A growing class of faculty, the “academic precariat,” often work with no job security, no benefits, and low wages. The proportion of faculty off the tenure track has been rising for nearly half a century, a trend that reflects the growing inequality in our society. The shift is particularly troubling in higher education because, as research conducted by the Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success suggests, an overreliance on poorly paid and unsupported part-time faculty may hurt student retention and achievement.
Adjunct faculty members have begun to fight back, turning to labor unions to improve their working conditions through collective bargaining. Faculties on more than 60 campuses have organized with the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU. A 2016 study in the Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy reported that 20 new faculty unions were certified in the first three quarters of 2016, with nearly two-thirds representing both full- and part-time adjunct faculty members, about a quarter representing part-timers, and about a tenth representing full-timers. In 2016, over 20 percent of postsecondary teachers were unionized, according to Hunter College’s National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions.
Today, unionization in U.S. colleges and universities proceeds apace, and with added urgency because of Janus v. AFSCME Council 31, a Supreme Court case that unions fear could potentially reduce their financial base and lead to membership declines. In March adjuncts voted to unionize at the University of South Florida, and in April adjuncts at Nazareth College filed a petition to hold a union election. At the University of Pittsburgh, at Elmhurst College, and elsewhere, adjuncts are currently fighting for the right to organize a union on their campuses.
Over roughly the past year and a half, graduate student workers from at least 14 different institutions have also voted to unionize. The most recent decision was at Harvard University, where graduate students voted to form a union with the United Auto Workers. Thousands more are currently organizing on campuses across the country. This is happening despite recent efforts by the presidents of Columbia, Yale, Boston College, the University of Chicago, and Loyola of Chicago to avoid collective bargaining and seek a favorable decision from Trump’s National Labor Relations Board. Four major unions — the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the SEIU, the United Auto Workers (UAW), and Unite Here — have banded together in an unprecedented national campaign to compel these universities to bargain in good faith.
The unionization of adjunct faculty is among the most important recent developments shaping higher education today.
In short, the unionization of adjunct faculty is among the most important recent developments shaping higher education. The increasing reliance on low-paid, part-time instructors has eroded the availability of tenure-track positions at many institutions.
Moreover, the same desire for cost savings that has motivated colleges to rely heavily on adjunct faculty has led, at many institutions, to worsening working conditions for tenure-track faculty in the form of growing teaching loads, a lack of administrative support, and diminishing funds for research. Given these developments, it is possible that adjunct and tenure-track faculty may come together more often to unionize together, as happened recently at our university, Notre Dame de Namur.
All these unionization efforts aim to stop the overreliance on and exploitation of gig workers in academe and to improve the working conditions of contingent faculty. Have they succeeded?
We analyzed collective-bargaining agreements ratified between 2010 and 2016 at 35 colleges and universities.
Adjunct faculty won salary increases at every institution we looked at. A 2018 survey by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources shows that U.S. faculty members this year are earning only 1.7 percent more than last year, a figure that is below the current rate of inflation. Unionized faculty have negotiated steady increases that are significantly higher, and some of the steepest gains have come from unions formed within the last few years.
At Rutgers University, where adjuncts are in a longstanding union affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers and the American Association of University Professors, instructors with 12 semesters of teaching experience at the university gained a 5 percent raise, plus increases of around 2 percent over the remaining two years of the contract. At Hamline University in Minnesota, adjuncts affiliated with SEIU also won pay raises — most received a 15 percent increase in the first year and then saw their base pay increase by 20 percent the second year.
Other SEIU-affiliated adjunct unions also enjoyed large increases: at Washington University in St. Louis, some adjuncts won a 26-percent increase over the subsequent four years; Boston University adjuncts won pay raises of between 29 percent and 68 percent over the three-year period covered by their contract; in California, Mills College adjuncts gained a wage scale that rewards seniority, with raises ranging from 1.75 percent to 60 percent.
Adjunct faculty members also increased their benefits at most institutions in our sample. Eighty-nine percent of the contracts we examined include provisions allowing part-time faculty to receive health insurance. At Northeastern University, adjuncts who work 30 hours or more per week won health-insurance plans, and part-time faculty gained the right to participate in the university’s basic retirement plan after two years of service. Lecturers in the California State University system who teach at least half time for four consecutive quarters or three consecutive semesters receive health-care benefits and participate in the university’s voluntary retirement program.
Ninety-seven percent of the collective-bargaining agreements in our sample provided increased job security for contingent faculty. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign agreed to offer multiyear contracts “whenever appropriate” to adjunct faculty. At Florida A&M University, instructors and lecturers may receive “two- to five-year fixed multi-year appointments.” George Washington University agreed that part-time faculty in their second consecutive academic year of teaching would be reappointed to courses they had previously taught and denied reappointment only under limited, specified circumstances.
Adjuncts at most institutions also won the right to some form of compensation when their classes are canceled. At our university, Notre Dame de Namur, an adjunct faculty member appointed to teach a course now will be paid $250 if the course is canceled and an alternative course is not offered in the same academic term.
Adjuncts have also gained increased access to professional development — 94 percent of contracts in our study included such provisions. At Montgomery College in Maryland, part-time faculty members negotiated a new contract that included a professional-development benefit of $900 per instructor. At Georgetown University, the collective-bargaining agreement established a $35,000 professional-development fund for adjunct faculty members to present their research at conferences.
At most institutions (83 percent of those we examined), adjunct faculty members have also won increased resources to support their teaching and advising of students. In addition to contractually guaranteed access to office space in which to prepare for classes and meet with students, and administrative support services, some faculty members have gained reimbursement for authorized field trips and classroom expenses.
