DALLAS TWP. — Campus activism isn’t just for students anymore.
Warning of the “corporatization” of higher education and the overuse of adjunct staff, faculty from six area institutions have formed a new alliance and will host a conference at Misericordia University Feb. 27 focusing on “best practices” for colleges and universities.
The move comes amid a local resurgence of membership in the American Association of University Professors, an organization that advocates for full-time faculty members nationwide.
It also has a collective bargaining component that can serve as an umbrella for unionization, which has made administrators at some institutions wary of the group.
But interest in the AAUP is about collaboration, not confrontation, Misericordia Philosophy professor Mark Painter stressed.
“People have a misconception about what the AAUP is. They think it’s a union. It’s not,” said Painter, president of the association chapter at Misericordia. “The point of the conference is to show that this isn’t faculty against administration. We have common interests, and the priority for everyone should be to determine and use best practices.”
King’s College English professor Noreen O’Connor agreed. While she has been an AAUP member for years, “King’s never had a chapter” until last April, she said.
“It’s a good way to have a conversation about things going on,” she said. She cited recent changes in administration that some faculty didn’t know about until after the fact, and the value of having an organization that can give faculty input into such decisions.
The college administration “seems to understand that it’s a good thing that faculty are interested in seeing the college run well,” O’Connor said. The new alliance also helps faculty from different area schools get together and share ideas. “We have a tendency to not communicate with other faculty.”
Matt Swanson, the vice-president of Misericordia’s AAUP chapter, said a big goal of the conference is to give both those in academia and the general public a clear idea of what the organization offers regarding ways to improve higher education.
“The more public this can become and the more transparent it is, the more chance we have of educating people about what those standards are, and that they are in all our best interest,” Swanson said.
The AAUP does offer an umbrella for unionizing if faculty want to do so at an institution — as happened at the University of Scranton. But the primary goal is advocacy, not unionization, Painter said.
The local growth in AAUP membership — Misericordia membership has climbed from about seven or eight to 20 in the last year — has likely been spawned by several issues, Painter added.
• The increased tendency of college trustees to think of higher education as a business. The most cited recent example was the appointment of a former venture capitalist as president of Mount St. Mary’s University in Maryland, which has sparked unfavorable national press and controversy on campus. Colleges and universities should focus primarily on the education of students, Painter argued.
• The increased use of adjunct, or part-time, teachers. According to the AAUP, non-tenure-track positions make up 76 percent of instructional staff nationwide. The trend shortchanges students by giving them full-cost education from part-time teachers, and it shortchanges the teachers with low wages. “The students are paying high tuition, yet the teacher gets none of it,” Painter said.
• A general misunderstanding of the purpose of tenure, which too often is viewed strictly as job security. The main goal is to assure professors have academic freedom and are not swayed by businesses or trustees who may have an agenda in reshaping lessons, Swanson said.
• The trend for institutions to spend money on amenities for students rather than on education. New buildings may impress campus visitors, but it’s important to ask if it benefits student learning, Painter said. “If money goes to a basically useless attraction that students can’t use in terms of their education, it’s not money well spent.”
• A December 2014 ruling by the National Labor Relations Board involving Pacific Lutheran University in Washington that may help make it easier for faculty that do want to unionize to achieve that goal. While the ruling faces challenges in court, the NLRB determined that non-tenure track, full-time faculty at the university were not managerial employees and thus could legally unionize.
AAUP members are still a small minority at most area institutions, Painter said, typically ranging in the low teens to somewhere in the 20s. But the recent growth in membership led to formation of the new Northeast Pennsylvania AAUP alliance, officially dubbed a “caucus of the Pennsylvania Division of the AAUP”
The caucus is comprised of chapters from six institutions: Misericordia, the University of Scranton, King’s College, Wilkes University, Marywood University, Keystone College and Lackawanna College.
The alliance put together the conference — slated to run from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Feb. 27 at Misericordia — and gave it the title: “Best practices in higher education: Grounding priorities in the Common Good.”
Several speakers have been lined up, with the keynote speech from Villanova University Associate Professor of Christian Ethics Gerald Beyer. There is a $25 registration fee, and while the official date for an RSVP is Friday (contact Rita Molino at 570-674-8184 or [email protected]), Painter expects walk ins will be welcome
Misericordia President Thomas Botzman not only agreed to let the conference take place at the Dallas Campus, he is scheduled to give introductory remarks. And he invited presidents from other alliance institutions as well as Diocese of Scranton Bishop Joseph Bambera, Painter said.
“This is not faculty jumping up and down talking to other,” Painter said. “Faculty and administrators are here. We really reached out to presidents to come to this. We feel we are all in this together.”