Budget cuts hit higher education

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Administrators have succeeded in playing one group against the other and have not hesitated to threaten to transAn invisible cancer has been eating form more full-time faculty members away at the heart of higher education into lecturers when they demand "too during the past decade. Thus far it has succeeded in dramatically lowering the quality of education for working-class The fightback has begun but the students. It has converted academic struggle will be long and hard. Faculty freedom into a dead letter. And finally it unionization is on the rise and lecturers has created a whole generation of sec- have consequently won significant gains. But quite frequently full-time facIn the 1970s college and university ulty and lecturers have found themseladministrators were faced with shrink- ves in different bargaining units and ing budgets and with young radical fac- hence have been forced to negotiate sepulty members who were willing to chal- arate contracts. Unfortunately this has lenge their administrative decisions. often been the result of the enthusiastic With almost cynical malice, administra- campaigns launched by some full-time tors confronted both problems with a faculty members who, by employing a single stroke and created a new type of kind of primitive logic, have hoped that faculty member known as the lecturer.

by removing lecturers from their union A lecturer is hired by the semester so the problem that lecturers pose will that the university is under no obligation to rehire the individual, though Gradually, however, faculty members many lecturers are retained for years. In are beginning to perceive the disastrous addition to lacking job security, lecturconsequences of this twisted logic. In ers are paid a mere fraction of the salary the California State College system the of their full-time equivalents, and in United Professors of California, which general receive no job benefits.

vied unsuccessfully for the role of barThey can be given anywhere from gaining agent, persistently argued for a one to five courses at any single univerbargaining unit that would comprise sity. Those who receive only one or two full-timers and lecturers together. Evenare then compelled to seek additional tually they prevailed on this point. courses at other nearby schools or find entirely different sources of supplemen- The working class has been robbed in tal income so that much of their time is the night of a significant degree of qualspent commuting on the nation's high- ity from higher education, but as the news leaks out and the crime is exposed ways. Women and minorities are more apt to be found in positions as lecturers the fightback will intensify. The workWing class will win back its investment in Already these lecturers account for quality education and no doubt will more than one-half of the teaching fac- demand a heavy payment in interest as ulty in the nation's community colleges well. But in order for victory to be and for one-third of the faculty in all secured, the capitalist system, which institutions of higher education places profit for the benefit of a few throughout the country. Institutions above the humanistic development of such as state and community colleges, the many, will have to be completely which attract working class students, have clearly been hit the hardest.

The quality of education has consequently been drastically diminished.

The July issue of Socialist Action contains the The necessity for these faculty members following mistakes made in the transcription to seek additional employment in order from tapes of articles by Ralph Schoenman: to eke out a modest living allows them 'It is the case of what the Jesuits call insensible less time to meet with students and pre- ignorance" should read 'invincible ignopare classes. Moreover, this intensified "Walter Mondale's chief de-sensitizer is exploitation has produced a wave of Harold Brown" should read "chief defense demoralization among lecturers so that many simply perform a minimum "This involves more tonnage in the period of amount of work for their meager mone- nine months than was used during the entire Second World War" should read "more tonFurthermore negotiations between "The economic spokesperson for George faculty and administrators for better McGovern's campaign is Robert K. Liston" working conditions have been compli"Ironically, even the bourgeois reforms cated by the existence of this division of invoked as a debate for supporting the Demothe faculty into two separate classes. crats" should read "invoked as a bait."

SOCIALIST ACTION anti-worker decision.

much."

WE CAN ASK HER -AS SOON AS SHE GETS BACK WITH THE COFFEE.

ond-class teachers. magically disappear.

WHERE TO FIND US:

Phoenix Socialist Action P.O. Box 5161 Phoenix, AZ 85010 (602) 951-0354 Pittsburgh Socialist Action P.O. Box 10769 than as full-time faculty.

Pittsburgh, PA 15203 Puget Sound Socialist Action P.O. Box 2903 Olympia, WA 98507 San Francisco Socialist Actio 3435 Army Street, Rm. 308 abolished San Francisco, CA 94110 (415) 821-0458 Washington Socialist Action P.O. Box 3467 Washington, D.C. 20010 (202) 232-1481 France."

adviser."

tary rewards. nage in a period of nine months."

should read "Robert K. Lifton."

AUGUST 1984

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Emporium workers locked out