Most Americans experience the higher-education crisis in the financial pinch of their children’s tuition bill or the burden of post-college debt. But to understand how the crisis feeds into the economic crisis facing the next generation, ask an adjunct professor why she’s struggling as hard to teach as her undergraduates struggle to graduate—and why both sides of America’s academic marketplace seem priced out of both decent jobs and an enriching learning experience.
Even at Tennessee’s Vanderbilt University, considered an Oxonian academic gem in a state that ranks among the highest in economic inequality, non-tenure-track professors are fighting to form a union—the first of its kind in the right-to-work state.
Vanderbilt’s contingent faculty filed an election petition with the National Labor Relations Board in February, seeking to unionize adjunct, part-time, and full-time non-tenure track faculty, in a proposed unit covering roughly 350 faculty members in various schools, including the Divinity and Graduate Schools. But the vote, which had been scheduled for April, was set back after the administration abruptly announced that it planned to challenge the vast majority of ballots during the vote count. The move led to the withdrawal of the original election agreement, and now, pending a further NLRB review with a different unit arrangement, the workers are awaiting a rescheduled vote.
