Psst: It's the most important strike in the history of American higher education (but you may not know about it)
What's really happening at the University of California
Friends,
A few days ago I spoke to some of the striking academic workers at the University of California. (You can view my remarks at their rally, below.)
A total of 48,000 are on strike, making this the largest and most important strike in the history of American higher education. As labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein says, it could not only raise the incomes and the status of those who work in an “industry” that now employs more workers than the federal government, but also transform higher education itself.
You wouldn’t know this from what you’re reading in the mainstream press. The New York Times reports that academic workers “walked off the job … forcing some classes to be canceled … classes were disrupted, research slowed and office hours canceled … only a few weeks away from final examinations.”
Whenever you read that striking workers are causing harmful disruptions, note the implied bias, and consider that the status quo before the strike might have been even more harmful and disruptive to a large number of people.
One spur for this strike has been the extraordinary rise in housing costs and rents in California. Some of the academic workers at the University of California are paid so little that they’ve been living in their cars. Inflation has further eroded their paltry salaries.
Why should employees of the best public university in America, in the nation’s richest state, in the wealthiest country in the world, live in poverty?
Last Friday, the University and the union representing tens of thousands of its striking academic workers agreed to ask an independent mediator to intervene.
Across American higher education, a large and growing portion of the responsibility for teaching and research has been borne by lecturers, adjuncts, graduate students, and post-doctoral students who are paid very little and have no job security. They are hired part-time, or are on year-to-year contracts, or are free-lancers who offer their expertise when needed.
These second-class workers reflect the same second-class system America has created throughout our labor market, and for the same reason: Employers want to pay as little as possible, and have maximum flexibility.
UC administrators plead budget constraints. Yet California is an immensely wealthy state with a budget surplus of almost $100 billion this year. Over the last several decades, however, state funding for UC, as well as the even larger state university system, has steadily declined. Today just over 10 percent of UC’s budget comes from the state (down from more than half when in 1963 UC president Clark Kerr created the UC system). UC remains the jewel in the crown of American higher education, but excellence can’t be sustained on the cheap.
So you might think (or hope) that California’s progressive governor Gavin Newsom would take a lead in the strike on the side of workers, but he’s been mum. Ditto the progressive California legislature.
The UC strike is not just an effort to raise thousands of academic workers out of near poverty. It’s a movement whose success requires a reversal of the austerity that has subverted public higher education across America.
Here’s a clip from my talk to the striking student workers:
The workforce model of U.S. higher education is "past its shelf-life expiration date."
The model was built first of exploding enrollments following WWII and solid student numbers growth through the 1990s. The model started to crack in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Comfortable tenured faculty jobs made possible by the growth gave way to 70%+ of teaching staff being adjunct or "contingent," often not making enough to pay rent and some living in their cars.
To keep the game going the model shifted to free and easy student debt. It was easier to get a student loan than buy a car, which lead to massive run up in student debt. Now the bubble has burst with a decade of declining enrollments with a crash caused with Covid. Plus, one could logically believe that being an Uber driver may be more attractive than being an adjunct faculty member. At least you would have a newer model car.
To add insult to injury, there has been no leadership in Congress. Education committee assignments are often made to the "left-overs," who did not get on the "important" committees such as defense, intelligence, etc. This explains, in part, why the Higher Education Act has not been reauthorized since 2008!
The issues with the U. Cal system are a small tip of an iceberg.
Professor Reich, thank you for supporting the student workers and all the staff and teachers and Professors of the California higher education system. The public is not aware of the limits of salaries and benefits for teachers at all levels. As a California public school teacher, I spent my own money to earn a Master’s degree so I would not only move higher on the salary schedule but qualify to teach in the public community college system. However, that system was hiring only part-time faculty, two office hours per week, no benefits and less than 12 units of teaching. And no tenure. That’s the clincher. No tenure means no security. No assurance you will have your position next school year, no matter how well you teach. I had to pay off my student loans for my higher degree. So I stayed in the Title 1 program and received a $5,000 dollar payment from federal government for teaching in a low income school for five years. I know people who earned PhDs in English and had to move out of state to teach full-time with benefits. I did teach halftime at the college level at a private school in California. However my goal was to stay in the public system.
That was not an option. There are countless stories of highly qualified candidates who move out of state or teach in private technical schools so they can work and pay off their loans.