Adjunct faculty members have also gained greater academic freedom through the collective-bargaining agreements we studied. Most institutions have formal policies ensuring academic freedom, of course, and most of the regional accreditation organizations require institutions to protect it. In reality, though, tenured faculty have the greatest academic freedom because they enjoy the greatest protection from arbitrary dismissal. Adjuncts at 83 percent of the institutions we sampled established greater academic freedom through collective bargaining.
Despite these noteworthy gains, three goals remain elusive: attaining true parity in salary and benefits with tenure-line faculty, obtaining meaningful participation in shared governance, and halting the increasing overreliance on gig labor in higher education. Even at institutions where adjuncts have been unionized for years, they have yet to earn salary and benefits equal to tenure-line faculty. Achieving parity would benefit the entire professoriate, because it removes the institution’s economic incentive to replace full-time and tenure-track positions with part-time instructors.
However, the only successful example we know of is at Dominican University of California, where the bargaining team set a baseline principle of tying part-time pay to the tenure-track pay scale. The strategy worked, and in the third year of their current three-year contract, Dominican’s adjuncts will earn 80 percent of the salary of a tenure-track assistant or associate professor. Shortly after Dominican’s adjuncts voted to ratify their contract in 2016, other unions in the Bay Area attempted to negotiate for a similar pay structure, but to date none have succeeded.
Collective bargaining has also failed to produce widespread gains in shared governance. Adjunct instructors — who represent the largest segment of the faculty — rarely participate in institutional decision-making. Acknowledging the problem, the AAUP in 2013 issued a report calling for departments and faculty senates to make sure that contingent faculty can vote in their meetings and elections and hold offices, just as tenure-line faculty do.
Many colleges claim to advance social justice, but few have acted on their own principles when it comes to adjunct faculty.
Although some research indicates that unionization can strengthen faculty participation, few of the collective-bargaining agreements in our sample even mention shared governance. Most agreements provide for a “labor-management committee” that meets several times per year to discuss matters of interest to adjunct faculty, but this kind of provision does not ensure that adjuncts have meaningful input, nor does it give adjuncts the right to communicate their concerns to the board of trustees or the ability to run for election to the assemblies and committees on which tenure-track faculty serve.
The third area where collective bargaining appears to have limited efficacy is in reducing the overreliance on part-time, contingent faculty. Most part-time instructors would prefer to work full-time. A 2010 national survey conducted by the AFT found that this was particularly true of younger instructors. A 2015 study based on survey data from 4,000 part-time instructors at some 300 colleges and universities found that 73 percent of part-time instructors want to have a full-time position but are not able to find one. One might expect that unionization would increase the number of full-time and tenure-track positions, but this has not happened.
In a 1997 study of 183 higher-education union contracts, researchers found that although administrators across the country were increasingly replacing full-time faculty with part-timers, most contracts failed to limit the number of temporary adjunct faculty hired. As shown in the new book Professors in the Gig Economy: Unionizing Adjunct Faculty in America (Johns Hopkins University Press), at the City University of New York and within the California State University system, where part-time and tenure-line faculty have been unionized for decades, the proportion of tenure-line faculty has actually decreased since the early 2000s.
None of the 35 contracts we examined include any agreements to increase the proportion of full-time and tenure-line positions. Only one has a provision about the proportion of the faculty: the collective-bargaining agreement between the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education and the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties, which pegs part time work at 25 percent of all faculty work.
Why has it been so difficult for adjunct unions to gain these three measures? To some extent, the failure stems from the bargaining process itself. Before starting negotiations, unions survey members to determine their highest priorities. The highest priorities, such as increasing salaries and benefits, have the support of nearly all members. In contrast, when members are divided in opinion about a specific issue, it is difficult to mobilize the faculty during collective bargaining.
Take the issue of increasing the number of full-time positions on campus. Although most part-time faculty want to work full time, many others do not. In fact, some part-time faculty may view an increase in the proportion of full-time positions as against their interests, because any such increase would likely diminish the amount of part-time work available. Collective bargaining alone is not likely to stanch the increasing reliance on part-time faculty on American campuses.
The issue of shared governance is similar: In adjunct unions composed solely of part-time faculty, participation in shared governance may be a lower priority when such work is uncompensated and many members have other commitments outside the institution.
The lack of traction in pay parity is easily explained, if hard to accept: Because adjunct pay is so low, pay parity would involve a very large salary increase, one that most institutions are loath to provide.
Many colleges claim to advance social justice or develop democratic communities, but few have acted on their own principles when it comes to giving adjunct faculty a living wage and a real voice in decision-making. Everyone who cares about the quality of higher education should demand they do so.
Since the founding of the nation, the purpose of higher education has been to develop skilled, thoughtful citizens capable of contributing in meaningful ways to society. This purpose will never be realized with a professoriate composed predominantly of instructors who work without the protection of real academic freedom, and have no role in shared governance, no job security, no benefits, low wages, and no real hope of ever finding a full-time position.
Kristen Edwards is a lecturer in history at Notre Dame de Namur University and at Stanford University Continuing Studies. Kim Tolley is a historian of education and a professor at Notre Dame de Namur University. This article draws from their chapter in Professors in the Gig Economy: Unionizing Adjunct Faculty in America, recently out from Johns Hopkins University Press.
This article has been updated to clarify that not all adjuncts at Washington University in St. Louis won the 26-percent pay increase.
