As if the Fall 2021 semester couldn’t be more eventful, with many of you teaching and working on campus, fighting to protect your health and those of our students, and the myriad of issues you face every semester, our first big break towards a New Deal, the Build Back Better Act, has begun to move through Congress. We need your help to pass it! The passage of this bill will make President Biden’s American Families Plan law.
Join us for a day of action on Wednesday, September 15th as the Senate comes back into session, urging them to support the Build Back Better Act - as well as to ask for further investments in the academic workforce. (For details on the bill, click here).
As New Deal activists, can you take these actions on Wednesday, September 15?

1. Send a letter to your members of Congress via Action Network.
   
2. Post that Action Network link on your local or chapter’s social media.
   
3. Send out a call to action to your colleagues. Our toolkit includes samples materials for a draft email to members.
   
4. If you have any meetings around that date, ask the whole group to take some collective action on the Build Back Better Act. Check out our sample materials for more background and examples of social media posts, scripts for a voicemail at your senator’s office, and more. 
   

Additionally, we are holding a joint AFT/AAUP national advocacy meeting for chapter leaders on Friday, September 17th. Our presidents Randi Weingarten and Irene Mulvey will share the latest updates on the Build Back Better Act, answer any questions, and lay out opportunities to act in the coming weeks. You can RSVP here.
Please let us know how we can support you locally in this federal campaign!
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Jim Bakken, AAUP Deputy Director of Organizing Services 
Richelle Fiore, AFT Director of Higher Education Organizing

Labor Day 2021 feels very different from Labor Days past. Even more, Labor Day 2021 feels very different from what many of us started looking forward to last spring, when we were rolling up our sleeves to get vaccinated. COVID-19 still represents a global public health crisis, the Delta variant is more contagious and more virulent, hospitals in many locations are full and turning patients away, more children are at risk of very serious illness or death, and there is no end in sight. It didn’t have to be this way.
The way to end the pandemic is with collective action. In some states, however, we see governors and legislatures doing exactly the opposite of what needs to be done: banning mask mandates indoors—effectively guaranteeing that the virus will continue to spread, will continue to sicken and kill people, and will have ample opportunity to mutate into another more deadly and more contagious variant against which our current vaccines may be less effective.
In far too many of our colleges and universities, instead of dealing with the reality of a more contagious variant and how that will spread through a population that is not fully vaccinated, we see magical thinking and plans being put into place as if the pandemic is effectively over. Colleges and universities are uniquely positioned to be places where the best science and the most effective requirements and guidelines—based on the expertise of public health faculty—should be put into place. Our institutions of higher education should be leading the way out of the pandemic. I am dismayed at the lack of leadership in many of our institutions and in mid-August called for administrations to do everything possible to ensure the highest level of health and safety, and to follow the guidance of public health experts to use every available tool to protect students, faculty, staff, and neighboring communities from further spread of COVID. 
In today’s message, I want to go further and encourage AAUP members everywhere to use all legal and appropriate levers of accountability in order to make the workplaces safe. I am heartened by the spirit of solidarity I see nearly every day when faculty refuse to passively accept unsafe working conditions being imposed on a campus, but use their collective voice to object and to demand better. In addition to our call to administrators, we have many resources for faculty to consider as they organize to demand that public health be prioritized over the bottom line and the magical thinking behind a premature “return to the on-campus learning experience.” I hope these resources, which include AAUP’s special report on COVID-19 and Academic Governance, are useful to you as we organize, advocate and work together for a safe present and a strong future for higher education.
Let’s be clear: the fight for a safe working environment as we begin the new academic year is our fight since it is inextricably linked to genuine shared governance and collaborative decision making, and to academic freedom in the classroom and on campus. Faculty are the ones taking all the risks in our classrooms. It is outrageous for a faculty member to find herself in a position where she needs to consider the probability of bringing the virus home where it might be responsible for the death of a vulnerable family member. When the administration isn’t making the best decisions for the institution, it’s the faculty’s responsibility to stand up, speak out and do all they can to ensure that the core academic mission is carried out in the most effective way for the circumstances. As AAUP president, I thank you for your work in this regard. I am privileged to represent members of the AAUP as we work together during these very trying times.

​In solidarity, 
Irene Mulvey, AAUP President

Summer 2021 | Vol. 107, No. 3 
The Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors is published annually as the summer issue of Academe. This year's Bulletin features a special report on COVID-19 and academic governance and findings from the 2020–21 Faculty Compensation Survey and the 2021 AAUP Shared Governance Survey.
Download a PDF of the entire issue at https://www.aaup.org/issue/summer-2021-bulletin using your member log-in information.

The steady rise of contingent faculty appointments and the growth of administration in higher education present a significant threat to academic freedom and shared governance. That’s the conclusion of studies on contingency and administrative growth in the AAUP’s Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2020–21.
Some key findings on contingency and administrative growth:

• In fall 2019, 63.0 percent of faculty members were on contingent appointments; 20.0 percent were full-time contingent faculty members and 42.9 percent were part-time contingent faculty members. Only 26.5 percent of faculty members were tenured and 10.5 percent were on the tenure track.
  
• From fiscal year 2011–12 to fiscal year 2018–19, the numbers of staff classified as “management” increased 12 percent per FTE student, real average salaries increased 7 percent, and salary outlays per FTE student increased 19 percent, including an extraordinary 24 percent increase in real salary expenditures per FTE student in public colleges and universities.
  

