If you are reluctant to ask the way, you will be lost
Malay proverb
Toke Hoppenbrouwers, Ph.D.

"Who are you?" I said to a gentleman I saw standing in front of "my" office, looking at the name cards posted on the door. He had a key and was about to enter. I had just left my office for a brief walk down the hall to get a cup of coffee. He hesitated then said his name. I said mine. It dawned on me. His name was on one of the several name cards posted on the door. Of course, that response of 'who are you' was less than gracious and expressed not just curiosity but a combination of disbelief, hurt and anger that he did not deserve.

For more than twenty years I have been a part-time instructor in the Psychology Department at a major California State University. I have had to move my office numerous times to find shared space. Thanks to relocation of other departments in the building about four years ago, I had been given the use of the office of a full-time colleague who had two. In the beginning I used her office furtively, as if I didn't belong there. One day, however, my competent teaching assistant Marnie Labadie filed all my exams and teaching material for each class in a separate drawer. She put weekly quizzes in large labeled folders, and afterwards she and I systematically threw away many loose papers that had accumulated. That re-organization prompted me to bring a Van Gogh print and a clock. I had indeed a place of my own.

At the beginning of the summer, not suspecting any change, I had created a modicum of order on my desk and had left for vacation. Now the fall semester was about to begin. The week before I had returned to 'my' office, a space measuring 10x10 ft with one desk, two chairs and two filing cabinets. I got my first surprise: It was full of boxes, files and materials of another part-timer that had apparently been moved during the summer. I had had no forewarning of such a move, and as a result no opportunity to re-organize the office to make room for this person and his stuff. I know he has been a part-time faculty member for at least a dozen years and he supervises many student research projects. Small wonder that a large pile of student research posters was standing against the wall. My immediate response was shock. I then presumed that with new faculty coming aboard, and no new office space, the Department needed to consolidate and had put us together. I imagined he might not have been notified either. "Must not be very pleasant for him to find his stuff moved, " I muttered to myself.

This first day of classes, I was confronted with yet another reality. Not only was I to share the office with this colleague, there were two additional names posted on my door. But that was just the beginning. Already that morning when I was sitting behind the desk seeing a student, yet another part-timer who claimed he belonged in the office visited me. At that point I was merely incredulous and the student later remarked how rude this individual was toward me. Who else might show up? I thought it would be wise to contact our new Chair and ask for clarification. She came promptly and explained that they, the powers to be, had consolidated all part-timers into two offices including "mine." I reminded her that on Monday, Wednesday and Friday my courses begin at 8:00 am and end around 3:15. I use the time between classes for office hours and preparation. She re-assured me that indeed this office would then be my primary place and within a few days it would all settle down when all part-timers would have found their place. With this knowledge I began to consolidate all my loose stuff and books on two of the six shelves, and then stepped out for coffee.

As an old­timer, I am teaching many courses, in fact more than most full- and part-time teachers. I have taught Introductory Psychology, Physiological Correlates of Behavior, Behavioral Disorders and Psychopharmacology- a course I designed and navigated through various committees, years ago. I also have taught Health Psychology when there was a need for it, and the senior-level Brain and Behavior with a laboratory. One semester in the past I had been offered Human Sexuality. "You are the person here that can do this," my full-time colleague told me when he went on sabbatical. I accepted the challenge. The same was true for a course in Developmental Disabilities a couple of years back. And just recently, when a new section needed to be opened, the Chair offered me the course Developmental Psychology, three days before classes started. I appreciate this offer in particular, because it brought me close to the number of units guaranteed by our recent contract. Teaching a new course requires a lot of additional preparation but I don't mind. I wish to retire in two or three semesters to devote myself to writing and my future retirement check depends on the number of units I teach now.

