Balancing Act

Your Money or Your Time

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By Joan C. Williams

I know a federal government lawyer, Megan, who recently won a big case against a major company. Her bosses were very pleased and wanted to reward her outstanding work. They asked her immediate supervisor, Luz, whether Megan would prefer a bonus or time off. Without hesitation, Luz replied, time off. So Megan got a paid week off in August. "I was going to take the time anyway," she told me, "because it was the week before Labor Day when the kids' school was closed, and I had no child care. This just meant that I didn't have to burn up my vacation time for it. So now we will get to have a vacation, too."

Luz understood what many academic employers need to learn: Many workers, if given the choice, would take time over money any day.

A recent survey of lawyers reported that in some law firms up to 70 percent of associates said they would trade $30,000 to $50,000 of their salaries in favor of more time. An entire class of associates in one firm actually got together and told the partner that they didn't want a raise, because they knew that a raise would mean an increase in their hours. (Ultimately, the firm said no; it raised their salaries, and their hours, anyway.)

I can hear you saying, That scenario would never happen in academe: "We're not like those rich lawyers, who have more money than they can burn." But the fact is that some academics trade money for time every day. Most of them are women who do so by taking low-paid, dead-end adjunct jobs. A few are luckier. Here and there, full-time, tenured academics have managed to pull off such a trade without wiping out professionally.

Jessica, the single mother of a 4-year-old, has tenure at a major university. Last year she cut back her schedule, and now teaches one less course each year. Here's how it happened: When she returned from a visiting appointment at another university, her dean took her out to lunch and asked what it would take to keep her at his university. She told him she would like to cut back her courseload in return for a salary cut. He offered her a merit increase. You're not listening, she told him: What I want is time, not money. Ultimately he offered a courseload reduction in return for a 20-percent pay cut, for a five-year period.

Why did she do it? "I was going insane," she says. "I had too many obligations, all the time, at every moment, and I couldn't fulfill all of them well. The art of juggling was getting to be more and more exhausting, and less and less fun. Then I had a eureka moment that I needed to create some space in my life."

The deal will last until her daughter turns 8. "It is great," Jessica says. "Last year during my time off I did some writing. It was great to have focused time instead of having to squeeze it in. I learned how to prune rose bushes. I took jazz piano. And I hung out with my daughter. I was able to spend more time with students. I am more productive and happier overall. Now I have a life -- at least for half the year." Jessica's experience shows what many employers already know: They get a good deal from many part-time arrangements. Jessica spends part of her "time off" doing academic writing and working with students free.

How has the lighter schedule changed her life with her daughter? "I still pick her up at the same time from day care. But the two parts of the year are very different. During one half of the year, we get up at 6:15, yell at each other to hurry up and get dressed, and eat breakfast in the car. During the other half, we get up whenever and have a leisurely breakfast. We can stay up later because we know we'll be sleeping later, so I get a few more hours with her in the evening. Really, I'm not sure how much more time we have together, but we are able to enjoy it more."

To afford it, she had to rent out her house and move into a cheaper place. "But we haven't had to feel pinched or to count my pennies," she says. To some of her colleagues, "It's bizarre and incomprehensible." If you believe that how much you make tells you how much you're worth, she says, then it doesn't seem to make sense. "Sometimes I get this look of befuddlement."

Her advice for people who may want to approach their supervisors with a similar request: Be protective of your time. "I knew some people who did this and took the pay cut, and then ended up working just as much as they had before," Jessica says. "You have to be very careful to specify that you won't be given unusually heavy committee assignments."

Jessica has crafted for herself a part-time tenure track -- an approach that I have advocated with my colleague Bob Drago. She has created an alternative to the choices offered to most academics today -- a full-time, tenure-track job or a low-paid adjunct job.

Jessica is not alone in the effort, but not every story ends as happily as hers. I know another tenured professor who wanted to cut back her schedule by 25 percent. She has two small children and a health condition that seems to be exacerbated by stress. She approached her department, which was supportive. But it turned out that university policy prohibited benefits for anyone who worked less than a full schedule.

To allow her to work a 75 percent schedule, the department chairman or the dean would have to pay the full cost of her benefits. Her chairman, while still supportive, suggested that instead of reducing her schedule, she use her sick leave. She didn't want to do that for two reasons. The first was symbolic: She wasn't sick. The second was practical: She thought the university should have a policy instead of leaving individuals to bargain alone.

She talked and talked, and negotiated and negotiated. It became clear that university administrators were being inflexible because they were determined to keep a sharp dividing line between part-time faculty members, who received no benefits, and the full-timers, who did.

Ultimately, the professor says, "the dean generously picked up the tab" for her benefits. She is grateful but still thinks there should be a policy.

So here we have an individual who wants to cut back, a department willing to let her do so, and university policies that make it impractical in the long term: One can hardly imagine that the dean will be able to pick up the tab indefinitely.

Creating viable part-time, tenure-track jobs in academe is not impossible. It's an issue of political will. We need not endorse the often shoddy treatment of contract and adjunct professors to say that tenured faculty members need more options.

It is that lack of options that keeps the gender balance in the professoriate so skewed. A full-time academic job often requires 50 or more hours a week. Over 80 percent of women become mothers. Fully 92 percent of mothers age 25 to 44 work fewer than 50 hours a week year-round. So it's not surprising that the percentage of women who are full-time faculty members in American higher education rose only five percentage points in the 75 years from 1920 to 1995.

Academics need an alternative to the "normal" 45-to-60-hour week that does not wipe them out professionally. So does anyone with elder-care responsibilities. Or with an ailing spouse or domestic partner. Or anyone who wants to have a life -- even for half the year.

We need to come to terms with the fact that, for some people some of the time, full-time jobs are sized too big. The solution is not a series of secret side deals -- the current approach -- which creates the need for the kind of anonymity represented by this column. We need to let the sun shine in and stop treating academics' need for flexibility like some dirty little secret.