but I love the work and would do it for free. (Don’t tell my boss.)
It also means I was very interested in Richard Vedder’s comments on some of the discussion at a meeting he attended.
Dan Julius, the Provost at Benedictine University, called for more serious academic research on labor issues, suggesting good ideas for studies. For example, has the spread in the use of part-time non-tenured (“contingent”) faculty led to reductions in academic or instructional quality? What is the relationship between academic quality and unionization? Good questions, deserving serious scrutiny. And Ernst Benjamin, who runs the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), saw a potential dilemma. In pushing hard for higher salaries and fringe benefits for mostly tenure track full time faculty, unions increase the incentives for institutions to hire more adjunct faculty with low pay and fringe benefits. He came close to suggesting that unions are promoting the demise of their own membership by driving universities to lower cost substitutes for their services.