New School and Parsons School of Design Adjunct Professors Go on Strike

[Langue_doc]

Striking professors stopped teaching classes and grading coursework on Wednesday after their contract expired earlier in the week.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/16/nyregion/new-school-parsons-strike-walkout.html

If the link doesn't work, here is the article:

Part-time faculty members at the New School, a historically progressive university that includes the Parsons School of Design, walked out en masse on Wednesday to protest pay and working conditions.

The strike is a culmination of years of contentious relations between the adjunct faculty and the university's administration and is part of a nationwide trend; earlier this week, 48,000 academic staff in the University of California system went on strike over job security.

At the New School in New York City, teaching staff complained that administrators' salaries were high compared with those of faculty, most of whom are part-time. At one point, the president of the New School was being paid more than the president of Harvard University.

Adjunct professors at the university have not received a raise in four years, and as a result, their real earnings have not kept up with inflation and are down 18 percent from 2018, according to A.C.T.-U.A.W. Local 7902, the union organizing the strike. The union said that while the university had offered a 3.5 percent wage increase, it was not sufficient given record inflation in recent months.

"The New School's reputation rests on its progressive history and professed values — a reputation with which its treatment of workers fails to align," the union said in a statement.

Amy Malsin, a spokeswoman for the university, said that negotiations would pick up again later in the week and that the school was "confident we will successfully reach a new agreement together."

"The New School's bargaining team is continuing to work incredibly hard to reach an agreement that prioritizes the mission of the university and preserves our students' exceptional academic experience, while reflecting the sincere respect we have for our part-time faculty," she added.

About 200 demonstrators showed up at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 14th Street, not far from the New School main campus building, shouting, "We're out here fighting for our contracts," as they carried signs that read "Administrative Thievery."

"We are a majority of the faculty body at the New School, and we have not been treated with respect," said Dianca London Potts, 35, a fiction teacher and a New School alumnus. "We work ourselves to the bone."

Annie Lee Larson, a professor at Parsons School of Fashion who teaches knitting and embroidery for design, said that she had to take three other jobs to supplement her income of $8,598 per year for teaching two semester-long courses.

"I don't have a safety net," said Ms. Larson. "I live alone in one of the most expensive cities in the world. If I can't pay my rent or bills, nobody else is stepping in to help."

The New School posted guidance for students and faculties during the strike, which instructed students to continue their coursework. It said the school respected teachers' right to strike.

Some tenured professors echoed the complaints of the striking adjuncts.

"The administrators seem to view themselves as essential and everyone else as inessential," said Sanjay Reddy, an economics professor at the university, who analyzed compensation data that showed that management salaries had increased by 45 percent between 2014 and 2019.

During that same period, he calculated, revenue increased only 17 percent. The New School largely depends on tuition for its revenue, unlike other institutions with large endowments. In 2017, Mr. Reddy's data showed that the institution's former president, David Van Zandt, received higher wages than his counterpart at Harvard, which has a bigger endowment and larger revenue streams.

The New School is "perhaps an especially pronounced, extreme, case" of a general trend among higher education facilities where administrative expenditures have been rising, he said.

Nearly 90 percent of the university's instructors are part-time, according to a trade union that represents part-time educators.

In response, Ms. Malsin said that the university's administrative costs include "student advisers, financial aid counselors, student health professionals and all manner of other student-facing functions." She said that "instruction and departmental research expenses" represented 36 percent of total expenditures in 2020, the largest portion of the university budget. Another third was spent on support and student services.

Many faculty — both adjunct and tenured — have argued that the university has not been transparent in sharing the details of these expenditures, noting that some senior administrative officials were nominally academics: A dean or an associate dean might have academic titles, even though their roles were administrative.

The total cost to attend the New School, including tuition, fees and on-campus living expenses, was $78,744 in 2021-22, an increase of 7 percent over the previous year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, though students typically pay significantly less when financial aid is included.

The New School, founded in 1919 as the New School for Social Research, an avant-garde institution aimed at countering the traditionalism of Ivy League schools, has produced some prominent academics and intellectuals, including the philosophers Hannah Arendt and Jacques Derrida, as well as Eric Fromm, the social psychologist.

