NEA HE Advocate: Quality in Higher Ed Is a Union Issue

'Quality in Higher Ed Is a Union Issue'
NEA President Chase Introduces the New Unionism

"Colleges and universities continue to devalue teaching at their own peril," NEA President Bob Chase told almost 500 higher education activists at the recent 1997 NEA higher education conference in San Diego. The conference focused on access, quality, and technology as the new issues unions need to address.

Chase, the keynote speaker at this the largest ever NEA higher education gathering, told the audience that teaching must be elevated to the status of research.

"No longer should the rewards of research outweigh those of teaching, in terms of either tenure tracks or salary," he said, noting that "teaching still plays second fiddle to research at our four-year colleges and universities."

The point, Chase emphasized, is to elevate teaching, not downgrade research.

"Research is enormously important," he said, pointing out that university research produces knowledge essential to the country's economic well-being.

"Everything from lasers to Internet navigators have come out of university-based research," he said.

Calling for a New Unionism that would make quality in education a collective bargaining issue, Chase told the higher education union leaders that the Association should play a central role in upgrading teaching.

Chase urged NEA local affiliates to bargain for more professional development opportunities for all faculty. He also urged higher ed units to challenge the academy's overreliance on an exploited, part-time, itinerant workforce and to make sure that faculty are decision-makers on issues of the new technology.

Some NEA affiliates, Chase noted, are already taking New Unionism approaches.

The United Faculty of Florida negotiated a contract with the state university system in record time by focusing on issues rather than staking out positions, he noted.

In Eastern Washington, the union and management bargained over improving the graduation rate, reducing the dropout rate, and improving the quality of instruction.

In addition, Chase pointed to a breakthrough settlement by the University of Hawaii Professional Assembly that will pave the way for other higher education bargaining units to protect the intellectual property rights of their members.

The NEA president also noted how the issue of professional integrity has galvanized the faculty at the University of Southern Illinois Carbondale as they combined the old unionism and the new to become NEA s newest higher education unit.

Chase termed access to higher education for minorities and the poor as another New Unionism issue and stressed the importance of "higher ed faculty stepping off the campus and wading into the storm-tossed waters of public K-12 education."

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