The Unofficial University: Precarity and the Academic Profession

This essay challenges the prevailing consensus that the current depravations of the labor of the American university, primarily precarity and its associated ills, are the result of the neoliberal orthodoxy that dominated the late twentieth century. It offers an exploration of the influence of the nineteenth century German university on the formation of the then nascent U.S. system of higher education. Through this excavation it is shown that along with the foundational principle of wissenschaft as the indissoluble unity of teaching and research came the two-tier employment system of stable employment for some and precarious work lives for many. Understood as the “unofficial university” this analysis suggests that contingency is not a neoliberal virus imported from outside the university but instead a systemic employment feature present at its founding. The essay concludes by exploring the implications of this reassessment of neoliberalism for the burgeoning field of Critical University Studies as it reimagines the university for the twenty-first century as a locus for increasing social justice.