As we note in the report, contingent appointments are the least secure, lowest remunerated, and generally least supported faculty positions. Most faculty members who are paid per course section do not receive retirement or medical benefit contributions, and in most states, adjunct faculty members do not have rights to unemployment insurance. Faculty tenure is the only secure protection for academic freedom in teaching, research, and service.
The prevalence of contingent faculty appointments also means that shared governance in higher education is increasingly at risk. Without adequate numbers of full-time tenure-line faculty members, many institutions now appoint administrators to committees that govern areas formerly within the sole purview of faculty committees. 
This deep imbalance between the rise of contingency and the rise of management, particularly the exorbitant rise in high-level administrative salaries, requires urgent action. Governing boards, legislators, and other policy makers must provide funds for a substantial readjustment of academic salary levels to avoid irreparable harm to the US higher education system. Additionally, the AAUP holds that full and part-time faculty members, regardless of rank, are to be considered eligible for tenure and the protections it affords. Faculty teaching, research, and service must remain the focus of higher education.
You can read the full report and view charts of our findings on contingency and administrative growth here.
Next week, we will discuss the report's findings on rising institutional debt and share resources from our New Deal for Higher Education campaign on this issue.
The AAUP Research Department

After six days on strike, the AAUP chapter at Oregon Institute of Technology successfully settled their first collective bargaining agreement. The new CBA includes significant improvements across a range of issues that inspired the faculty to unionize in the first place: workload, compensation, academic freedom, and more.
This victory is an important step forward for higher education, the AAUP, and the academic labor movement. 
We congratulate the faculty on their new contract and their successful strike, and we thank the AAUP membership for showing your support in your messages, comments, and social media posts.
In Solidarity,
Christopher Simeone 
Director, AAUP Department of Organizing and Services

Please visit the  website below to read a recent bog entry published May 6, 2021 in the blog of Academe by CA-AAUP Secretary/Treasurer and National University AAUP Chapter President,  Alex Zukas
​
 https://academeblog.org/2021/05/06/egregious-administrative-action-under-the-cover-of-covid-19/?

Campus police forces are not immune to broader injustices in US law enforcement, and these injustices intersect with core AAUP concerns over shared governance and academic freedom. That’s why I agreed to serve on a working group charged with drafting a report on the role of police on campus. 
We looked at the appropriateness of higher education institutions’ having their own police forces and considered the impact of systemic racism on campus policing—as well as the role of campus police in perpetuating systemic racism and inequities. We found thatcampus police forces have expanded and militarized at an alarming rate, and that there are clear tensions between the AAUP’s core values and the existence and function of campus police forces.
Our goal is to encourage and enable AAUP chapters to work in coalition with other publicly minded groups to transform campus safety into something more just, accountable, and effective, up to and including reorganizing campus safety in toto. Accordingly, we recommend changes needed to ensure that campuses are safe and welcoming for diverse peoples—especially those who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color—and provide tools for chapters to use when assessing the state of policing on your campus and organizing for change.
Download the report here. See questions we suggest chapters ask themselves to get started. 
—Megan Horst, Portland State University
Chair of AAUP Campus Police Working Group

I'm writing to share with you the results of the AAUP’s 2020–21 Faculty Compensation Survey, released today. Real wages for full-time faculty decreased for the first time since the Great Recession, and average wage growth for all ranks of full-time faculty was the lowest since the AAUP began tracking annual wage growth in 1972. After adjusting for inflation, real wages for full-time faculty decreased at over two-thirds of colleges and universities. The number of full-time faculty decreased at over half of institutions. 

Average pay for part-time faculty members teaching a three-credit course section in 2019–20 varied widely between institutional types, with average rates of pay ranging from $2,611 per section in public associate’s institutions without ranks to $5,760 per section in private religiously affiliated doctoral institutions. (Part-time faculty pay data is collected for the prior year as institutions generally cannot provide employment data on part-time faculty until the end of the academic year). 
The survey also asked about the wide range of actions taken by US colleges and universities in response to financial difficulties stemming from the COVID–19 pandemic. At a time when many institutions were already struggling to balance their budgets, many lowered their expenditures by implementing hiring freezes, salary cuts, fringe benefit cuts, furloughs, and layoffs. 

• Nearly 60 percent implemented salary freezes or reductions.
• About 30 percent eliminated or reduced some form of fringe benefits.
• Over 5 percent did not reappoint or terminated contracts for at least some tenure-line faculty.
• Over 20 percent did not renew contracts or terminated contracts for at least some non-tenure-track faculty.
• Almost 10 percent implemented furloughs for at least some faculty.
• Over 50 percent took some other action for tenure-line faculty. The most common action described was some type of early retirement program.
• Almost 30 percent took some other action for non-tenure-line faculty.
• Almost 50 percent implemented tenure-clock modifications for at least some tenure-track faculty.

Although part-time faculty have surely been disproportionally impacted by the COVID–19 pandemic, the fact that data on part-time faculty were collected for the prior academic year, 2019–20, precludes in-depth analysis of how part-time faculty have been impacted this year. 
You can see the complete survey results here.
--Glenn Colby, AAUP Senior Researcher