Academics are disposable members of working class

 
SOUTHERN ILLINOIS — On March 2, the Board of Trustees at John A. Logan Community College in Carterville, Illinois, voted to lay off 55 employees in an effort to resolve the college’s financial crisis, including 35 full-time faculty, 15 professional staff and five maintenance workers. The faculty layoffs include 27 with tenure and make up 38 percent of full-time faculty. Layoffs among professional staff will leave the college without coordinators for Veterans’ Services, Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Services, or student recruitment.
In a packed auditorium, the Board listened to more than three hours of emotional testimony from students, community members and employees before voting. In the end, board members blamed the state’s long-term budget impasse. But as full-time faculty chief negotiator Matt Garrison commented at the February Board meeting, “The state of Illinois is not entirely to blame for this situation. Years of dubious managerial decisions at the college have contributed their portion, as well.” For instance, among other expenditures, the college recently paid $900,000 for a new computer system that has been filled with bugs and a $290,000 severance package to buy out the former president’s contract. In addition, the college is paying off a $1.7 million fine for illegally inflating student numbers at its Community Health Education Center.
Logan represents a microcosm of the larger war on education and higher education in particular: the war on unions and tenure, the shift from full-time to adjunct faculty, and the bloating of administration.
The administration and Board made their priorities clear. Though full-time faculty make up only 14 percent of college employees, they account for 65 percent of layoffs. As IEA representative Bret Seferian says, faced with budget crises, he’s “never seen an education institution’s first move be to decimate the faculty.”
On the other hand, Continuing Education remained largely untouched. So did Athletics, prompting one student to ask the Board, “Are we a sports facility or are we an education facility?” Similarly, there was only one layoff among administration, leaving the college 33rd out of 39 state community colleges in terms of number of administrators per student and per credit hour, which places the school about 50 percent above the state average.
When asked if full-time faculty will be replaced by term faculty, interim President Ron House replied that they would do so on a “temporary basis.” But as the Association of Term Faculty president says, the large-scale shift to adjuncts raises concerns regarding “the potentially large influx of possibly inexperienced educators hired to teach classes recently taught by 35 full-time faculty, these educators perhaps hired on short notice, with little time to prepare for the classes and with no guarantee of retaining their positions.” Administrators have openly complained about the percentage of full-time faculty and seem anxious to shift to a poorer and more easily frightened workforce.
Southern Illinois is an area hard-hit by de-industrialization in the last 30 years, with high unemployment and towns filled with empty factory buildings. As the Logan Board reminds us, academics are equally disposable members of neo-liberalism’s working class.
David Cochran has taught history at John A. Logan College since 2001. He was one of the 55 faculty and staff sent layoff notices.