When the University of Pennsylvania got a high ranking in U.S. News and World Report's annual college report, Graduate Employees Together –University of Pennsylvania (GET-UP)/AFT sat up and took notice. If one of the criteria for rating is the percentage of classes taught by tenure-track faculty, how could Penn, where graduate workers feel they take on a large portion of the teaching load, have rated so high? GET-UP members were also intrigued by the recent survey from the Graduate Employees and Students Organization (GESO), the graduate workers union at Yale, which shows increasing numbers of temporary workers in academia.

To investigate the issue further, GET-UP published a report using the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the U.S. Department of Education and Penn's own data. Looking at all undergraduate classes in the School of Arts and Sciences during the fall term of 2005, GET-UP secretary Ciara Kehoe shows significant “casualization of labor.” In other words, large numbers of non-tenure-track faculty, including full-time and part-time lecturers, who are temporary instructors; adjuncts; and graduate employees, are teaching many of the courses taken by undergraduates. Graduate employees are teaching 67 percent of the recitations, defined as smaller, weekly discussion sections of large lecture courses. They also teach 52 percent of the labs. And when it comes to class instruction, they teach 10 percent of the classes; together with other non-tenured faculty they cover 60 percent of class instruction, while tenured and tenure-track faculty teach 40 percent.

The report points out these "non-ladder" positions have little if any opportunity for advancement and little job security. Few offer benefits.

"World-class instruction is the most important ingredient in building a world-class university," concludes the study. "Recruiting top teacher-scholars requires a long-term commitment via tenure-track jobs. Heavy reliance on temporary instructors weakens the quality of a university's undergraduate education."

Adds Kehoe, "It's part of the larger problem of corporatization of the university." For a copy of the report, please go to: http://www.getuponline.org/casualization/CasualizedPenn.pdf[Virginia Myers Kelly]

March 23, 2006