Dear Commons Community,

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has published a data snapshot on higher education faculty comparing those with tenure and non-tenured contingent status.  Using data drawn from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), its findings highlight the current status of the academic labor system in US higher education. At all US institutions combined, the percentage of instructional positions that is off the tenure track amounted to 73 percent in 2016, the latest year for which data are available. The data are troublesome for the status (salary, fringe benefits) of higher education faculty to say nothing about academic freedom. Below is a summary of the AAUP findings.

I thank my Hunter College colleague, John Wallace, for alerting me to this data source.

Tony

============================

Data Snapshot: Contingent Faculty in US Higher Ed

Over the past few decades, the tenure system in US higher education has eroded. At its best, the tenure system is a big tent, designed to unite a diverse faculty within a system of common professional values, standards, rights, and responsibilities. Tenure protects academic freedom by insulating faculty from the whims and biases of administrators, legislators, and donors, and provides the security that enables faculty to speak truth to power and contribute to the common good through teaching, research, and service activities.

The AAUP research department has taken a look at the data around tenure and the casualization of faculty labor. We looked at overall trends and broke out data regarding full-time contingent faculty and part-time and graduate-student instructors. Using data drawn from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), our findings highlight the current status of the academic labor system in US higher education. At all US institutions combined, the percentage of instructional positions that is off the tenure track amounted to 73 percent in 2016, the latest year for which data are available. The highest percentage of contingent faculty appears at two-year institutions, where tenure-track positions make up less than 20 percent of faculty positions. While a little less than 50 percent of faculty positions at master’s and baccalaureate institutions are part-time, more than 65 percent of positions at two-year institutions are. Part-time teaching positions tend to be the least secure and worst remunerated teaching positions in higher education, with low per-course pay and few benefits. For the most part, both full-and part-time non-tenure-track faculty roles are insecure, unsupported positions with little job security and inadequate due process protections.

Since the principal purpose of tenure is to safeguard academic freedom, the trend toward an increasingly contingent faculty is deeply worrisome. Free inquiry, free expression, and open dissent are critical for student learning and the advancement of knowledge. When faculty members can lose their positions because of their speech or research findings, they cannot properly fulfill their core responsibilities to advance and transmit knowledge.

Dear Commons Community,

Michael Cohen,  former attorney and fixer for President Trump registered as a Democrat this morning.

The ex-Trump attorney, who up until June served as the Republican Party’s deputy finance chairman, made the switch at the New York State board of election offices in Albany, a spokeswoman confirmed to the New York Daily News.

“Today, (Cohen) returned to the Democratic Party, another step in his journey,” attorney Lanny Davis tweeted. “Putting family and country first — distancing himself from the values of the current Admin.”

Davis added, “Can’t wait for his first interview!”

Cohen doesn’t currently have any interviews lined up, but a person familiar with the matter told The Daily News he plans to open up “at the right time.”

A White House spokeswoman did not return a request for comment.

Donald Trump will be thinking about this all night!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

City University of New York reported this morning that freshmen enrollment for Fall 2018 rose 4.0 percent to 39,938 students, a record for the University and a continuation of a five-year upward trend.  Since 2014, the number of freshmen enrolling at CUNY’s 18 senior and community colleges has increased by nearly 7 percent. As reported by CUNY’s Office of Communications:

“The growth of our freshman classes is a testament to our successful efforts to evolve, expand and continuously improve educational offerings on campuses across CUNY,” said Interim Chancellor Vita C. Rabinowitz. “Students are increasingly drawn to the quality and affordability of a CUNY education. Our mission to give them a pathway to social mobility has never been more vital.”

According to University officials, financial incentives by state and city government in recent years have also contributed to the upsurge. The state’s Excelsior Scholarship program, which supplements state and federal aid to make college free for more students, has been one factor. Another is the city’s move to waive CUNY application fees for public school students from low-income families.

Nearly all of CUNY’s campuses saw increases in their first-time freshmen enrollment this fall over last year. All told, the number of freshmen at the 11 senior colleges went from 20,158 to 21,214, a 5.3 percent increase. Among the seven community colleges, freshmen enrollment rose from 18,260 to 18,724.”

