CSU Teaching Staff in a "Race To The Bottom: Losing Ground and Losing Faith"

This paper is based on the results of a survey on CSU faculty salaries distributed by the California Faculty Association and responded to by over 5,500 faculty members during the period of February 6 to March 16, 2015.

Faculty were asked questions about their economic situations and were also given the opportunity to add written comments about their personal experiences. One indicator of the intensity of faculty feeling about salaries is that over 2,600 actually took the time to make extended comments; of those, more than 800 were willing to have their comments made public and to be contacted for further interviews. A number of respondents were contacted in order to follow up in more detail on their written comments.

Both the quantitative and the qualitative data reveal a significant economic precariousness in the lives of many CSU faculty. From these responses (and from the salary data provided in our first paper), it is undeniable that significant numbers of faculty teaching in the CSU today are among California’s “working poor.” Many others are financially hanging on by a thread through a variety of means, from living far from campus to save money on housing to postponing having children and borrowing from friends and relatives. Even many full professors, who often have been in the system long enough to have bought a house in easier times and to have received salary increases over the years, struggle with issues like paying for children’s college or helping aging parents.

In short, it is clear that many, probably most, CSU faculty are currently locked out of the middle-class or live in fear of becoming so...