Future Thinking. Academic Collective Bargaining in a World of Rapid Change

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33rd National Conference

Future Thinking. Academic Collective Bargaining in a World of Rapid Change

National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions

April 4, 2006: New York, NY

Cathy A. Trower, Ph.D.

Gen X Meets Theory X: What New Scholars Want

You may be wondering what, precisely, this title means. I’ll discuss, in a moment, who Gen X’ers are according to demographers who study such things. In the simplest of terms, Gen X’ers are those born between 1965 and 1980 and they are entering the professoriate in increasing numbers. Theory X is a metaphor for the 1960s workplace that Gen X’ers find when they arrive. The culture clash is not pretty and is only going to get more complex as the Millennials show up next.

Three years ago, I conducted some research (Trower, 2005) into the importance of various job factors for doctoral candidates about to come onto the job market. Survey respondents saw a list of 19 factors (see Table 1) that they might consider as they thought about taking a faculty job.

Table 1. Key Job Factors for Faculty Positions

Opportunity to work independently / Flexibility of work schedule
Opportunity to work collaboratively / Quality of the institution
Opportunity to work with a leader in my field / Quality of the department
Opportunity for recognition in my field / Geographic location
Content of the courses I’ll teach / Compensation package
Level of the students I’ll teach / Job security
Quality of the students I’ll teach / Match between my research interests and those of my department
Number of courses and preps (teaching load) / Time for family/personal obligations
Institutional support for my research / Employment opportunities for my spouse or partner
Content of the courses I’ll teach

The top five job factors across all surveyed were: 1) Institutional support for research; 2) time for family/personal obligations; 3) quality of the department; 4) teaching load; and 5) flexibility of the work schedule. I don’t know about you, but it’s difficult for me to imagine my father (a traditionalist) saying that he needed time for family and a flexible work schedule. In fact, those two are not even in my (boomer) top five.

Gender and race factor into this as well. Students of color placed significantly more importance than white students on institutional support for research, the match between one’s research interests and those of others in the department, the opportunity to work with a leader in the field, and job security. Females put significantly more importance than males on the flexibility of the work schedule, time for family/personal obligations, employment opportunities for spouse/partner, teaching load, and the geographic location of the institution, while males felt that the opportunity for recognition, the quality of the department, the quality of the institution, the opportunity to work with a leader in one’s field, and the quality of students were more important.

So who is Gen X? If there’s one adjective that characterizes this generation, it’s skeptical. This was the latch-key generation whose parents divorced and/or whose mom’s worked outside the home. This makes them independent, adaptable, and resilient. They don’t want anyone looking over their shoulder at work. They believe their parents suffer VDD – vacation deficit disorder. They want balance now, not when they’re 65. These two quotes sum up the thinking, “If they can’t understand that I want a kick-ass career and a kick-ass life, then I don’t want to work here.” And, “Why does it matter when I come and go as long as I get the work done?” Can you imagine saying that to your department chair or dean? Don’t get me wrong, Gen Xers are hard workers, but they want to decide when, where, and how. [This can be unsettling. I know; I have two working for me now.]

Table 2 shows some of the key workplace differentiators between the generations from Lancaster and Stillman (2002).

Table 2. The Generations at Work

Traditionalist
1900-1945 / Boomer
1946-1964 / Gen X
1965-1980
Chain of command / Change of command / Self-command
Collaborate
Build a legacy / Build a stellar career / Build a portable career
Satisfaction of a job well-done / Money, title, recognition, corner office / Freedom
If we give in to demands for flexibility, who will do the work? / I can’t believe the nerve of those X’ers – they want it all! / I’ll go where I can find the lifestyle I’m seeking.
Job changing carries a stigma. / Job changing puts you behind. / Job changing is necessary.
If I’m not yelling at you, you’re doing fine. / Feedback once a year; well-documented / Sorry to interrupt again, but how am I doing?

What does this mean for the faculty? From the focus groups we conducted and the surveys we analyzed, we have discerned a conflict between the dominant perspective of senior faculty—the embedded view—and the perspective of new faculty—the emergent view. There are several particularly pertinent fault lines which, taken separately and collectively, have practical implications for rethinking academic employment systems.

Senior faculty (traditionalists and boomers) and junior faculty (Gen X’ers) live in vastly different assumptive worlds. What the former take for granted, the latter seek to reform. The changes championed by a new generation challenge the commitments and convictions of an older generation. “The differences are not about right or wrong, or necessarily even about males and females, or minority and majority” (Trower and Chait, 2002, p.37). The fundamental tension revolves around a basic, yet profound, question: “Who makes the rules?”

First, the embedded view holds that secrecy assures quality and candor. The promotion and tenure process, as well as peer review of research proposals and scholarly manuscripts, must be strictly confidential in order to ensure quality control. Similarly, salaries, workload, and productivity must remain private to foster community. The emergent view maintains that transparency assures equity. For too long, newer faculty members argue, the shroud of secrecy has masked favoritism, cronyism, racism, and sexism. The tenure process has been described as “archery in the dark.” Is it not possible to illuminate the target? Several years ago, we proposed “Tenure by Objectives,” a system where thresholds are delineated for probationary faculty and, as importantly, where tenure-track faculty are informed when these thresholds are achieved. For example, an assistant professor could learn by Year 3, 4, or 5 that the department and administration no longer have any qualms about the tenure candidate’s competency as a teacher, or adviser, or scholar, or that the candidate has done more than enough campus and community service to meet the tenure standard. This information would simultaneously lower anxiety and focus the candidate’s attention on areas that may require further evidence of proficiency. For more than five years, the idea lay dormant. Then just a month ago, the MLA proffered a very similar proposal although I doubt that we were the source of the Association’s inspiration.

