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Brainstorm: Lives of the Mind Mark Bauerlein

When a 'Job Market' Isn't One

crossposted from howtheuniversityworks.com

So Brainstorm comrade Dan Greenberg has had a couple of great posts about academic labor in the sciences recently. A few days ago, he commented on the fake undersupply of scientists, essentially pointing out that labor markets are socially structured. When capitalists, universities, and farm employers don’t want to pay fair wages for work, they ask governments to help by saying that fruit pickers or software engineers are “in short supply,” so can they please import some workers willing to accept the low wages?

What this really means is that they’re in short supply at the crappy wages being offered, and the employers are begging the government to rig — I mean “socially structure” — the market in their favor. As Dan puts it: “The abundantly endowed Gates Foundation might attempt a useful experiment in talent supply. Advertise doubled pay for software engineers. A negligible response is not likely.”

In today’s post, Dan observes that we’re eating our young. (OK, OK, he more politely quoted someone saying “We’re eating our seed corn.”)

Thousands of young Ph.D.‘s are stacked up in minimum-wage postdoc holding patterns for lack of full-fledged positions. For years it’s been predicted that droves of old-timers would be stepping down from academic posts, making room for a new generation. But the seniors of science continue to show wondrous durability, perhaps because the grant system is loaded in their favor.

This is one area where I’ve done a bit of work. Dan’s also employing what passes for “labor market” theory in writing about academic labor — when he talks about science “seniors” not clearing out, he’s suggesting that the system has a glitch and that sooner or later we’ll be able to employ those thousands of young Ph.D.‘s.

The problem with this line of thinking (NOT Dan’s thinking) is that it assumes, inaccurately, that the academic labor market is a market in “jobs” when it is actually a market in contingent labor. When you look at it as if it were what we call it — the “job market” — something we dearly wish it was — it looks mysteriously broken, and we don’t know how to fix it. Brilliant labor economists like William G. Bowen make ridiculously erroneous projections about it.

But when you look at it for what it is — a labor market in contingency — you see that it’s actually functioning brilliantly. Exploitative, dishonest as hell, cannibalizing of the young — but functioning just as it is designed to do, to produce ultra-cheap workers — first as students, then as postdocs or contingent faculty. Increasingly undergraduate workers are drawn into this contingent labor market. The tenure-stream employment in many sectors — certain sciences, many humanities — is increasingly epiphenomenal, providing a layer of legitimacy/public relations, some grant income, an upper-management candidate pool, and day-to-day supervision of contingent workers.

As an added benefit, the minority who end up working in the tenure stream do so at lower wages because the price of the tenured is undercut by all the contingents. The “job market,” so-called, is therefore a rhetoric of the labor system and not a description of it. A true “labor market” analysis of academic labor would have to begin not with the superstructure of tenure-track jobs but with a rigorous analysis of the contingent base — the ways that the system produces and legitimates contingency. Including the legitimation provided by the institutional myth-making of presidents who urge “teaching for love” on other people while whacking away the cheese for themselves.

All this is discussed in detail in the free downloadable pdf of the introduction to How The University Works.

Posted at 08:49:59 PM on March 30, 2008 | All postings by Marc Bousquet

Comments

  1. Excellent analysis. May I suggest that you cross-post the link to this thread in the comments section of DG’s blog so that single-blog readers will be sure to see it? (The dialogue of the blogs!)

    Contingent labor conditions in the sciences (while often slightly better than in the humanities) are nonetheless further complicated by the “use” of a very large percentage of foreign students — often from Asian countries whose wages are so depressed that the low salaries of graduate students and post-docs are more readily accepted, though clearly not acceptable by American standards of living.

    AHA-Erlebnis

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Mar 30, 09:48 PM · #

  2. Re: the contingent labor force, there seems to be no such shortage in the humanities, perhaps because tenured faculty members, for a host of reasons, feel obligated to convince their graduate students that they, somehow, will be the lucky ones, the ones who manage to clamber up into the diminishing 40% of Ph.D.s who get tenure-track jobs (even though they might have to wait two or three or eight or more years to do so), instead of preparing them for the very real possibility that they will need to abandon ship and transfer their skills to some other occupation, if they have any hope of procuring a living wage and some on-the-job dignity.

    A note about international students: while they have the added concern of being intimidated into not complaining about their working conditions because of their visa status, often now tenuous in a post-9/11 world, I have often found them to be very receptive to the idea of unionizing — and I’ve never heard them use “but I love what I do” as an excuse for not organizing.

    — Adjunct for Hire · Mar 30, 10:43 PM · #

  3. One of the biggest obstacles “contingent” laborers face are those who perpetuate the exploitation: tenured faculty.

    If these Liberal Neo-Marxist goofballs would practice what they preach in the classrooms, they would make faculty solidarity a reality. But the truth is, tenured faculty enjoy their status so much, they can’t bring themselves to acknowledge their complicity in adjunct “guest worker”
    programs.

    — Muap Conners · Mar 31, 07:59 AM · #

  4. I’ve written this before in response to Marc’s arguments, but I still wonder what the role of personal responsibility is.

