Labor(ing) in higher education

The largest portion of all college and university budgets is personnel. Increasing college access in the U.S.A., accompanied by expansion of faculty and staff numbers, came with the entry of "baby-boomers" into higher education in the 1960s. This expanding enrollment generated enough revenue to cover the increased costs but when enrollment flattened and public support for funding declined, the costs began to outpace the ability of institutions to cover these costs.

The increased complexity and commodification of higher education requires a response - one that involves all those who work in higher education, students, families, employers, and communities. The first "Higher Ed Labor Summit" brought labor representatives together representing 75 labor organizations representing approximately 300,000 members to draft a platform that envisions "institutions of higher education that prioritize people and the common good over profit and prestige." The focus of the platform advocates a federal effort to address accessibility, permit more union participation, and guarantee shared governance. The AAUP issued a report that reinforced the threat to faculty related to participation in governance. Views of faculty participation vary over time but the swing away from broader types of involvement by faculty, most notably in areas such as facilities and budget, have declined.

Turning the problem of accessibility and sustainable financing over to those representing the largest portion of the budget seems naive, although the principle of collective thinking and organization participation is commonly seen as the pathway to improvement. The question is how do you broadly inform all those who work in higher education about the intricacies and challenges of funding and then engage them in true creative thinking about alternatives?

There are many floating pieces to the puzzle of higher education planning and finance. Some of them are:

• Breaking down silos.
• Addressing inequality throughout K-12 and higher education.
• Attending to employer needs/demands.
• Expanding opportunities for faculty to be involved in broader administrative responsibilities through internships while they are graduate students or through serial and periodic administrative assignments during their careers.

Each of these involves challenging the dysfunction of structures and roles of higher education personnel, including challenging the merit of academic disciplinary focus as well as job-specific vested interests. As the world reemerges from the pandemic of 2020-21, most sectors are being forced to rethink work, workers, and delivery of the products of their industry. In the higher education example, how labor and laboring in higher education is viewed and reconfigured has to be undertaken in at least as innovative a way as those in health, government, services, and other sectors.