Betrayal of Mission: Union Busting on Catholic Campuses

In recent decades, a predominantly tenure-line faculty has been replaced by a non-tenure line faculty, the bulk of whom are commonly referred to as “adjunct faculty,” and who, at seventy-five percent of the professoriate, are changing fundamentally the face of higher education. Adjunct faculty do without many of the basic conditions long the mainstay of tenure, including the guarantee of academic freedom and the promise of a living wage. They have no guarantee of employment. Many adjunct faculty members, furthermore, receive little or no intuitional support necessary for the flourishing of their teaching, and they are largely at a distance from the decision-making processes that help to shape what they teach their students. Most adjunct faculty receive no encouragement to engage in scholarship, undermining the scholarly enterprise to which institutions of higher education have long been committed. They have little say in governance.