are “worker bees” toiling in the “New Economy” under a shroud of “neoliberalism,” “new managerialism,” “corporatism,” and “fast capitalism.” I think I need an Advil.

Let’s dissect these charges. First, what exactly is this New Economy? According to the authors, it “values flexible, specialized production, particularly knowledge production tied to new
technology, and ‘multifaceted, pan-occupational team players,’ who contribute to reduced costs, increased profits, or produce measurable outcomes, and expand markets.” The term “pan-occupational” implies globalism, of course, and the authors continually refer to the community college as a global entity. The
community, we can deduce, is Earth.

Moving on. “New managerialism,” say the authors, refers to
“management practices and values commonly associated with
the private sector.” Similarly, neo-liberalism focuses on the needs
and interests of government and businesses, not on individuals.
Immersed in all this, community colleges have “shifted from
student and community betterment to a workforce development
model that seeks to serve the ‘global economy.’”

Leading the charge are college administrators, who “view faculty as extensions of management and as contributors to the corporate strategies and goals of the institution.” While faculty are
“expected to be more entrepreneurial in their practices,” their
“entrepreneurial behaviors are focused on economic efficiency, not
necessarily educational quality.” As a result, faculty are “agents of a corporate ideology that arguably makes them instruments and not autonomous professionals.” Any inroads made by professors toward participatory governance are allowed only to satisfy corporate needs. In other words, faculty help, perhaps unwittingly, to manage and advance the institution.

The authors thus claim that faculty are compromised, colonized, “managed professionals” forced to “consent to the choices and reasoning, and indeed domination, of administrators, governments, and private businesses—those who have power over the meaning of work in the community college.” Doesn’t sound terribly appealing, does it?

Further, community colleges have developed a more “overt entrepreneurial culture…that can provide efficient and flexible programs tied to market demands.” Along the way they’ve “adapted to a changing labor force through workforce preparation programs and contract training…and by modifying the traditional curriculum to emphasize employability skills.”

Seems to me they always have. Claims of bending to market
pressures are hardly new. Over time, all colleges, to differing
degrees, have modified programs and curricula to meet emerging needs, be they local, national or global. Consider: “We believe that changes may, from time to time be made with advantage, to meet the varying demands of the community, to accommodate the course of instruction to the rapid advance of the country, in population, refinement, and opulence.” Sound like a contemporary concern? It’s from the Yale Report of 1828. Community colleges,
in particular, have always been entrepreneurial, adaptive, flexible and relevant.

Adding to this flexibility is the use of adjuncts. The authors
tell us that 64 percent of community college faculty teach part-time. They remind us of this often, and tend to repeat salient
points again and again. Repetition is the key to retention, I suppose. Did I mention 64 percent? Anyway, the authors say the
increased use of “disposable part-time and adjunct instructors”
relates directly to the “globalization of community colleges and
the ascendancy of New Economy management principles.” It’s
all about efficiency and “controlling production costs.” And
while full-time faculty are merely marginalized and compromised, part-timers are “alienated from the organization,” which
“deprives [them] from the personal satisfaction, relatedness, and
meaningfulness of participating in a college’s culture.” We kind
of knew that already.

The authors, though, are careful not to lump all adjuncts together, drawing a meaningful distinction between vocational faculty and transfer faculty. Vocational faculty have marketability beyond the academy and often work full-time elsewhere; they “resemble the highly valued stratum of temporary labor in the New Economy.” Transfer faculty, those folks teaching in the arts and humanities, “resemble the exploited and less valued stratum of labor in the New Economy.” So if you’re a computer scientist teaching part-time at the local community college, you’re broadening your horizons and perhaps demonstrating your altruistic side. If you’re a philosopher king teaching seven courses at six colleges, you’re rather stuck.

By now you may have detected a hint of Marx, and I don’t
mean Groucho. The book reads like a carefully-reasoned political manifesto, but I’ll concede this: It does make you think.
Considering the two classes of adjuncts, I suppose, makes perfect sense. And the authors do well in walking us through some
sidebar issues such as the use of instructional technology (they
call it “distributed learning”). They also provide intriguing first-person accounts of community college employees; these mini
case studies of people battling in the trenches attach human
voices to the cacophony of isms swirling around our heads.

Missing, though, is any blueprint for change. The authors appeal to faculty to “assess their environmental conditions and define a path for the development of professional identity,” but that’s about it. If someone can tell me what this means, in concrete terms, I’ll share my Advil. Meanwhile, I’m left with a decidedly unfavorable view of community colleges, especially from the faculty perspective. I’m also left with an incomplete understanding of how all this oppression and marginalization affects student learning.

Still, if you teach at a community college, you may find relevance and, in a perverse way, comfort in these pages. You’ll conclude that you’re not alone, assuming you agree with these arguments. If you aspire to teach at one, heed the warnings. And if you’re simply curious about the lot of those toiling in two-year schools, you may gain some useful insights. In any case, just don’t expect to be uplifted.