With so many courses I have inevitably accumulated paperwork. With the advent of four more people in the office I foresaw chaos. So when I said, "who are you?" we set out poorly, this unknown colleague and I. When I indicated that the room was available for his office hour, but not the hour before, because I expected to be in the office-perhaps he could find room in the other one, he was not pleased. Knowing nothing more, I would not have been pleased either. He took the time to write a lengthy complaint to the Chair. I found a copy in my mailbox a few days later with a note: "please come and talk to me." She is new to the job this year. In our Department Chairs have remained in office for two or three years of late. I don't envy their task. I can't imagine the fast learning to be done the last weeks of the summer and the first days of the fall semester. I have every reason to believe that she is smart, fair and devoted. So my first sentence was: "Don't worry, I will apologize. How I began my conversation was not very gracious. But please let him know that I was not made aware of these changes."
"Yes, sorry that's my mistake," she replied.

So I did apologize. Dwelling a little longer on this unpleasant experience, it began to dawn on me, however, that it is part of a much larger issue. By a recent estimate, almost 50 percent of faculty at four-year colleges is part-time . In our Department, part-timers often teach a larger number of students than full time faculty. The two tiered­part-time/full-time faculty structure initiated at least twenty years ago has built-in features that foster scenes I just described.
Scarcity
In-group versus out-group
Fundamental attribution error
Entrapment

We psychologists usually label and explain these constructs. At this time it is probably useful to detail how these operate to perpetuate a grossly unfair system in many universities and colleges nationwide. Understanding these ideas will shed light on the current part-time/full-time predicament. "Ideas we have, and do not know we have, have us, (2) psychologist James Hillman wrote. Indeed, I doubt whether my colleagues are aware that they unconsciously hold some of the beliefs I am about to discuss. Awareness is a prerequisite for any meaningful change.

Scarcity: If you ask 15 faculty to share two small rooms with a total of three desks in a department with about 40 office spaces and do not notify them of the impending changes, wouldn't you expect them to first get mad at each other before they realize that they ought not to make each other the target? There are plenty of examples of this phenomenon in society. Of course, others might think that in this case, I just reacted impetuously and displayed poor impulse control-- an idea that can also be defended.

In-group versus out-group: Give one group most of the traditional privileges and the other group hardly any. Tenure for instance, and the privilege of judging the members of the other group on merit; the power of hiring and dismissing; to apportion course load and times to teach; to pronounce on grievances. Moreover, give the tenured group not just security but significantly more money than the other group whose members don't know from one semester to the next whether they will be re-hired- wouldn't you expect that members of the former experience a tad of discomfort that they try to reduce by suggesting to themselves at critical times that they are indeed superior? In psychological parlance this is referred to as reducing dissonance. This creates a risk for the out-group. Part-timers almost inevitably need to protect themselves from an open or implied projected inferiority. For instance, I once saw a memo from a full-time faculty to other full-timers implying that the letters of recommendations for the graduate student program received from part-timers were worth less than those received from full-timers.

Fundamental attribution error: In the past decade, full-time faculty has benefited from the fact that part-timers were available for teaching. As a result the former had more options such as teaching intrinsically easier and more attractive small seminars and re-assignment time for projects of interest, including sabbatical projects. Similarly, the California State University system has benefited economically by balancing their budgets on the backs of part-time faculty who earn much less for comparable work. It is often heard, however, that academic standards have been lowered as a consequence. This sounds very much like blaming the victim. Thompson has pointed out that the presumed deterioration is not necessarily attributed to the pressure and situation part-timers need to work under, but to their lack of education and experience (3). As an example, in contrast to tenured full-time faculty, part-time faculty must submit themselves to student evaluations for every course during every semester. Their grading is scrutinized to ensure that favorable ratings are not 'bought' by easy grading. I believe accountability is important for every faculty member who teaches and I have many colleagues who would agree with me. However, evaluating my teaching for twenty years uninterruptedly seems overkill and a waste of energy and time; moreover, the requirement grabs me as slightly insulting and foolish. Does somebody fear that after fifteen or twenty years, as a part-timer I am uniquely vulnerable to undergo a sudden personality change that jeopardizes my ability to teach and by inference, jeopardizes my students?

