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Review Essay

Kenneth-Roy Bonin

University Professors: Recurring Issues

Revisited

A review of

Schuster, Jack H. and Martin J. Finkelstein. 2006. The American Faculty: The Restruc-
turing of Academic Work and Careers. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

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Woodhouse, Howard. 2009. Selling Out: Academic Freedom and the Corporate Mar-
ket. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

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Recurring issues in higher education originate in dissention over contentious

subjects persistently unresolved despite extensive and enduring debate. The roles,
responsibilities and rewards associated with the professoriate in the 21st-century
university inspire such continuing disputation, presented here from the perspectives
of two illustrative texts: one American, the other Canadian. Both reflect negative
contemporary professorial evaluations of public- and private-sector influence in
higher education generally, in university governance specifically, and even in deter-
mining the nature of post-secondary academic programs. The American Faculty: The
Restructuring of Academic Work and Careers, by Jack Schuster and Martin Finkelstein,
addresses the transformation of faculty work and careers over the past forty years.
Selling Out: Academic Freedom and the Corporate Market, by Howard Woodhouse,
provides a complementary account, arguing that corporate interests have com-
promised the traditional values associated with university education as well as the
autonomy of professors who contribute to the defense of those values through their
research, teaching and professional service.
University administrators, members of their boards of governors, skeptical col-
leagues and even informed members of the general public might choose to discount
warnings about the current state of higher education voiced by those perceived
as self-interested parties. Some might question the objectivity of authors who
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assert that the social contributions made by universities should be overwhelmingly

attributed to their professors (Schuster and Finkelstein 2006: xxiii). Others may
express concerns regarding work acknowledged to have been inspired by a personal
experience of wrongful dismissal (Woodhouse 2009: 3). However, even if initially
plausible, such facile dismissals of both of these learned and scholarly works arise
from serious underestimations of their descriptive and polemical achievements,
and moreover would have to ignore the extensive documentation and meticulous
research that supports each work’s particular and troubling conclusions.
Schuster and Finkelstein, for example, record statistical changes both in the char-
acter of the academic workforce and in the environment in which it perseveres,
the specific details of which are not easily discounted. Comprehensive empiri-
cal evidence depicting longitudinal student-faculty ratios, employment categories,
workload components, job satisfaction, demographics, scholarly productivity, career
mobility, compensation, student characteristics and measures of quality serve to
verify the existence of the various trends identified and discussed in The Ameri-
can Faculty. Such evidence matters to Schuster and Finkelstein, and they provide
detailed descriptions of twenty-eight data sources in Appendix A of their volume,
while additional appendices supplement and lend weight to claims in specific chap-
ters concerning the professoriate, the nature of academic work, the character of an
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academic career and changes in contemporary academic life. Illustrative tables and
figures add further authority and clarity to descriptions of where American higher
education has been, where it now is and where trends indicate that it is going.
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Schuster and Finkelstein describe changes in the nature of the academy and in the
status of university professors over the past four decades in revolutionary terms,
although they are careful to note that not all of these changes have been nega-
tive ones. Among both faculty and students, an increasing number of women are
now being recruited, amounting to almost 50 per cent of all hires in certain dis-
ciplines. Likewise, looking at other demographic and social attributes including
class, religious affiliation and marital status, Schuster and Finkelstein acknowledge
steady growth in the number of ethnic, racial and other minorities joining the
ranks of university professors. And with over half of all faculty members currently
holding full-time positions in American universities aged fifty years or older, the
steadily increasing number of people approaching retirement age would appear to
offer significant opportunities for younger academics and thereby a renewal of the
professoriate.
Unfortunately, this positive outlook is limited by other realities revealed by Schuster
and Finkelstein. They cite, for example, surveys documenting a measurable erosion
in job satisfaction among current permanent faculty members. The major factor in
this regard is the perception by professors that their salaries are not commensurate
with increased expectations relative to teaching workloads and greater demands for
research productivity. Students-per-faculty-member ratios have increased, while
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new and emerging information and communication technologies are adding com-
plexity to the skill set required for one to become an effective university professor,
today and in the future. Mastery of electronic instructional delivery tools is now
more or less required of all faculty, who are expected to use them to supplement, if
not replace, their conventional classroom lectures. Using digital class and records-
management systems, maintaining a World Wide Web presence and ensuring
accessibility via social media are considered inherent elements in a modern faculty
member’s repertoire of abilities, frequently to be employed without the mediating
assistance formerly provided by secretarial and clerical staff. Even without consid-
ering the weight of increased workloads, Schuster and Finkelstein record a decline
in faculty compensation over the past three decades. This persists even when base
salaries are supplemented by income derived from overload and summer teaching,
administrative assignments, grants, fringe benefits associated with health insurance
and pensions, and consulting and other paid professional activities. Controlling for
progress through the ranks and years of experience, statistics confirm that salary
levels for American professors have not kept pace with inflation in comparison to
the very real financial advantages enjoyed by those in other professions. Individuals
in fields where competition from industry for similar talent dictates competitive
compensation have fared better, but this is generally restricted to certain science,
computer, engineering and business disciplines. The influence of collective bar-

