Are unions really associated with inferior universities rather than the flagship institutions that Ohio University considers its peers? The self-styled Committee for an Independent Faculty (OUCIF) suggests this in its most recent effort to scare its colleagues at OU from forming a collective bargaining unit.
I wonder, though, how OU faculty would view OUCIF's assertions about collective bargaining if they knew faculty at the following campuses enjoyed the benefits and protections of collective bargaining.
These include the University of Connecticut (OU peer institution), University of Delaware (OU peer institution), University of New Hampshire (OU peer institution), Rutgers University, University of Rhode Island, University of Vermont, New York Institute of Technology, Bard College, City University of New York (23 CUNY campuses), State University of New York (64 SUNY campuses), New Jersey Institute of Technology, Rider University, University of California (5 campuses: Berkeley-San Francisco, Davis, Riverside, San Diego, Santa Cruz), San Francisco Art Institute, and California State University (23 campuses).
Hardly a crowd of slacker institutions! And guess what? They all have active collective bargaining units that empower their faculties to win real and enforceable terms of employment and to exercise effective influence in matters of shared governance. For a list of AAUP-represented campuses, see http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/about/cbc/colbargainchap.htm.
What about OU? When OU is compared to its self-identified peer universities, the three institutions on the list represented by the AAUP surpass OU on numerous indicators of quality. OU boasts 82 percent freshman retention, but Connecticut boasts 91 percent, Delaware 90 percent, and New Hampshire 86 percent. OU has a graduation rate of 71 percent, but Connecticut graduates 74 percent, Delaware 76 percent, and New Hampshire 74 percent. While 15 percent of OU's freshmen are from the top 10 percent of their high school classes, at Connecticut 38 percent, at Delaware 39 percent, and at New Hampshire 20 percent are. OU accepts 85 percent of applicants, Connecticut 51 percent, Delaware 47 percent, and New Hampshire 67 percent. U.S. News & World Report ranks OU 54th among national public universities, but ranks Connecticut 24th, Delaware 31st, and New Hampshire 52nd. The student/faculty ratio at OU is 19-to-1 but only 17-to-1 at Connecticut and New Hampshire and 12-to-1 at Delaware (http://www.ohiou.edu/instres/univ/peerstudy/PeerComparisons.pdf).
As for the rest of OU's self-declared peer universities, all but Washington State are located in states that prohibit faculty from collective bargaining: Tennessee, Indiana, South Carolina, Alabama, Missouri and North Carolina. Luckily, Ohio has legislation enabling collective bargaining by faculty. Why would anyone NOT want to take advantage of laws offering faculty the legal means to enforce employment agreements?
An underlying fallacy in the OUCIF's argument is that nationally MOST faculty - at any kind of institution, no matter its national ranking - are NOT organized into collective bargaining units, period, just as most U.S. workers in every other field are not. Harvard, for example, dominates rankings but does not have collective bargaining; but then neither does the University of Phoenix, which fails to show up in the rankings at all.
It's impossible to know which institutions' faculty WOULD choose to form collective bargaining units if they weren't legally prohibited from doing so. However, the academic workforce in education generally and higher education in particular is opting for collective bargaining at a rate that eclipses the general workforce's rate of unionization (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/union2.pdf).
Collective bargaining does not tarnish or devalue an institution. Nor does it cause the quality of teaching and research to decline. Although the OUCIF acknowledges that correlation is not causation, they set up their correlation against collective bargaining anyway, claiming perceptions matter. Perceptions of what? That collective bargaining devalues a university. Go tell that to OU's peer institutions - especially those fortunately located in states that allow collective bargaining!
Tracy Leinbaugh is an associate professor in the Department of Counseling and Higher Education.
4 Opinion