Second, the embedded view positions merit as empirically determined and objectively derived. For each discipline, there are and, indeed must be, absolute standards of quality uniformly applied. We must treat all faculty equally. Any considerations other than merit are, by definition, extraneous. In research, merit means theoretical work organized around a discipline to advance the discipline that appears in the premier refereed journals of the discipline. The emergent view perceives merit as a socially constructed, subjective concept. Quality and merit are relative notions, inevitably conditioned by personal experience and tacit bias. The new generation cites, for example, studies which indicate that peer assessments of identical resumes and identical research differ markedly as a function of the gender-specific name assigned to the material under review. The emergent view contends that conventional definitions of merit do not prevail on the merits. Instead, people in power valorize the norms necessary to remain in power.

Third, the embedded view assumes that competition improves performance. The promotion and tenure process, as a slightly kinder and gentler version of Darwinism, assures that the only very best earn lifelong appointments. Competition best serves the institution’s ultimate interests. And in order to determine relative talent, tenure-track faculty, for the most part, must teach, research, and publish alone. Long live autonomy. The emergent view asserts the collaboration is superior to competition, and that co-operation best serves the institution’s long-term interests. The best work often pools intellectual capital, blends a plurality of perspectives, and taps collective talents. Long live community.

Fourth, there is an embedded view that scholars should organize research around established departments, disciplines, and subspecialties. The narrow alleyways of academic research are typically more fruitful than the chaotic intersections. To be successful, favor theory over practice and discovery over application. Scholars advance knowledge first and foremost. The emergent idea is that serious scholarship concerns important social questions as well as scientific problems. Disciplines are a home base, not a remote island. Rigor cannot always triumph over relevance. Academics are not the only audience that matters. Improvement of society as well as advancement of knowledge may appropriately concern scholars.

A fifth embedded assumption is, at the end of the day, or certainly at the end of the probationary period, the quality and quantity of scholarly research matters most. Internal reviews and external markets properly place the heaviest weight on the most important and most difficult task—academic research. Scholarly output historically separated the men from the boys and now separates the most meritorious from the least. However, the emerging view is that teaching, advising, and service to the campus, the community, and the profession matter, along with research. The value of these activities should not be discounted because they are more nurturing, less visible, not easily documented, or disproportionately assigned to women and faculty of color. Citizenship should mean more than self-investment, self-advancement, and free agency.

Sixth, there is a prevailing belief that serious, successful scholars make difficult choices and substantial sacrifices that typically place professional priorities above personal needs. Relationships, marriages, families, and recreation, at least in the short run, have to occupy a distant second place. The embedded view basically separates work and family; by and large, personal circumstances are irrelevant. In a zero-sum game, more time dedicated to family means less time devoted to career. Representative of that perspective, an Ivy-League president speculated in January of last year that the dearth of women in the natural sciences may be due to an aversion to 80-hour work weeks. (Literally and figuratively, he has been paying for that remark ever since.) The emergent view, however, is that overall quality of life matters and matters a lot. Perhaps we cannot have it all, but we seek more than professional achievement. Home life and work life should be harmonized and not counter posed. The days of stay-at-home spouses have been replaced by dual career families. The emergent view insists that personal life matters and that a balanced life should not be incompatible with an academic career. If success requires 80-hour work weeks, then we have mis-conceptualized what should constitute success. The emergent view contends that institutions should adapt to the needs of faculty, not vice-versa.

The last items listed here overarch the others – how do we balance autonomy which almost all faculty value highly with our collective responsibility? These embedded and emergent assumptions need to be addressed and recognized. Tomorrow’s faculty will make choices that surprise older faculty members and administrators. Fewer may opt for the fast track or the tenure track. Personal satisfaction may outweigh institutional prestige. Common enterprise and collective success may mean as much or more than individual awards and personal triumphs. How well junior faculty are treated may matter as much or more than how well they are paid. In focus groups and surveys, junior faculty expressed a common, though certainly not universal, sentiment: I would accept less pay and less prestige if I could work on a campus where I fit, and where the senior faculty and the administration were invested in my professional success and concerned about my personal welfare.

It is my belief that if we do not pay attention to the values of new scholars, if we fail to change our tenure and promotion policies and practices to keep pace with the times and the people, if we are unable to shed the straightjacket but insist that one size fits all, we will not continue to attract the best and brightest women and men of all races and ethnicities.

I’d like to close with a quote from the Wall Street Journal from November 2, 1992. “The Roman Catholic Church conceded, after 359 years, that it was wrong to have condemned the Italian scientist Galileo for asserting that the Earth orbits the sun. Pope John Paul II, on Saturday, accepted the findings of a panel that studied the case.” I hope we can act faster than that to make academic careers more appealing to this and future generations of scholars by making changes in policy, practice, structure, and culture to reflect their core values and crazy lives.

References

Lancaster, Lynne C. and David Stillman (2002). When Generations Collide, New York: HarperBusiness Publishers Inc.

Project on Faculty Appointments. (2000). Faculty Recruitment Study: Statistical Analysis Report. By Jared Bleak, Heidi Neiman, and Cheryl Sternman Rule. Senior Researcher, Cathy Trower. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Trower, Cathy A. (2005). “Gen X Meets Theory X: What New Scholars Want,” The Department Chair, Volume 16, No. 2, Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing Company, Inc.

Trower, Cathy A. and Richard Chait (2002). “Faculty Diversity: Too Little for Too Long,” with Richard Chait, Harvard Magazine. Vol. 104, No. 4. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Magazine, Inc., pp. 33-37, 98.