Book shows tenure-track jobs reach an all-time low

By Mary Georgevich

Santa Clara English professor Marc Bousquet's newly released book paints a dismal picture of the hiring practices of American universities.

"This is the seamy underbelly of higher education -- a world where faculty, graduate students and undergraduates all work long hours for fast-food wages," begins the description of Bousquet's book on his Web site. "Tenure-track positions are at an all-time low, with adjuncts and graduate students teaching the majority of courses."

Bousquet, a tenured professor, said he wrote "How the University Works" because "something was really wrong." While in graduate school, Bousquet said he discovered the success of a potential professor usually depended on whether he or she had the family wealth to carry them through years of low-paying, part-time employment before getting on the tenure track.

"I was one of the lucky ones," said Bousquet, who now teaches classes in radical U.S. culture, Internet studies and writing with new media. He was able to become tenured fairly early in his career, and came to Santa Clara three years ago when a position opened up. Tenure describes the lifetime appointment of professors, meaning they can be fired only in extraordinary circumstances.

Bousquet said many professors are forced to work part time in order to help pay for the expensive schooling they had to take in order to become professors. Meanwhile, they hope eventually to move to the tenure track.

"Unfortunately, for the majority, part-time teaching tends to be the end of academic careers," Bousquet said.

Senior Vice Provost Don Dodson said most Santa Clara tenure-track faculty members are hired from outside the university.

Bousquet said many universities changed their hiring habits in the 1970s as a result of the Vietnam War. Money that had previously gone to schools was spent on defense, and "with the decline in public funding, universities rapidly grew desperate," he added.

"Schools began to substitute student labor and contingent labor for full-time workers across the board. Not just faculty, but also janitors, librarians and food service workers," said Bousquet.

This replacement of professional workers with a cheaper student work force has become a permanent strategy for many universities, he said.

"What was a strategy to deal with funding shortfalls in connection with the Vietnam War rapidly became a permanent strategy. Even when funding improved, university management said, 'This is great! Look at all the money we can save if we get rid of the full-time workers and put the students to work,' " said Bousquet.

As a result, many graduate students were teaching the same course loads as tenured professors for a much lower wage while finishing their studies, Bousquet continued.

"Today, depending on who's doing the counting, about one in four faculty are tenure stream," said Bousquet.

In 2007-2008, Santa Clara employs 511 full-time and 268 part-time faculty. Current numbers of tenure-track faculty were unavailable, but in 2005, 35 percent of Santa Clara faculty were full-time tenured, 9.4 percent were full-time tenure track and 16.5 percent were full-time non-tenure track, while 39.1 percent taught part-time, according to data compiled by Institutional Research.

"Thirty-five years ago, nearly 75 percent of all college teachers were tenurable. Only a quarter worked on an adjunct, part-time or nontenurable basis," Bousquet writes in his book. "Today, those proportions are reversed."

Bousquet's research from the U.S. Department of Education found that taking all disciplines together, the average age at which the terminal degree is awarded is 33 and the average age at which the first full-time job is awarded is 39. For new scholars, more than a third of those full-time positions will be nontenurable.

"Santa Clara's numbers are better than average. But they're not as much better than the average as they would like you to think," said Bousquet.

Bousquet said that he hasn't studied Santa Clara's finances closely; however, he has served on the faculty senate while reviewing surveys of nontenure-track lecturers. He said the results indicated that nontenure-track lecturers "by and large would like to continue working here, but they would like improvements in working conditions."

Dodson said Santa Clara has tried to take care of many of the issues that Bousquet's book raises.

"We've made a strong effort over many years to increase the size of the tenure-track faculty," said Dodson, who read Bousquet's book in manuscript form before its completion.

The percentage of full-time tenured faculty at Santa Clara increased from 1979 to 2005, while the national average decreased from 1975 to 2005, according to data from a United States Department of Education survey. According to that same survey, the number of part-time faculty increased at Santa Clara over the same time period.

"The increase in the number of part-time faculty is a concern," Dodson said.

However, Santa Clara doesn't put graduate students in charge of teaching courses, he said.

"We have some graduate TAs in the School of Engineering," said Dodson, "but I don't believe they are responsible for teaching."

"How the University Works" is available on most online booksellers, with discounted prices on Amazon and Barnes & Noble for around $17. For more information and to view a Web blog with video updated by Bousquet, visit howtheuniversityworks.com.

E-mail Mary Georgevich at mgeorgevich@scu.edu.