Full at http://blog.cheapmotelsandahotplate.org. I welcome comments. Note my reference at the end to Louis Proyect's
many fine blog posts on this subject.
One thing that struck me when I became a teacher was the high degree of control that professors had over their work. We had considerable say about what we taught, when we taught, what went on inside the classroom, and how we used our time outside the classroom. Once we earned tenure (basically a guarantee of lifetime employment), our control deepened; we could do pretty much as we pleased, as long as we didn’t behave in an egregiously bad manner. By the time I retired, I was able to choose the days and times I taught; I could skip class or keep a class any length of time I chose; I had sole discretion when it came to textbooks, assignments, examinations, papers, and the like; I could ignore student complaints without much risk; and I could conduct my classes in any manner I chose. Although teachers sometimes abused the freedom accorded them, and occasionally violated every canon of human decency, most professors labored diligently until they retired. When I was young, I had disdain for the old-timers, who seemed out of touch and over the hill. But I had to admire the way they kept at their trade, the concern they had for their students, and the loyalty they had to the college. Although I never developed any loyalty, I was much like them when I got old. I taught a Principles of Economics class to non-majors for thirty-two years, and I gave lectures as enthusiastically and as larded with commentary on current events in the last year as the first. I was happy that I had tenure; it protected me from being fired because my analysis of society was too radical for my colleagues or supervisors or because students didn’t like having their cherished notions demolished in class every day.
The extraction of surplus labor from workers is central to the way a capitalist economy operates. To get this surplus labor time—the source of profits—from the workers requires that employers exert as much control over the labor process as they can. That is, it is incumbent upon businesses to structure their workplaces so that the employees can interfere as little as possible with the conversion of inputs into outputs. For example, a modern automobile plant is built so that a moving assembly line dictates the pace at which the workers labor. Each job along that line has been studied so that it can be done in as little time as possible. Each worker is given a set of detailed orders that tell him or her exactly what to do and in what sequence. Failure to do the work as specified and in the required time sets in motion a panoply of corrective mechanisms, including penalties paid by the workers. Modern computer technology allows the supervisors to minutely monitor the whole operation. Periodic stresses are placed on the system to compel the employees to work faster and with fewer errors. Laggards and malcontents are quickly eliminated. All possible efforts are made by management to prevent the one monkey wrench that workers could use to muck things up, namely collective action.
Many commentators, going back to Thorstein Veblen in the early 1920s, have argued persuasively that colleges and universities have come more and more to resemble corporations. They seek to maximize their revenues and minimize their costs, just like any business entity. Their reasons for doing so are many: to generate money for patent-producing research, to hire the ever-increasing number of administrators necessary for student recruitment and retention, applying for government and private-sector grants, seeking state aid, fund-raising, and hiring “star” faculty. As we shall see, the main way they have tried to keep costs in check has been to control faculty labor.
Higher education is a labor-intensive affair. To maintain a healthy surplus (and make it grow), attention must be paid to the cost of the labor, most especially relatively expensive faculty. However, the tenure system places an obvious roadblock in the way of labor cost control. From a management perspective (and most high-level college and university administrators see themselves as managers; in fact, more and more of them come directly from corporate management), it would be cheaper to replace tenured faculty with contingent teachers, that is, those with temporary and revocable contracts. The question is how to do this. Most colleges and universities have found it difficult to attack tenure directly. It is important for them to give lip service to lofty academic ideals, and firing tenured teachers or insisting that they sign ordinary labor contracts would be a public relations nightmare. Tenured teachers are not without some power and influence. They are, after all, the best-remembered teachers of state legislators, rich alumni, and the captains of industry. They may have deep local ties and national or international scholarly reputations. Therefore the captains of academe gradually, in fits and starts, hit upon less direct ways to gain the control over their academic workforce necessary for them to minimize labor costs. . . .