Entrapment: People will over time express more commitment to the two-tiered system because a retreat would essentially signal that the system was flawed. The longer such a system is in place, the harder it becomes for some to admit that a mistake was made. It is not so much that all participants in the system believe deeply in its worth, I suppose. But for the comfort of many, the system remains unexamined so that the embarrassment of admitting the mistake does not need to be faced. Apartheid in South Africa and our own system of racial segregation are historical examples where entrapment played a role to sustain unfair situations until gradually awareness grew enough to create a climate where efforts to bring about changes could succeed. Unfortunately, I see no indication yet that the Administration, the Faculty or the California Faculty Association (CFA) are close to facing this embarrassment by seriously working toward a more equitable system; not even in light of 'comparable worth' considerations.

What is the stance of the CFA toward this two-tiered system? I have been a member of this union from inception but most of the membership is tenured and full-time. I consider it somewhat shortsighted not to be a member of the union but, realistically, the members of my group may be there one semester and not the next, and there is no discount on their membership fee. CFA has to satisfy the majority first and the issues of lecturers, as we part-timers are called, are of low priority. Historically some tenured professors have had their own outside consulting practices and sizable extra incomes. Indeed there have hardly been any limitations placed on the percent of time professors in our university system can devote to outside work. Within limits, it is good to bring this firsthand experience to teaching; students are the better for it. However, of late, the powers-that-be have instituted tighter accountability. Increases in pay are to be based on documented merit, following the unpopular Faculty Merit Increase (FMI) program based on faculty activity reports. The outside work really has to benefit the university and students, and a bit of scrutiny is to be implemented. CFA is fighting this FMI program tooth and nail with the Chancellor. CFA prefers across the board raises, irrespective of merit. They reason that there should not be distinctions created between tenured faculty members. Whether or not there exists already a chasm the size of the Grand Canyon between faculty that teach in the same department is for this argument conveniently forgotten.

The administration loves this situation. "Divide and conquer". Why not divide the faculty even more? Success in dividing was manifest a winter ago, when the fulltime faculty apparently voted to apportion 90% of the FMI funds among themselves, and leave just 10% for distribution among the 15 or so part-timers. "There wasn't enough money to give to everybody, but what was given was just about enough for an extra pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream every month", our Chair told me. I know she and two other faculty members had tried to sway the vote but were unsuccessful. The privileged group is obviously not likely to make sacrifices for the under-privileged one; on the contrary they were gripped by a terminal attack of greed. From their point of view we seem to be the scabs. There are hundreds of us waiting in the wings. Obviously, the Administration only stands to benefit from this implied judgment. They won't expect to find any strong, principled opposition from CFA- that represents mostly full-timers- to the continued exploitation of part-timers. Indeed, the Administration has been unwilling to budge on salaries and job security for part-timers. For each of the last contract negotiations, CFA has told us they had no choice but to relent.

If I teach full-time, which I am not allowed as of two semesters ago, my annual salary after more than 20 years of teaching is about $ 49,000. Full-time, tenured faculty members, who have been in the Department for an equivalent number of years, will have a salary in the neighborhood of $ 80,000 (4). In fact, the beginning salary for an Assistant Professor is around $ 42,000 as of last spring. As part-timer I cannot move from Assistant to Associate to Full professor. I reached the upper limit of what part-timers can earn about a decade ago. Merit and general increases are the only ways to get a raise. Awards ranged from 1-5% this year, according to our newly appointed President. She failed to acknowledge that the salary gap between part-timers and full-timers in our Department had been enlarged again with the 10/90 split. In principle, merit raises that tenured faculty despise, do not get me worked up. When many of my full-time colleagues do not seem to notice that they fail to practice what they teach and, I fear, are content to remain ignorant, I feel compelled to register my complaint. CFA encouraged all faculty to use the FMI appeal process, but they explicitly cautioned not to speak negatively about faculty colleagues.

During my 20 years at this university, CFA has been able to negotiate a few improvements. But even if there is a minor victory, such as two- year contracts for part-timers who have taught for more than seven years, part-timers are left to fight for implementation within their own Department. Just recently, a decision came down from the Dean's office that part-timers cannot be teaching the maximum full-time equivalent 15 units any more. Too bad if that violates the two-year contract that stipulates that part-timers will be offered the number of units that they taught before.

