aphanisis: the crisis of tenure

Music: Dead Can Dance: Aion (1990)

I received a message this morning alerting me to an Inside Higher Ed piece titled "The Disappearing Tenure Track Job." Apparently, a new study commissioned and released by the American Federation of Teachers found that the percentage of tenure track professorships in all sectors of higher education is below 40%, despite a dramatic increase in "contingent" positions (e.g., adjunctships) from 1997 to 2007. Such evidence disproves one of the founding assumptions of the sniveling shits of republichristiandom, of course, but what is more alarming is that in 4-year colleges and universities, the number is closer to a quarter of the working force! This is, admittedly, astonishing.

I suppose what is worse is that I don't see any change for the better in sight, only an increasing reliance on unjust labor and abuse and the continual devaluation of permanent faculty positions. For most of the Rosechron readership, we are fortunate to be in fields anchored by service courses. Because the skills we teach are vital (and because our service courses basically pick up the slack from high school educations overrun by testing and assessment), we still have tenure track jobs available. Comm and Comp have a long way to go before we become "English" and will need to resort to discouraging graduate students. But I worry that day, too, will come because our programs are not exempt from the trends identified by the AFT.

A crisis is typically understood as a moment or state of intense trouble or risk or calamity. Our economic condition today is definitely a "crisis." Are we, however, in a "tenure crisis" now? Is higher education in a state of general crisis? I'm not sure. I am suspicious of the apocalyptic in general, since the form always works through the exclusion of others. Also, narcissistically, it looks like my hide will get promoted, that my generation will not suffer from the downsizing of the permanent professoriate. But I worry.

If crisis is usually resolved by the exclusion or disciplining of an other, then the AFT report signals a crisis: the purging of adjuncts (or simply ignoring their interests) is one obvious move. Unfortunately, I've seen tenure-related issues do precisely at: when I was at LSU, the place was practically functioning on the backs of underpaid adjuncts. As part of a new regime change, two or three adjunct positions were converted to "tenure lines," which led, of course, to many unhappy people. Now, the old LSU system was truly abusive, in my opinion, so this move was a good one. But I recognize that's easy for me to say since I'm on a track.

I don't know what to think about the "tenure crisis." I solicit your thoughts.