It has been expanding internationally in recent years, and a third of its students are from overseas. Parsons became part of the New School in 1970.

[apl68]

Though the New School could perhaps use some rebalancing of priorities between administration and academics, it would take an enormous infusion of cash from somewhere--higher tuition, taxpayers, friendly billionaires--for the school to afford to pay all its staff a living wage by NYC standards.  They don't seem to have any such infusions in the works.

The "New School" is now 103 years old!  Well, that's still sort of new by Ivy League standards.

[dismalist]

Looks like they've outsourced teaching! You can do that in a couple of metropolitan areas.

[mamselle]

To what degree is their research grant-funded?

As I noted on the CA thread, some costs would just be folded into grant applications.

M.

[downer]

Solidarity! Good luck to the strikers. May they get everything they want.

[Hibush]

To what degree is their research grant-funded?

As I noted on the CA thread, some costs would just be folded into grant applications.

M.

That is a good question. If 90% of the instructors are part-time, they can't have many faculty as PIs on major grants. But maybe instructors are part time because they are on soft money.

Their subjects tend not to get gobs of Federal funding: design, performance, liberal arts, public engagement. Maybe some in social research.

[Mobius]

The blurb on the knitting professor...yikes! I mean, even with an 20% increase in her salary, her adjunct income isn't much better. The professor identity is really hard to let go of.

[Parasaurolophus]

The NSSR runs one of those dubious unfunded PhD programs in my field. They have 10 FT faculty members, an army of adjuncts, and, like, 100 PhD students and another chunk of MA students.

It's really not OK, especially for a supposedly socialist institution.

[dismalist]

The New School runs an unfunded PhD program in my field, too. They have about 10 FT faculty members and some adjuncts in Economics.

The core of what they teach is perfectly fine. The penumbra, in my opinion, is nuts, but that's totally beside the point. Tastes differ. I'm glad they exist and can fund themselves privately.

Some years ago I sent a student to their PhD program. I had some communications with the then chairman of the department. He was perfectly sane.

Look, you gotta pay for a socialist education nowadays. It's another form of sacrifice for socialism! :-)

[ciao_yall]

The blurb on the knitting professor...yikes! I mean, even with an 20% increase in her salary, her adjunct income isn't much better. The professor identity is really hard to let go of.

Well, she only teaches two classes per year. I don't know anyone who expects to support themselves, 100%, on a job that is basically, what, 20-25% of a full-time job, with school breaks off?

[Mobius]

What do the striking faculty want? Higher pay per class? FT positions? I know what the union leadership is negotiating, but rank-and-file might think it would lead to something else.

[Langue_doc]

The strike continues...

https://gothamist.com/news/new-school-and-part-time-faculty-union-to-meet-with-mediator

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/06/nyregion/new-school-parsons-strike.html

[Hibush]

The strike continues...

https://gothamist.com/news/new-school-and-part-time-faculty-union-to-meet-with-mediator

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/06/nyregion/new-school-parsons-strike.html

Some of the basic facts don't align well with a socialist operation.

• The total cost to attend the New School, including tuition, fees and on-campus living expenses, was $78,744 in 2021-22.
• The school's chief operating officer [is] a former McKinsey consultant.
• Adjunct professors are paid $5,753 for a three-credit course. The university does not compensate for out-of-classroom hours, which includes time spent grading papers or counseling students.
• Part-time instructors...make up about 90 percent of the faculty.

Regarding the third bullet, there is no mention of prep time! Strange omission for a reporter, unless they spend all their time writing and no time...reporting.

[Mobius]

I came across a tweet criticizing The New School for not paying striking faculty. I sympathize with their plight, but that's just a dumb criticism.

[waterboy]

I have done a few adjunct jobs over the years and I always assumed the pay, low as it was, covered ALL aspects of teaching a class, both in the classroom and out (such as grading,...). Thus I don't get the complaint being made. The overall pay might be low - probably is for NYC - but it (by my definition anyway) covers everything.