by Elizabeth J. Carter

The unveiling this past November of the first-ever collective-bargaining agreement between 2,000 part-time faculty and administration at the New School was met with widespread public attention and considerable self-congratulation by both sides. Indeed, the agreement is being described in superlatives usually reserved for the likes of pro athletes and hit television shows. In a statement to Inside Higher Education, for example, Richard Boris, Director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions of Hunter College at the City University of New York, called the contract “amazing”—one that will “serve as a template for contingent faculty throughout the country.” With similar effusion, New School President Robert Kerrey told The Chronicle of Higher Education that the agreement’s purported advances in guaranteeing job security amount to a “win-win situation.”

Many aspects of the contract are indeed impressive in their apparent commitment to improving the lot of part-time faculty, especially in the areas of health insurance and salary increases. Further, there is no arguing that the contract symbolizes how essential part-time faculty have become to the education of university students in this country. Nevertheless, a close look at the memorandum of the contract (which may be downloaded at http://www.newschooluaw.org/memorandum-of-agreement.html), reveals gaping holes in its potential application. These holes could result in a nullification of nearly every crucial benefit conferred by the contract, and leave part-time faculty once again on the street, tin cups in hand.

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