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gaining, more pronounced in Canada than in the United States, also exercises an
observable positive influence on salaries in certain institutions.
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More than heavier workloads, the impact of technological change or unfavourable
salary trends, the ongoing restructuring of academic positions in universities is
registered by Schuster and Finkelstein as a matter of increasing concern in faculty
surveys. They confirm that term, part-time and contractually limited non-tenurable
university appointments increased by 376 per cent between 1969 and 2001—a rate
of growth five times greater than the expansion in the number of permanent posi-
tions created during the same period. Statistics reveal very little mobility of part-
time professors into permanent full-time positions. As full-time faculty members
moonlight from their regular positions and retirees continue to teach on a part-time
basis, the exact opposite is occurring. Even with the introduction of permanent
teaching-only positions, tenure-track faculty hiring has failed to match the growth
in university enrollment, and the number of full-time tenured professors continues
to decrease.
The marginal anticipated benefits relative to the cost of doctoral study, a diminish-
ing demand compared to the over-supply of qualified academics, and therefore the
tremendous competition for available positions (particularly in research universi-
ties) suggests that the most talented graduate students possess a greater promise of
alternative employment. Ironically, the data examined by Schuster and Finkelstein
indicate neither a decline in the quality of applicants for academic positions nor a
reduction in their interest in academic careers.
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Documented in national surveys, however, is a perceived ineffectiveness and declin-

ing interest in faculty members’ personal involvement in university management.
Schuster and Finkelstein attribute this to the complex range of factors evident in
the other trends their research illuminates. Faculty members are now a less homog-
enous group than they were in decades past. A multiplicity of new intellectual
disciplines and professional fields had fragmented earlier forms of intellectual and
institutional (structural) consensus. New professors carry heavier teaching work-
loads, with promotion and tenure primarily becoming oriented toward rewarding
publishing and research productivity. The marked reduction of tenured faculty posi-
tions and the rise in the number of part-time, term and teaching-only contractual
instructors has produced a not yet fully appreciated, but fundamental, shift in the
employment landscape of the traditional university. Not only are these changes
occurring with unprecedented speed, they have been further complicated by the
expanding range of institutions that now offer postsecondary education programs.
For-profit providers of postsecondary instruction that exploit new technologies
and employ professors under terms and conditions far removed from conven-
tional university contracts are competing with traditional institutions in a market
context driven by corporate efficiency and the discourse of entrepreneurship. In
such environments, course offerings are more frequently focused on professional
and vocational programs rather than on the more traditional general sciences and
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humanities.
While less comprehensive than Schuster and Finkelstein’s investigation, and with
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a greater concentration on the influence of market capitalism on Canadian uni-
versities, the analytical framework employed by Woodhouse in Selling Out is no
less perceptive. Woodhouse’s observations are developed in chapters that carefully
examine the market model of education and separately present three case stud-
ies of corporate intervention in universities. Weighing the consumer approach to
the evaluation of teaching by students, and outlining the values of the market
model of education, Woodhouse clearly delineates the threats they constitute to
the principles of institutional autonomy and academic freedom. Thoroughly docu-
mented sources and exhaustive interviews with the principals involved in the cases
of obstruction favouring corporate marketing, restrictive dissemination of research
results and the commercialization of research that he considers lend credibility to
Woodhouse’s observations concerning the effects of market forces on the academy.
Similar to the work by Schuster and Finkelstein, Selling Out cites the diminished
authority and control by professors over the goals and conduct of university educa-
tion, a decline symptomatic of their decreasing influence over their institutions in
general. Woodhouse identifies this regression with curtailed academic freedom, cir-
cumscribed by corporate interests and commercial values and preferences. Extend-
ing far beyond his rejection of such market generated vocabulary as “client relation-
ships” and “return on investment,” Woodhouse criticizes traditional universities that
attempt to compete with the new for-profit commercial providers of postsecondary
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instruction by adopting simplistic customer satisfaction models of teaching quality

