{"id":9282,"date":"2009-05-23T15:49:47","date_gmt":"2009-05-23T20:49:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=9282"},"modified":"2012-10-22T19:48:29","modified_gmt":"2012-10-23T00:48:29","slug":"employment-trends-and-academic-labor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/05\/23\/employment-trends-and-academic-labor\/","title":{"rendered":"Employment Trends And Academic Labor"},"content":{"rendered":"

American workers have lost power relative to their employers since the heyday of unionization during the industrial era. One way in which employees gained was through the extension of benefits to full-time workers: salary, relative job security, health insurance, sick pay, paid vacation, parental leave, etc.\u00a0 Full-time jobs, however, are being replaced by part-time jobs, and with them have gone much of the power and most of the benefits that workers were able to gain through unionization.<\/p>\n

You would think, though, that jobs that require a high level of education and training might be immune from these trends. Perhaps not.<\/p>\n

The American Federation of Teachers released a report<\/a> that included data on the percentage of employees at U.S. colleges and universities that are full-time tenure-track professors, full-time non-tenure track, adjunct (part-time) professors, and graduate students.\u00a0 As you can see, the percentage of full-time tenure-track professors is decreasing and we are being replaced by other types of employees who cost the institution much less (graphs borrowed from MontClair SocioBlog<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\"00_adjuncts_comp1\"<\/p>\n

\"00_adjuncts_rsch2\"<\/p>\n

This is a problem from a labor perspective in that it strips power away from employees, putting it squarely back into the hands of employers.\u00a0 It may also be a problem in terms of the quality of education.\u00a0 Adjunct professors are often terrific, but anyone who is overworked and underpaid is likely to invest less in their product.\u00a0 I wonder, too, if this impacts the rate of scientific research (fewer full-time tenure- track professors= less research).\u00a0 Any other thoughts on this trend?<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

American workers have lost power relative to their employers since the heyday of unionization during the industrial era. One way in which employees gained was through the extension of benefits to full-time workers: salary, relative job security, health insurance, sick pay, paid vacation, parental leave, etc.\u00a0 Full-time jobs, however, are being replaced by part-time jobs, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[209,253,76],"class_list":["post-9282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academia","tag-history","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9282"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52214,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9282\/revisions\/52214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}