“As universities increasingly model themselves after corporations, it becomes crucial to understand how the principles of corporate culture intersect with the meaning and purpose of the university, the role of knowledge production in the twenty-first century, and the social practices inscribed within teacher-student relationships. The signs are not encouraging.”
-Henry Giroux (1)
Administrative Fuzz.
Viewing the labor dispute at NYU through the lens of political economy and against the backdrop of recent history remains key to understanding it in a broader context. In the last few decades, a concerted attack from (Republi-crat) politicians, business, and administrators has attempted to hyper-corporatize higher education. The origins of these processes of corporate transformation have been traced by some to at least four interrelated developments beginning in the 1970s: the (now 30-year) conservative reaction against liberalism, the ascendance of neoclassical economic dogma (aka “neoliberalism”) as hegemonic politico-economic discourse, the consequent evaporation of public funds under “small-government” executives and legislatures, and finally, a massive consolidation of corporate power and assets (2).
Creeping corporatization in higher education means running the [non-profit] university “like a business.” It replaces the liberating potential of scholarly investigation with raw economic functionalism; universities serve primarily to produce 1) scientific knowledge for the “information economy,” 2) a well-trained workforce and political elite (ex: CSS), 3) credentials, “cultural capital,” and divertissement for this intellectual class.
Consequently, it has meant decreased access for students, as tuition skyrockets and financial aid disappears. It has meant money for science, no money for humanities (“not useful”). It has meant increasing corporate encroachment upon research agendas, and the stringent policing of “intellectual property rights.” It has meant the erosion of faculty governance and the centralization of administrative power. And finally, it has meant the casualization and exploitation of academic labor.
Working in the Knowledge Factory.
“The union can die a quick death or a slow death.”
-NYU Prez. John Sexton
In the corporate university, as tenured positions are eliminated, TAs and adjuncts take up the teaching slack; a 1999 national study found less than 1/3 of all faculty were tenured, 45 percent were “part-time”; the rest are assumedly TAs (3). At NYU TAs account for 80 percent of the teaching of core-level classes and 90 percent of the grading (4); similarly GESO found that in 1999, 70 percent of undergraduate teaching at Yale was performed by non-tenure track teachers, with 40 percent of class contact hours performed by TAs (5).
Without unions, the relationship between TAs and universities can be highly exploitative; poorly paid and overcommitted, they scramble to make ends-meat, while falling thousands of dollars in debt with loans.
Universities discredit TA unions with two classic arguments: 1) that Tas are students, not workers, that teaching is part of their training, and 2) that unions interfere with academic freedom. Both unravel quite easily.
Graduate students are not exclusively students or workers—they are both; they provide universities with (a substantial amount of) labor which, one way or another, has to be paid for, pursuing their academic goals at the same time. On academic freedom, the charge is again groundless; for example, GSOC enjoys overwhelming faculty support, despite the NYU administration’s constant invocation of “academic interference” to legitimate union-busting. The claim is risible, given that non-tenured teachers have minimal speech protections or job security, as illustrated in the Westheimer case Tuesday.
The Wesleyan Connection.
1. We are the future of the Academy. 80 percent of Wesleyan alumni attend some sort of graduate or professional school within five years of graduation; for seniors especially, labor trends in the academy take on an immediate importance. NYU is under pressure from other universities to “hold the line”; the ramifications will be great for campaigns at other schools.
2. Wes has TAs. Though not proportionately large, graduate students still work here—especially in the sciences. How our TAs (and adjuncts) are doing—if they have decent healthcare, for example—should concern those who care about “justice” as well as the quality of their education; poorly treated workers make less-than-great teachers.
3. Accountability. A group dedicated to transparency, like Faculty Democracy at NYU, could greatly help students and teachers articulate their concerns and interests (6).
(1) Giroux, “Corporate War Against Higher Education,”
www.louisville.edu/journal/workplace/issue5p1/giroux.html
(2) Aronowitz, The Knowledge Factory
(3) NEA, http://www2.nea.org/heuupdate/vo17no3.pdf
(4) Jessup, in Johnson, Steal this University
(5) GESO, Casual in Blue: Yale and the Academic Labor Market, http://www.yaleunions.org/geso/
(6) www.facultydemocracy.org/
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