    When a student enrolls at a second- or third-tier university’s Ph.D. program; when s/he attends no conferences and publishes no work in his/her eight years of graduate study; when from the beginning s/he knew she was competing with students from better programs; aren’t such students contributing to the labor glut that makes adjunctification possible?

    If professional organizations and unions were to put serious pressure on schools to cut the size of their Ph.D. programs, we might see that the labor shortage that results might put pressure on schools to shift away from the adjunct model. That is to say, when schools find that they don’t have enough qualified labor to fill tenure-track positions, let alone adjunct positions, they might realize that they need to raise their end of the bargain.

    — Luther Blissett · Mar 31, 08:27 AM · #

  5. Luther, I’m sorry if I didn’t respond to this earlier. The point you raise is discussed in great deal in the free pdf of the book’s introduction.

    In short, you are applying vulgar economism—of the supply side variety: “if we choke off the supply, those demand fellows will really start to cry pretty soon!”

    Problem is, administrators have long been redefining their “demand” for persons with the doctorate by stripping away elements of the professor’s job and saying oh, a student, paraprofessional, or staffer can do that part of your job, can’t they?

    The real “supply” for what used to be the “demand” in academic jobs is graduate students, former graduate students, persons with the terminal m.a., undergraduates, academic staff…. you name it.

    It’s a market in temp work, not tt jobs.

    As I discuss in the book’s intro, a better—more accurate, more historically appropriate—model for approaching the academic labor system is the one traditionally used for professionals… the labor monopoly.

    In the case of faculty, it would be largely a failed labor monopoly. Thanks to quality management.

    Medicine is also facing challenges to its labor monopoly—that’s why you occasionally hear about residents and HMO physicians talking union.

    — Marc Bousquet · Mar 31, 09:14 AM · #

  6. Your remarks about the Bowen report, Marc, take me back to my first years on the job market (88-90) and the way the report gave us all hope and optimism and trust in the profession. Each year we approached application time with worry and despair, but, people pointed out incessantly, “It’s going to get better. All those profs hired in the 60s are retiring, and must be replaced.” Bowen’s report gave the promise credence. I’m not sure many people remember the full professional meaning of that report when it hit and was echoed by so many insiders.

    — Mark Bauerlein · Mar 31, 09:47 AM · #

  7. Thanks, Mark. That report was shopped to me when I first thought about grad school—1990—and it was still being circulated in some disciplines in 2000!

    The main thing, of course, is to find a way to move folks away from the “job market” heuristic. We want desperately to believe that there’s a market in jobs.

    Really, there’s a market in temp work, with a lottery in jobs floating on top!

    Not in every field, of course. But in many of them—especially those selected for attrition by quality management. Solidarity, M

    — Marc Bousquet · Mar 31, 10:10 PM · #

  8. The largest higher education professionals union in the nation, SUNY’s United University Professions —at over 30,000 members, one-fifth of AFT’s total of 150,000 — already has the basic equivalent of at-will employment for all tenured faculty via its “contracting out” clause in the bargaining agreement.

    I understand from my SUNY friends that the union tells the faculty not to worry, that there is an MOU that is so Rube Goldbergian that nothing can happen — but go to the Web and read it: http://www.uupinfo.org/contract/text.html#app27
    It is positively chilling….

    First of all, there is no statutory tenure in the largest academic union in the country. SUNY has “continuing appointment” which is contractually bargained for every four or five years at contract renewal.

    Now for the real fun part: “contracting out”. Have a gander at this excerpt from the above-linked page:

    Ҥ5.1 An academic employee with a continuing appointment shall retain continuing appointment, the same title, and the same basic annual salary at the time a Request for Proposal for contracting out is issued.

    §5.2 An academic employee with a continuing appointment shall be offered redeployment at the contracting-out campus or elsewhere within the State University system.

    §5.3 The redeployment offer shall be in writing and the employee must accept or decline the offer in writing within ten working days after the employee’s receipt of such offer.

    a. If the employee accepts the offer of redeployment, the employee shall retain the academic title which the employee held immediately prior to the time of redeployment. In addition, the employee shall retain continuing appointment and shall continue to receive the same basic annual salary that such employee was receiving immediately prior to the time of redeployment.

    b. If the employee declines an offer of redeployment or fails to accept in writing within ten working days, no further redeployment consideration shall be accorded the employee. The employee shall be terminated from employment effective 30 calendar days from the date the employee declines the redeployment offer if such offer is for a position at the contracting-out campus. In the event that the offer is for a position other than at the contracting-out campus, the employee shall be terminated from employment effective 180 calendar days from the date the employee declines such redeployment offer. Upon termination, the employee may elect one of the transition benefits in accordance with Article 36.2 of the Agreement.”

    Get it? The affected tenured faculty member will keep his/her title and salary but NOT his/her “position”. An upstate SUNY physicist or historian contracted out will have a matter of days to decide to accept employment in a library, for example, at a downstate campus (higher cost of living, too) — but with the former title and salary on the books. If s/he hesitates, within 30 to 180 days, employment will be terminated.

    This is the agreement executed with the State of New York by former UUP President William Scheuerman, now President of the Labor College (where the adjunct to full-time faculty ratio is 3:1 and whose adjuncts have just last year unionized). Where was the AAUP?

