The year just past was pretty decent for the Assembly. Our programs at the Mark Twain House, the New Britain Museum of American Art, Fairfield University and Storrs were all up to our standard. Looking back, I'd like to thank some special individuals, the officers whose devotion makes the wheels turn. John Kolega, the Treasurer and bill payer, Ceil Welna, the Secretary and recorder, and Mary Rogers, tireless Editor and organizer of the newsletter are those whose continuing service has kept us going over the years, along with Tim Killeeen, Vice President and Membership Secretary. Nor should Mort Tenzer's contributions be ignored, with his wise counsel, his liaison work with the AAUP State Conference and other main branches of the Association. Walter Giger's presence as past president, and the invaluable zeal of May Giger in stimulating our adoption of the newer technologies of communication, aided by those she has enlisted, notably Judith Lefelar, Clifford Pelletier, and Richard Wurst, also deserve enthusiastic mention.
Another piece of good fortune, enabling me to feel that the year has ended with ebullient uplift, is of course the encouragement that many of us take from the Fall elections. There is a sense that a cloud has begun to lift, that ignorant dogmatism and overbearing surliness have carried their exemplars far enough for a fall. The Congress has turned a leaf, personified most of all by the new leadership of the House of Representatives. The change that one feels in the air, still but a presentiment, makes it possible to dream of many joyous upheavals, of reordered national priorities, probity restored, values reaffirmed to guide our government in its service to its citizens and in its own citizenship in the regional and global community. A tide of pessimism recedes with the Orwellian shadows of false speech, intrusions upon liberty, surveillance of citizens and the vision of perpetual war. Or so it seems to this writer.
I exaggerate. Improvement of our affairs will be incremental and inconsistent, and there are many things that encroach on our happiness without being the fault of the present national Administration. Some evils go back further. I'm thinking now, for example, of the continuing trend in the institutions of higher education in our country, to move towards employment at will as the model relationship between administration and scholar. The concept of tenure is so old fashioned, and the welfare of an institution so clearly calls for flexibility in the allocation of resources.
The national AAUP has sponsored a new survey, the Contingent Faculty Index, first released in December, that reports the number of faculty 2,617 American colleges and universities, as the Chronicle of Higher Education reported on December 15, 2006. Figures derive from data collected by the U S Department of Education for 2005, and questions have been raised about the reporting of figures from some institutions. The figures represent the numbers of faculty in each of three categories: those with tenure or on tenure track; those with full time appointments to whom tenure is neither granted nor available; and those with part time appointments. Few of us will be surprised to read that the tenured and/or tenurable faculty now constitute a mere 35% of faculty in the institutions reporting, or that this represents a decline from the 57% fraction of the 1970s. Even worse, "the proportion of professors in line for tenure has shrunk faster than the proportion of those who already enjoy tenure."
Florence Hatcher, a member of the AAUP Executive Council and Executive Secretary of the AAUP State Conference of Connecticut, is quoted in the CHE article: she says that the new Index will be useful to faculty groups concerned about and anxious to influence college hiring practices. Unfortunately, its impact may be limited by the increasing willingness of accrediting bodies to grant indulgence to institutions such as the University of Phoenix, where tenure is virtually nonexistent. But such indulgence is wrong, monstrous, and our obligation to challenge and oppose. Let us seek for ways to make our feelings known.
Nicholas Welchman
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