Writing at the Atlantic, Megan McArdle wonders why academics--whose political demographics suggest they ought to be sensitive to matters of workplace exploitation--are among the most exploitative employers around. Quoting an Inside Higher Ed piece about how 73 percent of college teachers are now non-tenure-track, and how these teach over half of all courses at public colleges and universities, McArdle lays out a problem and a paradox:

Academia has bifurcated into two classes: tenured professors who are decently paid, have lifetime job security, and get to work on whatever strikes their fancy; and adjuncts who are paid at the poverty level and may labor for years in the desperate and often futile hope of landing a tenure track position. And, of course, graduate students, the number of whom may paradoxically increase as the number of tenure track jobs decreases--because someone has to teach all those intro classes.

I have long theorized that at least some of the leftward drift in academia can be explained by the fact that it has one of the most abusive labor markets in the world. I theorize this because in interacting with many professors, I am bewildered by their beliefs about labor markets more generally; many seem to think of private labor markets as an endless well of exploitation where employees are virtual prisoners with no recourse in the face of horrific abuses. Yet this does not describe the low wage jobs in which I've worked--there were of course individuals who had to hold onto that particular job for idiosyncratic reasons, but as a class, low wage workers do not face the kind of monolithic employer power that a surprising number of academics seem to believe is common.

It is common, of course--in academia. Until they have tenure, faculty are virtual prisoners of their institution. Those on the tenure track work alongside a vast class of have-nots who are some of the worst-paid high school graduates in the country. So it's not surprising to me that this is how academics come to view labor markets--nor that they naturally assume that it must be even worse on the outside. And that's before we start talking about the marriages strained, the personal lives stunted, because those lucky enough to get a tenure-track job have to move to a random location, often one not particularly suited to their spouses' work ambitions or their own personal preferences . . . a location which, barring another job offer, they will have to spend the rest of their life in.

What puzzles me is how this job market persists, and is even worsening, in one of the most left-wing institutions in the country. I implore my conservative commenters not to jump straight into the generalizations about how this always happens in socialist countries; I'm genuinely curious. Almost every academic I know is committed to a pretty strongly left-wing vision of labor market institutions. Even if it's not their very first concern, one would assume that the collective preference should result in something much more egalitarian. So what's overriding that preference?

The strong suggestion seems to be that if academics really were more radical, the labor problem would not exist--because academics would organize to fight the power. Bousquet concludes with two questions:

Maybe we should ask ourselves, "What obligations do professionals have to the profession, to other professionals, and the society we serve?"

And: "Where are we obliged to act collectively and draw the line with management on these issues? Did we cross that line about 30 years ago?"

But Bousquet's second question does not follow from the first. Surely unions are not the only answer? And surely unions can cause their own intractable and damaging problems--particularly in a delicate setting like a university, where there are fluid governance relationships and where something a lot more vulnerable and non-quantifiable than widgets is being made? It's quite a piece of prestidigitation to culminate a rousing plea for a better academic workplace with a single, one-size-fits-all "solution" that may be no solution at all.

After all, as Neil Hamilton and others have argued, one of the reasons why the tenure track is disappearing is that for the last forty years, academics have adopted a collective bargaining mentality that focusses almost exclusively on securing rights, perks, and job security. This mentality has colonized the concept of academic freedom--which has historically described academics' responsibilities to the truth and to the public--so that today many academics think of academic freedom almost entirely in terms of what is owed to them. Meanwhile, ethical lapses such as cheating, plagiarism, and research misconduct are running rampant in an academy that does not police itself.

Bousquet is clever like a fox: With his two questions, he raises the issue of professional responsibility in order to argue that the most responsible professional path is to "act collectively and draw the line with management;" i.e., to unionize.

But if the union mentality is a big part of what is wrong with academic culture right now--and a big reason why academics have lost credibility with "management"--then it's not likely to be much of a solution at all, and could well exacerbate the problem. After all, "management" as Bousquet uses it is a weasel word for deans (who answer to presidents and provosts), presidents and provosts (who answer to trustees), and trustees (who answer to the public, as the AAUP notes in its 1915 Declaration of Principles). Management isn't some evil Gordon Gecko-like guy exploiting workers from the swank comfort of his glass high rise office. Management is us! And we just might say that unionization is not the answer.

UPDATE: As long as we are on the subject, this Peter Berkowitz piece on academics' abdication of ethics is worth a read. Academe's labor problem, which, as Bousquet notes, is also an ethical problem, can't be studied in a vacuum. Unionizing will just make the problems Berkowitz describes worse--because the union mentality is one of advocating for rights, defending turf, and extracting resources, rather than of vigilant self-regulation centered on accepting and fulfilling core responsibilities.