Unions and the Future of Higher Education Employment

Abstract

The employment patterns of instructional faculty have transformed in the forty years since I earned a doctorate and became a professor. There is no foreseeable end to the trend away from tenure-track professors and toward  contingent faculty—that is, those with short-term contracts and no tenure protections.There is, however, a glimmer of hope for stemming the worst effects of contingency: low pay, few benefits, little job security, and hardly any academic freedom. Increasingly, contingent faculty are turning to unionization. As a  professor, I had a front-row seat to the trends and, as a local union president and chief negotiator for more than thirty years, a role in mitigating them.