In reality though, salaries of tenured university faculty are by no means outrageous. I don't begrudge them a salary that is a little closer to the large, six-figure salaries of administrators such as the chancellor. I certainly do not want to imply that tenure should be abolished. On the contrary, tenure is essential. It is not easy to state what you think, if your job is at stake. I am aware of this while writing this essay.

A priori, I do not see demons in my Department, or in my University. I have gotten to know most of my colleagues in the Department and I respect them. I find them fair, competent and they have the students' welfare in mind. Some I consider friends. They are invariably courteous to me and some are vocal in their admiration for my reputation as a teacher, as a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California, and a writer in my personal life. That makes up for the small indignities of being left out of photo displays in the hallway, of finding sketchy curriculum vitae information on the Internet compared to information on full-timers, or of discovering that we cannot sign our own name when we supervise students for community projects. In that sense my displeased colleague and I agree. He ended his letter speaking of "the typical collegial behaviors I had been accustomed to at " this major University.

In fact, I love this University for its outreach and diversity. Our University is student-oriented. It is rated one of the most welcoming for disabled and deaf students and for Chicano students. Two thirds of my students' parents or grandparents were born outside the United States. According to a National Science Foundation survey, the Psychology Department is the first to get their graduates into PhD. programs and complete them. I have reasons to be proud of my University. Our last President left a more diverse campus than the one she found and our newly appointed President promises to continue vigorous minority recruitment and to improve the climate in which we work.

I do feel less charitable about the chancellor's office. Two years ago, during bargaining, I received a letter from the Chancellor stating that he thought it unreasonable that CFA was hoping to win some security for long-time part-timers. After all, they had not gone through the rigorous scrutiny that full-timers typically go through, he argued. This is another example of "divide and conquer." I wrote a letter to him explaining that I have been scrutinized every semester for 20 years through student evaluations. On top of that are the peer evaluations. Besides, I am laid off every year by the end of June and rehired in September under the provision that there is work. Every year, I have to reapply and my updated curriculum vitae and performance are reevaluated before rehiring. At that time I am competing for courses with newly hired, less expensive part-timers who have been added to the pool. These individuals are hired for their special expertise and can now be given preferentially the courses that I have taught in the past. Supposedly, the powers-that-be can declare disingenuously: "There is not enough work for you anymore. Sorry, we cannot give you the units that your two-year contract specifies." This makes a mockery of the contract.

"A member of the administration told us that the newest 2-year contract for long-term part-timers is not ironclad," the Chair reminds me. Apparently, our Chancellor and President disseminate interpretations of the contract that are in direct opposition to what it intended to accomplish: a modicum of job security and financial stability. Are we indeed so poorly represented by our Union or is this more "divide and conquer"?

A perceived lack of forthrightness on the part of our leaders is demoralizing. If this is the experience of about half of the faculty who teach the majority of the students, it is bound to affect the quality of education and the academic program in a university system. We are teaching because we like teaching, but it is more difficult to sustain enthusiasm in the face of inequities and mistrust.

It is not that the State Legislature has not made more funding available for faculty salaries. Cumulatively, the Chancellor as of the fall of 2000 spent $100 million less on such salaries than was budgeted, according to an estimate by CFA. Who knows what it has been spent on, administrative items and raises or is that money still in the bank? Apparently, the system is not transparent enough to track the expenses.

I see a disappointing lack of forthrightness and vision in our Chancellor. "Divide and conquer" seems an obsolete way to govern. It doesn't capitalize on the unique contributions that every member makes. It doesn't inspire individuals to give their best to the whole of the university or society. Our leaders could begin to showcase the contributions of the individuals I encounter every workday when they are about to finish their cleaning shift. They haul away big plastic bags of garbage that they have collected from everywhere in the building, are putting the finishing touches on mirrors in the bathrooms and flush the toilets once more before the hordes of students arrive. They might feature the staff of the physical plant that oils the machinery of our infrastructure. They might showcase librarians, secretaries, computer staff, telephone operators and clerks. Indeed rather than denigrate or ignore the contributions of part-timers, they might take pride in the quality of this flexible workforce and show what they uniquely provide to students, colleagues and the university at large. Let's look again at the psychological constructs, introduced in the beginning.

