The Challenges of Minoritized Contingent Faculty in Higher Education

Edna Chun, Alvin Evans

• Publisher: Purdue University Press
• Year: 2023
• ISBN:
  9781612498386
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

The Challenges of Minoritized Contingent Faculty in Higher Education offers a probing and unvarnished look at the employment challenges of these faculty members in four-year institutions. With dramatic shifts in the faculty workforce and nearly three-quarters of instructional positions in United States institutions now off the tenure track, contingent faculty have become the essential, frontline workers of higher education. Remarkably little research attention has focused on the experiences of minoritized contingent faculty in this new academic underclass. Based on in-depth interviews coupled with extensive research, the book highlights the double marginalization that can occur due to secondary employment status in the academic hierarchy, and the exclusion resulting from the intersectionality of nondominant social identities including race and ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability. As the first-person narratives reveal, these faculty often struggle for acceptance, recognition, and rewards in the day-to-day academic environment, and they can face devaluation of their contributions. As a pragmatic and concrete resource, this book offers proactive workforce strategies and key structural and policy recommendations that will assist academic and administrative leaders, including presidents, provosts, department chairs, and chief diversity officers, in building more inclusive working conditions for contingent faculty.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Impact of COVID-19 and the Defunding of Higher Education on Contingent Faculty
• 1 How Did We Get Here? Neoliberalism and the Two-Tiered Faculty Equation
• 2 Demographics of the New Academic Underclass
• 3 The Precarious Working Conditions of Minoritized Contingent Faculty
• 4 Resilient Coping Strategies of Minoritized Contingent Faculty
• 5 Navigating Systemic Change in Contentious Times
• 6 Moving the Needle in Contingent Faculty Employment: Recommendations for Change
• Appendix: Profile of Survey Respondents
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Authors