Congratulations all around!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Ruth Perry and Yarden Katz, professors at MIT and Harvard respectively, have an article this morning in The Chronicle of Higher Education, entitled Higher Education, Inc. that examines how some universities are becoming “cogs in corporate machines.”  Below is an excerpt:

“In 1972, when one of us (Ruth Perry) first came to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the federal government — and especially the Department of Defense — significantly subsidized MIT’s budget. Faculty members and students objected to how this funding changed research priorities and slanted educational objectives. After the end of the Vietnam War, MIT increasingly turned to corporations for funding. The change was not salutary. Federal funds had trickled down better; those Defense Department dollars subsidized the teaching of literature and philosophy as well as projects in the arts. Opponents of the Pentagon’s militaristic research agenda nevertheless thought it was right and proper that the federal government should support higher education beyond the narrow scope of applied research.

Corporate funding was neither so generous nor so far-reaching. There was less tolerance for educational purposes, and instead of a broad mandate for the public good (or even the rhetoric for it), these new sponsors focused narrowly on their own business interests. Moreover, corporations expected quicker results and had little interest in basic research. Those of us who had objected to the corrosive effects of Pentagon funding were surprised, perhaps naïvely, to realize that corporate money stifled free inquiry even more than federal dollars had.

Fifty years later, universities have been transformed to run like corporations, top-down and hierarchical, relying on impersonal bureaucracies rather than collegial debate to make decisions. Research is viewed instrumentally, as it is at the corporations that sponsor it.

The line between education and business has all but dissolved. Corporations lease campus land for their commercial buildings and help direct research in campus labs. The atmosphere encourages students to work on their “pitches” for corporate jobs rather than identify problematic assumptions. Students’ imaginations are trained to develop new products and open new markets rather than to think about what would constitute human fulfillment. We end up reproducing the view that the “real world” is inevitably one of competition, anxiety, isolation, and fear.

MIT, like its peer institutions, has formed many corporate partnerships. The word “partner” deserves some attention. Used as a legal term in the 18th century, “partner” has always covered a multitude of sins. The legal meaning was invented to create a legal entity to share profit but avoid personal liability. Partnership continues to mean what it meant then: an association whose precise terms are hidden, but whose public aspect is neutral, professional, and sanitized.

MIT’s partnerships are generally negotiated confidentially, without input from the greater campus community, and have become normalized over time. Last year, IBM committed $240 million to build an artificial-intelligence research laboratory at MIT, whose goal is to commercialize AI research for various industries (including defense). This corporate-academic hybrid gives IBM access to the computer-science and brain-and-cognitive-sciences faculties, as well as to students. (And it is only one of the corporate partnerships that are part of MIT’s “Intelligence Quest” initiative.)”

Later in the article, Perry and Katz also remind readers that:

“Recently the Stevens Point campus of the University of Wisconsin proposed to cut 13 of its humanities majors, “including English, art, history, philosophy, and foreign languages.” Language is the repository of our most subtle thoughts and noble feelings, the medium that stores our common knowledge and folklore — but no one has figured out how to commodify it yet. Closing research departments in the humanities is also an attack on labor. It converts programs with tenured-faculty slots into “service departments,” based on even more precarious contract labor, that teach “basic skills” to students in more strategically profitable programs. And so, another crack where academic resistance could take place is sealed shut.

The space for seeking un-pragmatic truths on campus is shrinking. It is collapsing under the weight of marketing and markets. Our hope is not to convince those in power that these trends are real. Nor is it to add to the literature of laments for a mythologized age in which the university was enlightened. Rather, we hope faculty members can learn from and make alliances with those students, community members, and colleagues at neighboring institutions who want to resist the corporatization of academic research. Together we can make more room for different kinds of thinking on our campuses.”

Amen!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Michael Bloomberg announced on Instagram and Twitter  this morning that he had re-registered as a Democrat, in a sign that the former New York City mayor could be seriously considering a presidential bid in 2020.