assessment that ignore measurement of the provision of actual, successful learning.
Woodhouse also condemns universities that have embraced business models and
branding designed to promote their reputations, images and lifestyle rather than the
self-actualization, intellectual development and knowledge that have traditionally
marked the outcomes of a liberal education.
Despite solid research transcending simple anecdotal corroboration, neither of the
texts reviewed here brings the recurring issues associated with faculty roles, respon-
sibilities and rewards in the contemporary university to any practical resolution.
The relation of these issues to governance, differentiated staffing models, corporate
funding of instruction and research, market forces and curriculum continues to
generate controversy and inspire heated debate in universities and, on occasion, in
our greater society. Schuster and Finkelstein certainly suggest that greater attention
should be directed to higher-education policy concerning such matters as faculty
recruitment, mentoring, job satisfaction and retention, diversity, quality assurance,
scholarship and research leading to innovation and productivity, as well as the
adoption of new information, communication and instructional technologies. These
issues definitely need to be recognized and assessed for their impact on the academy,
both immediately and in the long term.

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Woodhouse also presents us with specific cases that have attracted and deserve
national attention: the introduction of a corporate mentality into the operations
of a business school; the ethical confrontation between a medical researcher and a 255
pharmaceutical giant; and the compromises associated with the commercialization
of university research. In comprehensively accounting for the relevant events, he
assures his readers that the issues raised in each case can continue to be referenced
long after the fleeting interest of the evening news and the lives of professors
Vedanand, Nancy Olivieri and others who were directly involved have moved on to
other challenges. Notwithstanding his calls for greater transparency and account-
ability in existing universities, however, Woodhouse devotes the final chapter of
his book to advocating in favour of alternatives to the present overly structured
and regulated institutional forms of higher education, and specifically to promot-
ing the idea of a learning commons as the way of the future. While laudable as an
ideal, the practicalities of opting out of the post-secondary system as it is presently
constituted make Woodhouse’s ideas seem finally no more attractive than simply
selling out.
Comparatively, therefore, and notwithstanding the valuable scholarly character-
istics of these two important works—including the extensive explanatory notes
included by Woodhouse, the exhaustive bibliography compiled by Schuster and
Finkelstein and the essential indexes prepared for both texts—the American Faculty
in my view clearly stands as the greater milestone. In the continuing debates sur-
rounding such issues as the roles and responsibilities of professors in determining
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the future direction of higher education, Schuster and Finkelstein have provided
us with a picture not unlike a photograph of a rapidly moving river. The American
Faculty carefully announces a position frozen in time from which nevertheless the
future flows. It is a unique study of the present academic moment and, given the
magnitude of effort involved in any attempted replication of its methods or results,
The American Faculty will not be easily superceded.
Despite ample discussion, well-documented arguments and conclusions asserted
on the basis of observations sustained by empirical research, both books discussed
here possess a similar limitation: neither includes an objective university adminis-
trator’s point of view. In the course of his research, interview requests addressed by
Woodhouse to university administrators were uniformly declined. Their reluctance
to comment on cases where victims were vindicated, thereby casting particular
administrators as villains and holding them up for vilification, is hardly surprising.
Nevertheless, other studies have been far more overt in their criticisms of the dam-
age done to higher education by a generally unwarranted proliferation of assistant,
associate and vice-deans, deans, vice-presidents, provosts and their accompanying
personnel and support infrastructures (see, for example, Ginsburg 2011).
Consideration of the trends highlighted by Schuster and Finkelstein, along with the
related workplace issues accentuated by Woodhouse, would benefit from answers to
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several questions posed to university administrators: What responsibility do profes-

sors themselves bear for the proliferation of advanced degree programs still oriented
256 toward the production of candidates for non-existent tenure-track faculty posi-
tions? How many faculty members, preferring the stimulation involved in working
with these graduate students, have abandoned undergraduate teaching completely?
And, given that collegial selection for academic appointments is still the norm in
most universities, who exactly is complicit in the hiring of the part-time term and
teaching-only instructors now assigned the majority of large introductory courses?
Similar questions also apply to peer review processes that privilege “big” science,
inter-institutionality and multi-disciplinarity over traditional research in one’s own
discipline and school. And what of the myriad new programs that are introduced at
the expense of existing liberal arts curricula, even during periods of fiscal exigency?
The answers to such questions are predicated on choices, some already made and
others still to be confronted in certain universities. Contention originates from
divergent fundamental principles such as those underpinning the conflicting views
of education as, respectively, a public good and a marketable commodity. Syntheses
are not easily arrived at, either in society as a whole or institutionally, even within
a single university. And so the debates continue.

References
Ginsburg, Benjamin. 2011. The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative
University and Why It Matters. New York: Oxford University Press.