    So, tenured faculty of SUNY — and likely, one-day, of all of America — as you see that at-will adjunct entering the building to teach a night class for a tiny fraction of your moderate salary:

    “Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Apr 1, 12:21 AM · #

  9. Academic jobs are great hiding places (from accountability, for laziness, from relevant research topics, for narrow little make-the-math-work publishings). Academia also has diffuse criteria of excellence so it tiers into genius ranks, dishonest second tier people pretending to genius, smarties in a third tier, and smarty-looking types in a fourth tier, etc. Where real smartness begins and ends is anything but clear. It is mess, really. Got any better alternatives? Let the government choose? Standardize a test? Let political bigots choose? Let the richest funder choose?

    If we say, at the top most level, that research is everything and teaching is junk, then it should not dismay us that teaching gets totally outsourced to the cheapest possible people on the planet. That leaves people free to employ their minds where it really counts, in doing research. The problem is all too many professors do no research (= enough to pass muster for wanted jobs) voluntarily, and consume their careers teaching—where they get under pressure from outsourcers of teaching work. We have got to figure out whether research is what faculty ARE and whether teaching is something at all related to faculty or not. We are sending ourselves, our funders, our students, and our societies mixed messages about this. Are we reseachers burdened with teaching crap or are we teachers burdened with research crap?

    — Richard Tabor Greene · Apr 1, 04:51 AM · #

  10. AHA, I’m not up to speed on UUP, but is it possible that the provision you’re talking about is what happens in financial exigency?

    For most faculty, that is, tenure offers little to no protection against department closure or often—spurious declarations of financial emergency.

    Just from what you’ve provided, it sounds like the SUNY contract provides a modicum of protection from that kind of exigency, similar to what happens in police departments when an investigative unit is closed, etc.

    I could be wrong—I’m not really informed on this.

    — Marc Bousquet · Apr 1, 10:26 AM · #

  11. Richard, I think the best way of getting to your question is to note that “tenure” has not historically and is not now a privilege of research faculty. Nor should it be.

    Academic permatemping is part of a global war on labor that takes many forms—privatization of services in the public service, such as the military, prisons, social services and health care, with perma-temps working for the holders of lucrative government contracts; outsourcing by for-profits, etc.

    Very few people think “teaching is junk,” as you say. Administrations pay poorly—and they still usually get highly qualified people. But they get people from a limited pool—the pool of persons who can afford to discount their labor: the very young, the hopeful who self-finance with loans, the retired, the relatively affluent, those with substantial alimony or a pension, those who are married to someone with a large income, etc. This has implications for the race, class and gender composition of the group seeking this ultra-discounted work. Which is itself unjust, and which very likely has consequences for the persistence of students by class, by race, and by gender as well—though before you start complaining, the latter is just speculation on my part!

    — Marc Bousquet · Apr 1, 10:40 AM · #

  12. I’m enjoying so many of these posts. 1 and 3 are particularly spot on. I was finishing grad school just as the first job depression hit (late 70’s). What amazes me now is that despite these awful conditions, many grad students today seem surprised or, worse, convinced they’ll be an exception. My fellow grad students then compared such students to the proverbial lemmings.

    — George · Apr 2, 01:33 AM · #

  13. Re: 8 and 10 above….

    No, “contracting out” in SUNY is completely different from retrenchment (at the link provided in 8, just scroll up on the page to Article 35), and proceeds differently. Article 36 of the NYS-UUP (SUNY) contract is the official contracting out clause: “The State has the right to contract out for goods and/or services.”

    A retrenched faculty member is basically gone; a contracted out faculty member can be given work as a janitor.

    Sure that’s employment protection, but I sure wouldn’t call it job protection….

    The Memorandum of Understanding (linked in 8 above) is the “modus operandi” of the beast. You will note that a “professional” with “permanent appointment” (the “equivalent” of faculty “continuing appointment”) actually gets a form of position specific security while faculty only get title and salary security — however, the faculty member has better employment security.

    May I suggest that all contingent faculty union organizers consider getting “up to speed on” UUP. After all, it is the largest higher education union on the planet — and contingent faculty are in its bargaining unit.

    In fact, the UUP contract gives more job protection to part-time contingent workers than to full-time contingent workers. Notice is owed to part-time faculty after they have taught a certain number of consecutive semesters — but not to full-time non-tenure track faculty. The latter are always completely “at will.”

    I’ll grant you that not all faculty get “turned on” by reading collective bargaining agreements but, having read and compared several from around the country, I can assure you that it makes for most enlightening reading….

    P.S. MB, I expected you, a member of the AAUP National Council, to be outraged at this state of affairs in SUNY. But I have been told that your reaction to this contract is typical for AAUP.

    This sort of “defense of the indefensible” reminds me of a friend’s interview for a major German fellowship (a few decades ago). He was asked to discuss the positive aspects of Hitler’s foreign policy. His answer: “There weren’t any.”

    Of course, he didn’t get the scholarship….

    AHA-Erlebnis

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Apr 2, 09:30 PM · #

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