Culture wars cover up economic realities on campus

“Culture” is often the reason given for campus conflicts over issues such as free speech. But they aren’t really cultural issues; they’re economic ones.  

As the bad economic news keeps rolling in for U.S. colleges and universities (from the Big Quit and inflationary pressures to the demographic cliff), it’s important to keep in mind that economic realities, not cultural ones, largely underpin volatile campus political dynamics.

Take, for instance, the matter of free speech and academic freedom on campus, a political issue often chalked up to “cancel culture.” I don’t mean to be evasive here. Sure, I know what people are talking about when they reference “cancel culture” and have experienced some of it first-hand. It’s just as ugly as critics claim, if not worse. But the root of the problem is economic, not cultural.

The vast majority of university faculty in the U.S. are “contingent” faculty, meaning they are full-time and part-time workers without tenure. Over the past 40 years, the proportion of academics holding full-time tenured positions has declined 26 percent. The proportion holding full-time tenure-track positions (i.e. eligible for tenure) has declined 50 percent. 

Today, close to 75 percent of faculty are contingent faculty. Tenure for faculty is similar to lifetime appointments to the bench for judges. It’s a mechanism for ensuring that we can build knowledge and seek truth independently, that we can teach, research and make public commentaries without external political interference. The Government Accountability Office estimates that part-time contingent faculty make, on average, 75 percent less than full-time tenured and tenure track faculty. Full-time contingent faculty make, on average, 45 percent less than their full-time tenured and tenure-track colleagues.

In 2015, taxpayers paid almost half a billion dollars in support of public assistance for families of part-time faculty. This is the so-called “Walmart model,” in which taxpayers subsidize low wages paid by employers, permitting exploitative labor relationships to continue over time. The impact of this labor hierarchy and the economic insecurity it creates on the capacity of faculty to take risks, including risks regarding political speech, is difficult to overstate.

Contingent faculty generally understand very well that, if they are perceived as stepping out of line in any way, there is a high likelihood of not being rehired. It is pretty rare that faculty who engage in “wrongspeak” are fired flat out like some high-profile professors have been. It is much more common for contingent faculty to just not be rehired for the next semester or the next year. Contracts won’t be renewed. Courses will be given to someone else to teach. And even if the reason was politically motivated, there’s little leverage for faculty in such situations. It’s hard to prove that you weren’t rehired because of your social media posts as opposed to low enrollments. And lawyers are expensive.

And it’s not like there are many other jobs out there waiting for you if you lose the one you have. The academic job market has been tight and highly competitive for a long time. Faculty jobs, even the contingent kind, are hard to find these days, especially if your expertise is in the humanities or social sciences.

Further, academics are a tight-knit, competitive and ego-rich group with a strong proclivity for gossip, meaning that bad news about you may travel well beyond your own campus, poisoning your ability to get work elsewhere. So, every time you decide to take a risk at work, for example by standing up for your own beliefs or for a colleague, you face the knowledge that this may be your last academic job. Full stop. It’s a powerful deterrent and a super effective mechanism for worker discipline.

It is all the more so because most of us love our work, love working with our students and don’t want to give it up (and also because many faculty are themselves student debtors). So, if faculty generally seem too silent on critical issues like this one, it’s not because we don’t care. It’s not because we all creepily agree with one another like the Borg from Star Trek. It’s because we’re afraid that we won’t be able to work, earn an income, feed our families or provide them with health insurance. Political freedom requires economic security.

Sasha Breger Bush is an associate professor at the University of Colorado Denver and the author of “Derivatives and Development: A Political Economy of Global Finance, Farming, and Poverty” and “Global Politics: A Toolkit for Learners.” For more of Sasha’s research and writing, visit her Substack and website.