“At key points in U.S. history, one of the two parties has served as a bulwark against those who threaten our Constitution. Two years ago at the Democratic Convention, I warned of those threats,” Bloomberg said.

“Today, I have re-registered as a Democrat — I had been a member for most of my life — because we need Democrats to provide the checks and balance our nation so badly needs,” he added.

Bloomberg had been a Democrat prior to his initial mayoral run in 2001, when he became, and was elected as, a Republican. He was re-elected in 2005 as a Republican, but then became an independent in 2007 and was re-elected to a third term in 2009 as an independent.

He spoke in support of Hillary Clinton at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

Bloomberg flirted with presidential runs in 2008, 2012, and 2016, but ultimately decided not to jump in each time.

Last month, The New York Times and The Times of London both reported that Bloomberg, 76, was seriously considering running for president in 2020 as a Democrat.

The former mayor, who previously made a fortune as the founder of media and finance company Bloomberg LP, pledged earlier this year to spend $80 million on efforts to help flip the House for the Democrats.

Welcome Mr. Bloomberg to presidential politics.  It will not be an easy road.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Nikki Haley this morning abruptly resigned as US ambassador to the United Nations, Axios reports.

The reasons for her departure are unclear and this was not expected. Haley reportedly had a discussion about her resignation with President Donald Trump during a visit to the White House last week. (NOTE:  After I made this posting, the New York Times had an article speculating on Haley’s decision and future plans.]

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, has been among the more moderate members of Trump’s administration. She had a tough job from the start representing the Trump administration’s agenda in the UN, a body the president has long criticized.

This news comes less than a month after the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York City, which was somewhat of a rocky affair for the president. During his address to the UNGA, world leaders laughed at Trump as he claimed his administration had accomplished more than any other in US history.

The media had mischaracterized the laughter and contended it was actually a sign of respect.

“They love how honest he is,” she told “Fox & Friends” in late September. “It’s not diplomatic, and they find it funny. I mean, when he goes and he is very truthful, they kind of were taken back by it.”

“Whether he said good things about him or not, they love that he’s honest with them,” Haley added at the time. “And they’ve never seen anything like it, so there’s a respect there. I saw that the media was trying to make it something disrespectful; that’s not what it was. They love to be with him.”

It will be interesting to see how this story unfolds.  Haley is a moderate Republican and has also been mentioned as a possible future presidential candidate.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Ford Motor Company reported yesterday that it is preparing to layoff a large percentage of its white-collar workers after suffering a blow to profits of at least $1 billion due to tariffs enacted by President Donald Trump.  As reported by several news media:

“The nation’s largest automaker hasn’t yet revealed how many workers will be affected. But a report by Morgan Stanley estimated that as many as 12 percent of the company’s 202,000 workers worldwide could be cut, NBC reported.

Layoffs will center on Ford’s 70,000-strong white-collar workforce as part of what the company is calling a “redesign” of its staff in an ongoing $22.5 billion reorganization, according to NBC.

Trump’s tariffs and the retaliatory tariffs they triggered are taking a toll on the U.S. auto industry.

Ford CEO Jim Hackett told Bloomberg last month that tariffs on imported aluminum and steel alone dealt a blow to company profits.

“From Ford’s perspective the metals tariffs took about $1 billion in profit from us,” Hackett said. “The irony of which is we source most of that in the U.S. If it goes on any longer, it will do more damage.”

The ongoing trade war is expected to continue to hurt the company’s bottom line. Earlier this year, Trump said that “trade wars are good, and easy to win.”

Ford announced a shift earlier this year to produce almost exclusively SUVs and trucks. Those vehicles continue to grow in popularity and are more profitable. 

Its only passenger car will remain the popular Mustang, but production of the iconic brand could also be hurt if profits continue to fall.

The automaker said last month that it was ditching plans to sell its new Focus crossover vehicle in the U.S. The Ford Focus Active is manufactured in China. Because of the U.S.’s new tariffs on imported cars, it’s no longer profitable for the company to sell it in America, officials said.

