Aftermath of the UC Lecturer's Almost Strike

The LA Times ran an editorial yesterday largely inspired by the strike of UC lecturers that was settled at the last minute with a strike looming. Excerpts:

The era of college courses taught mostly by tenured professors, who spend time on research and scholarly pursuits in addition to teaching, has been fading fast. Increasingly, the work of instructing students now rests with lecturers or adjuncts — non-tenure-track faculty, almost always working part time for less money and with almost no job security. In California, they’re often known as “freeway fliers” because they drive from one campus to another in order to patch together a mediocre full-time salary teaching one or two courses at several colleges and/or universities, usually without benefits...

This is good neither for the instructor nor the student. But the recent tentative agreement between the University of California and unionized lecturers — who teach close to a third of the classes — points out the inherent irony that could change what’s been an exploitative situation for far too long. As higher education hires more adjuncts, it also relies on them more. Colleges and universities can’t fulfill their teaching mission without them — which gives part-timers more power, if they choose to use it... 

No wonder so many University of California adjunct faculty leave each year. Some are pushed out, but others leave on their own volition, according to a CalMatters report that found about a quarter of UC’s adjunct faculty turn over every year... This kind of churn is common among contingent part-time instructors and results in a faculty that may lack institutional knowledge and teaching experience.

Perhaps even more problematic in the overreliance on part-time instructors is the diminishment of academic freedom. Most adjuncts know that they can be let go for any reason and may avoid saying anything remotely controversial to students. Even their personal social media accounts could become fodder for student complaints...

The tentative UC agreement — which provides new benefits for lecturers such as family leave as well as a new measure of job security based on performance evaluations — has awakened a sense of the possible in adjunct faculty nationwide... and should be seen by higher education as a warning shot. Only about 20% of non-tenure-track faculty are unionized, a number that probably will rise now. Whether it does or not, colleges and universities have been placed on notice: They can’t operate without adjuncts, so for the benefit of their students, academic freedom and instructional stability, they should pay and treat these instructors fairly.

Full editorial at https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-11-28/editorial-colleges-overreliance-on-adjunct-faculty-is-bad-for-students-instructors-and-academic-freedom.