By Susan Meisenhelder,
Former President of CFA

Among the many observations faculty have offered about our last round of bargaining, two contain very important lessons for success in the future. As more and more faculty came to realize during the almost 18-month process, we were not bargaining merely about issues of pay and working conditions.

Rather, in the disputes surrounding “merit pay,” tenure-track appointments, department chairs as faculty or administrators, and many others, we were oftentimes really at odds with the CSU administration about issues much deeper – the structure of the university and the faculty's role in it.

As Gary Rhoades, author of "Managed Professionals: Unionized Faculty and Restructuring Academic Labor" (SUNY Press, 1998) suggests, many of the CSU administration initiatives and bargaining proposals that faculty have found most troubling are not merely local phenomena but examples of broader national trends in higher education. Rhoades analysis of contractual provisions in university faculty contracts from around the country on issues such as “merit pay,” the use and working conditions of part-time faculty and distance education, for example, documents exactly what many CSU faculty have sensed — a demonstrable erosion of faculty professional autonomy and concomitant expansion of managerial discretion. As in the medical profession, marked by increasing corporatization and decreasing professional autonomy for physicians, the academic profession, Rhoades argues, is also undergoing restructuring. The terms and position of faculty's professional labor are being renegotiated as managers seek to reform, reinvent, reengineer, redesign or reorganize colleges and universities...Higher education executives have sought greater flexibility in shaping and controlling the configuration, distribution, activity and output of the academic work force. Such efforts have implications for faculty's reward structures, their job security, the ratio of part- to full-timers, the use of technology in delivering curriculum, outside employment, and intellectual property rights.” (2-3)

As Rhoades' analysis and our own experience makes clear, collective bargaining in higher education today is not about marginally significant minutiae but about issues that will profoundly affect the future of the university, our professional role in it and the quality of education our students receive.

But as many CSU faculty also sensed during bargaining, despite our own conviction and understanding of what was at stake, we often found ourselves on the defensive in responding to CSU bargaining proposals. In fact, if you believed some newspaper versions of the dispute, the chancellor had the only vision for the CSU in the 21st century; and the faculty were self-interested enemies of progressive change. In short, the chancellor was too often able “to control the conversation” surrounding bargaining, framing the terms of debate, and forcing us to argue within them.

Both the gravity of the issues dealt with in collective bargaining and the need for a larger, self-defined framework within which to articulate faculty positions demand that CFA move in some new directions. To be successful in bargaining and in lobbying the legislature for more adequate funding for the system, we must articulate for ourselves and for the public a faculty-based vision of the CSU that drives and legitimates our agenda as the collective bargaining representative of CSU faculty. Toward this end, the Fall 1999 Delegate Assembly passed a resolution authorizing CFA to sponsor a "The Future of the CSU" project that will begin to address this need.

In addition to supporting faculty participation in the legislative Master Plan revision hearings now underway, the "The Future of the CSU" project will involve hearings on campuses beginning this spring with the goal of including representatives of different sectors of the university community as well as local legislators, public officials, and others from the local communities surrounding campuses. As the Assembly motion states, these activities will begin to foster a more public role for faculty by providing access for faculty to the state's higher-education policy-making process and by helping develop in the constituent communities of the CSU a set of goals and sense of practical priorities that can improve the quality of education in the CSU and strengthen the professional role of its faculty. These activities will help faculty shape the state's discourse on higher education rather than remaining victims of other's terms. Further, they will help faculty lead rather than follow in the ongoing debate over the role and nature of the CSU.

Such a project will allow faculty to present a vision of the university that contrasts with that of the corporate university. It will help remind the public of the primary purpose of higher education by, for example, laying out the arguments for faculty-student interaction, clarifying the relationship between tenure and quality education, differentiating between education and instruction and providing the argument for dedicated funding for higher education. The project will also help cement ongoing alliances (and not just passing coalitions) between our different CSU communities – educating us about each other's needs and how our interests fit together. Building a strong set of alliances for higher education is critical to ensuring that public universities in California become a higher priority in future battles for limited state resources; it is also essential if CFA is to win contracts that protect the faculty's professional authority and promote quality education.

Finally, the project will permit us to move from what often appears as a defensive position on key issues and will give us the initiative, based on sound principles, on the campuses, in the legislature and among opinion-makers in the state. At a time when privatization and commercialization are affecting the university as never before, nothing is more important than guaranteeing faculty a voice in public-policy debates and taking our case directly to the public. We hope you will join us in this endeavor.

Feedback: e-mail Susan Meisenhelder