All of this is predicated on the privilege to attend university. We must also acknowledge that there are mainstay barriers to access to higher education. If addressed, those barriers are evaluated from a student experience, as they should be. It’s important to consider that financial barriers also affect our employed campus communities.
Moving expenses, gaps in new-hire insurance coverage, and single end-of-month pay systems preclude many graduate students, junior faculty members, and adjuncts from taking jobs and finding housing, thereby limiting their options on their path to success. Being able to move, having enough in savings to wait for that first paycheck, and not needing a month of health coverage is a financially privileged and ableist perspective. Schools need to better address prospective employees’ financial burdens in relocating and/or transitioning to a new institution.
Once employed, retirement plans reinforce a wealth gap that is naturally most prominent at well-funded institutions. Many have called out the anti-humanitarian and antiquated pay structures designed to mirror hierarchies of power, lining the pockets of upper administration; others have had no choice but to live in cars and tents. (Aimée Lê’s story featured in The Guardian is the most recent of published examples.) This classist, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and ablest structure is reinforced by not contributing to adjunct and graduate student retirement plans and paying qualifying employees based on their current salary, widening the class divide.
The solution is quite simple: equal pay for equal work and equal retirement contributions among all campus employees. We recognize many institutions will sweep past this idea, hiding behind budget constraints and institutional bylaws. We encourage all higher education employees to hold your institutions accountable, and even more so that those in positions of power commit to doing the work we know can be done.
We implore universities to stop blaming their financial woes for their limitations to change when what we’re experiencing is a failure to address inequity in campus populations. That is not to say universities don’t face financial problems; we know categorically they do. It is to say that some of that burden would be remedied by addressing the root of the problem (inequity and misappropriation of funds) rather than the symptom.
Intuitions need to embody and model equity. These issues aren’t being solved by mere acknowledgment of their existence and empty action plans to investigate their impact. Campus communities have been telling you their impact, pleading for change. It’s time to triage inequity; it’s time for action.
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