‘Separate but Not Quite Equal’: Collegiality Experiences of Full-Time Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Members

ABSTRACT

Collegiality, which indicates respect, a voice in decision making, and a commitment to the common good, is central to academic governance and faculty culture. However, as faculty work is increasingly unbundled, little is known about how concepts traditionally applied to tenure-track faculty, such as collegiality and the collegium (to which access is granted through recognition of expertise), apply to newer categories such as full-time non-tenure-track faculty (NTTF). This interview study investigated collegiality experiences among 38 full-time NTTF in a public comprehensive university and a religiously affiliated research university. A framework blending symbolic interaction (Blumer, 1980; Snow, 2001) and role ambiguity (Bess, 1992) was used to understand the experiences of NTTF with collegiality. Findings suggest that with little opportunity to earn recognition as experts based on scholarship, NTTF experiences with collegiality are at best conditional and at worst deficient. Interactions with colleagues, institutional structures, and professional/academic culture reflect substantial role ambiguity that creates a “separate but not quite equal” status for NTTF. The practice of maintaining NTTF on the periphery of collegiality and the collegium may well compromise the health and vitality of an increasingly differentiated faculty body and the ability of universities to accomplish their academic missions.

KEYWORDS:

• Non-tenure-track-faculty
• collegiality
• collegium
• qualitative
• symbolic interaction

Notes

1. Bowen and Tobin (2015) noted that today’s notions around shared governance and the collegium have emerged only in the last 100 or so years, with faculty input and authority peaking in the “golden age” (p. 135) of the 1960s. They argued growing fragmentation among faculty has constrained the ideal of open debate, consultation, and deliberation characteristic of the collegium. Their argument, together with Rice’s (1986) observation of the narrowing criteria for expertise, suggests that criteria for access to and the role of the collegium evolve and raise the question of whether even TTF feel a part of the collegium, at least in its ideal state, today.