The fundamental myth is that of quality differences between full-timers and part-timers, a created myth to perpetuate the status quo. It serves the Administration; its maintenance requires the collusion of full-time faculty and ignorance on the part of students, their parents and society at large. If capabilities and achievements of part-timers were widely known it would become obvious that there is no inherent difference between full-timers and part-timers other than those created artificially to support the inequity in institutional rewards. Among each group there will be excellent teachers and mediocre ones. The chance that part-timers are poor teachers is slim. They would not be rehired. In contrast, most departments have a couple of poor, tenured full-time teachers/professors. There will be young and relatively inexperienced ones and older ones among each group. There will be tremendously productive individuals and less productive ones. In each group, there will be those that freely and generously contribute to the community at large around the University. The decision to have the full-time faculty govern the part-timers is not based on intrinsic worth but on financial considerations of the Administration and, I fear, to create a division that makes university-wide governance easier. In the current situation the Administration saves millions from employing part-timers. In addition they have nothing to fear in terms of complaints from this group who has no organized or substantial voice in either departmental or university-wide governance. Putting the full-time faculty in charge of the part-timers could be construed as a means to make the full-timers feel superior and important. It also serves to make them less inclined to complain. After all, their situation is vastly better than those they govern.

As full-time faculty one only has to be human and relatively unaware to then act as every other subject in social experiments. A fight for crumbs, entrapment, reduction of dissonance and fundamental attribution errors are well documented and ubiquitous in society at large.
Of course, the Chancellor manages with the help of the trustees who have given him a mandate. In our society with its economic dictum "leaner and meaner" and "the bottom line counts," he is following in the footsteps of many other CEO's. Most large businesses and corporations have resorted to two-tiered systems. It is no secret that many executives construe their mission solely as the maximization of profit. Here and abroad, they seem to have succeeded in re-structuring businesses so that they are more flexible and productive. Much has been written already about the fact that the university is now a business. Campus, Inc, edited by Geoffrey White, is one of the newest additions; it consists of 30 essays that discuss the ramifications of this "corporatization" of the university (5).

I don't want to demonize those who see their role as making businesses more flexible and efficient; it is becoming clearer, however, there is a price to pay. I am reminded of the frog story. If you slowly increase the water temperature for a frog with increments of a tenth of a tenth of a degree, letting him adjust to each increment, over a long period of time he can handle a large temperature increase. Another frog thrown into a pond with the last temperature that the previous one survived, would succumb immediately. In this climate we are slowly adjusting like the frog. There is a price to pay for individuals such as faculty and administrators. Maintaining a two-tiered system requires tremendous 'blindness.'' Remember, "ideas we have, and do not know we have, have us." This blindness is bound to take its toll. We humans are both frail and strong. It is hard to predict who will have to face a stroke, cancer, suicide, mental illness and other stresses such as accidents, loss of property by fire, financial setbacks or loss of a job, conditions that might precipitate more catastrophic outcomes. The terrorist attacks have not made our lives easier in this respect. Some of us may be ill equipped to handle the hardships created by the additional ubiquitous competitive climate surrounding us all. It prompts me to say: "Even though competition and the two-tier system were adopted long before your arrival, you are now in charge, Chancellor. This is a risky strategy." We hope that we can inoculate ourselves against deleterious outcomes, but the reality is: "Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one," as Voltaire proclaimed. I wonder what will accelerate the changes that are both desirable and inevitable? Will a critical mass of adverse personal experiences alert us to the dangers we have created?

