Stephen
Kershnar
Who Votes? Democracy and Academia
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
March
9, 2015
A fascinating
article by SUNY-Fredonia English professor Emily VanDette (“Who Gets a Vote in
Departmental Decisions?” in The Chronicle
of Higher Education) signals a looming battle in academia. For years, tenure-track
faculty along with university administrators have decided important issues in
academia, including how academic departments (such as chemistry and history) are
run. They’ve done so without allowing contingent faculty a vote.
A
tenure-track professor is a professor has or likely will have a permanent
position at a university. Usually, people in these positions get paid
reasonably well and have strong job protection. Traditionally, they are thought
to be full members of the faculty in the sense that they have all the duties and
privileges traditionally associated with being a professor.
In
contrast, a contingent (or adjunct) professor is a professor hired for a
specific purpose or length of time and often receives only part-time pay. For
example, they are often paid per class and not paid well. They are not given
all the duties and privileges of full membership in the faculty. For instance,
they don’t have to do research and, also, don’t get a vote and strong job protection.
They get last choice in classes and, when enrollment is down, get fewer classes
thereby reducing their already meager income.
The
tenure-track faculty’s role has recently been challenged in that the contingent
faculty have asked for and received more of a say in how departments and
universities are run. Specifically, they want a vote on what’s taught, who gets
hired, and who’s in charge. VanDette’s article nicely lays out the Fredonia English
Department’s divisive struggle over this issue. The problem is that contingent
faculty do more of the teaching at a college than ever before and are more
often than in the past making careers out of adjunct work. As of last year,
contingent faculty did roughly 50% of the teaching at Fredonia, but got only
about 20% of the pay given to professors.
One
theory of democracy is that it is justified because it allows people govern
their own lives in the sense that they can control the world around them. As
adjuncts are more commonly teaching at a university for longer periods of time
and increasingly making adjunct teaching a career, the self-government argument
strengthens because the university becomes more important to their lives.
A
second theory of democracy is that it is justified by the equal respect people
can and should demand of others who are part of an organization. The equal
respect can be seen in that when everyone gets a vote, people’s interests and
preferences are given equal consideration.
The
problem with both theories is that they don’t apply to the workplace. Consider
a small family-owned restaurant. Morally, it is owners and not employees who
have the right to decide how the restaurant is run. The rights of ownership
exhaust the moral rights to control the business. Of course, restaurant owners
should consult its workers because the workers often know more about the
day-to-day operation of the business than anyone else, including the owners.
Even
if were the case that owners did not have the right to control their own restaurant,
there would still be legitimate reasons to give some people more of a say than
others. Cooks and servers at the restaurant who have worked there full-time,
done so for decades, and who oversee the other workers likely know more and
have more at stake than transitory and part-time workers. It is consistent with
self-government and equal respect that these differences be taken into account
by giving the full-time people more of a say.
In
addition, in academia, faculty votes count as no more than advice given to the
university’s administrators. As such, there is little reason to think that
self-government justifies faculty voting in general, let alone granting
adjuncts the same voting privileges as tenure-track professors.
The
equal-respect argument is murky here in part because equal respect is
consistent with different roles being assigned based on knowledge, experience,
and investment in an organization.
A third
theory of democracy is that it is justified because voting results produce
better decisions than other forms of group decision-making, such as dictatorship.
The idea is that publicly vetting ideas and including more people in the
decision-making allows for more information to be considered and for it to be
better used. Democracy is also better because it forces the group to take more
people’s interests into account. An example of this last point is economist Amartya
Sen’s observation that large-scale famines don’t occur in democratic countries
with a free press.
On
this theory, voting works better when voters are more informed, not coerced
into voting one way rather than another, and invested in the outcome (they have
some skin in the game). In the academic context, tenure-track professors meet
these conditions to a greater degree than do adjuncts.
As
a general matter, and there are exceptions, tenure-track members know more about
their fields than contingent faculty. They beat out stiffer competition to get
a tenure-track spot and are required to have an active research program prior
to tenure. They also know more about the university because they sit on more committees
and do more service-related work. They often have doctorates (or other terminal
degree) rather than a master’s degree.
Tenure-track
faculty are less subject to pressure from the administration and other faculty
because their positions and salaries are more secure. They are also more
invested in the university because they are more likely to work there longer
and are more financially dependent on it than are contingent professors.
The
tenure-track faculty’s greater knowledge about their field, lesser
vulnerability, and greater investment in the institution make it likely that their
voting will achieve better results if their votes are not diluted by the votes
of contingent faculty. Even the proponents of contingent seem to agree to some
extent in that they rarely argue that contingent faculty should get to vote on tenure
and promotion. Still, fewer proponents want graduate students to vote. This is
despite the fact that their arguments support both outcomes.
This
better-result argument is correct and it explains why, traditionally, only
tenure-track members get a vote. It also explains this voting rule is more
rigidly enforced the higher up the university on the academic food chain. Still,
when contingents are not allowed to vote, it just seems disrespectful and a
denial of their right to self-governance. As contingents teach an ever larger
portion of classes, the challenge to traditional academic voting rules will
continue, even if it is mistaken.
