Dickensian U.
It seems like there’s been a cavalcade of bad news about Hard Times in Academia lately. The grim story about the University of Tennessee adjuncts that I blogged about last month was just the beginning. In just the last few days, I’ve run across articles on:
- an AFT study showing how heavily colleges and universities rely on adjuncts (not really surprising to anyone who’s been paying attention, but still, grim);
- tenure at Kentucky community colleges as a potential casualty of the economic meltdown;
- the University of Missouri paying its football coach a $2.5 million compensation package right after imposing a cost-cutting hiring freeze*;
- the real possibility of college becoming unaffordable for most young Americans, thanks to rising tuition costs;
- Harvard’s endowment taking a 22%, $8 billion hit; and
- all kinds of cutbacks at all kinds of institutions (the article is behind a paywall, but the gist of it is pretty much “ouch”).
The recession has everyone worried about money. Things aren’t very dire at MPOW so far (cross fingers and touch wood), but the news coming out of a lot of similar colleges is anxiety-inspiring: hiring freezes, construction projects halted, whacking sums of money chopped out of budgets all at once. I suspect the next crop of campus novels will all receive the epithet “Dickensian.”
For those of you who work (or study) in higher education, how are things on your campus? And what are you doing to stave off Recession Anxiety?
* I know, I know: football makes people happy, and football programs pay for themselves, make alumni feel loyal and warm and fuzzy and willing to donate, yada yada yada. And it’s not like I don’t enjoy watching enormously expensive spectacles as much as the next person; I am an opera fan, after all. But still: 2.5 million dollars? A year? What can a person even do with that much money? Buy a private island? Install solid gold plumbing in their Versailles-sized mansion? Order a custom-built spacecraft complete with warp drive? If Stanford’s president and provost can take 10% pay cuts to help their university out, why can’t some of that money get plowed back into the university and benefit a few more people who need it, instead of further enriching someone who’s probably already a gazillionaire?
After the government takes away their share, the average coach could only afford one gold commode, tops.
At the private liberal arts institution where I adjunct, my department is running two current searches, and those are not in danger of being yanked. But it’s likely that the department will not be creating any additional tenure lines–we’re in a replacement-only mode. Then again, it’s a small school, so this is not an unnormal mode. And I don’t think the University is even in any danger of touching our endowment yet: tuition here is high, as is alumni financial support.
In the meantime, many of us on the job market continue to see searches canceled and committees substituting phone interviews for large-convention interviews. Pickings are extremely slim.
I’m actually teaching a course in the spring on the politics of the University, its history, and the institution’s relationship to government, economy, and popular culture. By collecting reading materials for the course, I’ve learned so much more about how it all works, and I’m hoping to help clue in our students to these issues. Have you read Marc Bousquet’s work/blog or the book and PBS documentary _Declining By Degrees_? It’s all rather depressing, and I’m wondering if there really is any light at the end of the tunnel. *sigh* I’d love to hear some *good* news!
I was following Bousquet’s How the University Works blog for a while, yes. And I still keep up with him on the Chronicle’s blogs. But sometimes it’s more grimness than I can take.