The frog story also applies to the professoriate at large. The last issue of Thought and Action was devoted to the slow, incremental changes in the status of the profession that have been creeping up on us (6). It is essentially a warning about:
"Threats to tenure and academic freedom.
A for profit consumerism that controls and defines the purpose of higher education.
Dwindling numbers of full-time faculty, separated from dramatically increasing numbers of exploited part-time faculty.
An increasing loss of control over determining the professorate's role in society."
Lastly, the frog story applies to students and to society at large. The students are our future leaders. What happens when the chancellor and the university presidents narrow their roles to corporate functionaries and see the students as just consumers? Ideally, enlightened leaders, especially those in academia such as chairs of departments, university presidents and chancellors are ahead of the curve; that means they are in developmental stages that have gone beyond a worshipping of scientific achievement and materialistic gains. One wishes our academic leaders had reached a more relational, world-centric viewpoint, where decisions are arrived at through consensus and reconciliation, where a caring for the earth and sensitivity toward all its inhabitants is evident. After all, our entire world is a two-tiered system, the 'haves' and the 'have-nots', here and abroad. New thinking is in the air, however. Bill Gates, probably the richest man in the world, is spending billions of his and his wife's foundation money on medical care and vaccinations in Third World countries. As he put it, according to a recent NY Times report: " The world's poorest two billion people desperately need healthcare right now, not laptops. "

Are there perhaps other encouraging trends that suggest that our leaders are becoming wiser in governance of our businesses and institutions? After all, it is at this level that enlightened policies need to be envisioned and implemented. I like to think of academia as the place where innovative ideas can be spawned and nurtured. Today, there are some interesting new ideas being promulgated among political and business leaders in such places as the State of the World Forum and the Leadership Circle7. There is a growing awareness that the very complex world we live in, with its instantaneous information exchange across populations of vastly different cultural backgrounds and worldviews, requires leaders with unusual wisdom and depth. Mandela is the first person who comes to my mind. The pace of our society does not foster a quiet search, except for a few. Nor has our work life during the last two decades been conducive to the pursuit of values, morals, an examined life and the inner journey of consciousness. However, interest in eastern thought with its emphasis on wholeness and integration is entering our culture in new ways, including the world of governance and business. Integral approaches pay attention to interior development of both the individual and society at large. If the two-tiered system is here to stay, our leaders might discover valuable ideas in these more integral ways of looking(7).

I like to believe that all teaching is ultimately a matter of enhancing awareness and a moral awakening. In that sense, all of us need to remain students. Then we may discover ways to less adversarial negotiations, for instance. David Noble recently suggested that unions see their role as not just representing the narrow interest of their members, but the interest of society at large (8). If an orchestra is a good metaphor for a university as Hugo Sonnenschein proposed at his retirement as president from the University of Chicago then,

The gap between boards, presidents, and administrators (the conductors) and the faculty (the orchestra) needs to be bridged. Each component has certain specific roles to play, but the ultimate success of the university will occur when all those who make up the university come together to create a unified vision of the future, inspiring each to a higher level of involvement, commitment and excellence. Samuel Goldman, 20009

This is the only scenario from which our students and society can truly benefit. I take a risk by speaking my truth as a part-timer. But part of teaching is modeling for our students. Over the past five years, our Department has been hiring a group of young, enthusiastic and talented full-time tenure-track faculty. I would like to think that speaking my truth would embolden them as well. The protagonists in this story are resourceful people. We cope with disappointments. I don't stand to benefit from future changes in the two-tiered faculty system throughout the California State University. Fortunately I like teaching and, as an immigrant I have always felt right at home among our students; many of who have had to overcome more serious obstacles than I.

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Notes:

1 Brent Staples, New York Times, Summer 1997

2 James Hillman, Kinds of Power, Currency Doubleday, NY 1995, p16

3 Karen Thompson, Piecework to Parity: Part-Timers in Action. Thought and Action, 16:53-60, 2001

4. As of 2001

5 Geoffrey White, Editor of Campus, Inc. Prometheus, 2000

6 Jim Sullivan, Overview; Thought and Action, A Retrospective Issue, 16:5-6, 2000

7 An innovative vision of leadership can be found in Spiral Dynamics, Mastering Values, Leadership and Change by Don Beck and Chris Cowan, based on writings by Clare Graves (Cambridge, Mass, Blackwell Publishers, 1995). Apparently, these writers were quite involved in the transition from Apartheid in South Africa to a more enlightened mode of governance. The recent writings of Ken Wilbur, such as A Theory of Everything, An Integral Vision of Business, Politics and Spirituality (Shambala, Boston, 2000) also speak to these issues

8 David Noble, Science for Sale; Thought and Action 16:151-156

9 Samuel Goldman, The Imperative of Transforming the Professoriate; Thought and Action