“This is the first of potentially many vehicles that will disappear from the U.S. market” due to the trade war, Kristin Dziczek of the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Center for Automotive Research warned.”

Sad news for what is a proud American car manufacturer!  It should be mentioned that American car manufacturers have had lower than expected sales for this fiscal year that also might be contributing to Ford’s woes.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell was on Fareed Zakaria’s talk show yesterday and called out President Trump for placing himself ― rather than the American people ― at the center of the nation.  Powell said

“My favorite three words in our Constitution are the first three words: ‘We the People…'”. “But recently, it’s become ‘Me the President’ as opposed to ‘We the People.’ And you see things that should not be happening.” 

Powell criticized Trump for “insulting everybody,” from world leaders to blacks to immigrants to women, and for calling the media the “enemy of the people.”

“How can a president of the United States get up and say that the media is the enemy of Americans? Hasn’t he read the First Amendment? You’re not supposed to like everything the press says or what anyone says in the First Amendment, that’s why we have a First Amendment, to protect that kind of speech,” Powell said. 

As for immigration, “the world is watching” and it’s appalled that the Trump administration is separating migrant mothers and children, Powell warned.

“They can’t believe that we’re making such an effort to cease immigration coming into the country. It’s what’s kept us alive,” he said. “How can we be walking away from this model?”

Thank you Mr. Powell for your insight and commentary!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Over the past two weeks, we have seen day after day, hour after hour, coverage of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation debacle in Washington, D.C..  Yesterday he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate and will take his seat on the US Supreme Court.  In addition to Kavanaugh and Christine Ford, a number of political figures such as Jeff Flake, Susan Collins, and Diane Feinstein have had the spotlight during these deliberations.  Of all the pols, Lindsay Graham captured the most attention with his tirade against those who opposed Kavanaugh just after Kavanaugh’s own tirade and Ford’s testimony a little more than a week ago.

Frank Bruni comments that Graham has gone from President Trump’s tormenter in the Republican Party to his “slobbering manservant”.   Here is an excerpt:

“But Graham is special. He really is. I can’t think of another Republican whose journey from anti-Trump outrage to pro-Trump obsequiousness was quite so illogical or half as sad, and his conduct during the war over Kavanaugh completed it. For the president he fought overtime, he fought nasty and he fought without nuance.

In so doing, he distilled our rotten politics — its transactional nature, its tribal fury, its hysterical pitch — as neatly as anybody in the current Congress does.

Has a diva at La Scala ever delivered an aria as overwrought as the one that Graham performed on the day when both Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee? I doubt it.

“Boy, you all want power,” Graham, who serves on the committee, railed at his Democratic colleagues, accusing them of ginning up accusations against Kavanaugh. “God, I hope you never get it.” Because Graham and his fellow Republicans exercise it so much more responsibly? Because they’re so principled themselves? I guess that’s why they minimize Russian interference in our elections; indulge Trump’s bromances with Vladimir Putin, Rodrigo Duterte and Kim Jong-un; and smile upon his mendacity, misogyny, racism and unchecked greed. They’re modeling integrity in government.

“You want this seat?” Graham said to them. “I hope you never get it.” No, Senator Graham, you do more than hope. You cheat. Let me introduce you to Merrick Garland, a figure far less partisan than Kavanaugh and thus much more deserving of a seat on the highest court in the land. You and your Republican colleagues in the Senate, every bit as desirous of power as Democrats are, crushed him, and the fact that it didn’t involve an attack on his reputation doesn’t diminish its ruthlessness.”

Bruni concludes:

“Graham’s smearing of Christine Blasey Ford and the Democrats who championed her was so vehement that he earned public raves from Rudy Giuliani, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Eric Trump and Sean Hannity.

They and the president are his constituency now, and his agenda? According to a few people who know him well, he’s auditioning for attorney general.

Him or Sessions? It’s like deciding whether to be shot or poisoned. And to plunder a quote from a quintessential Washington hack: God, I hope he never gets it.”

Tony