Shared Governance and Professional Equity for Lecturers in the California State University System

Higher education’s overreliance on contingent faculty has resulted in several concerning issues for the professoriate. Much of the research on contingent faculty has centered on the exploitative working conditions and marginalization of adjunct faculty, but little research has been conducted on how the bifurcation of faculty into a two-tier system manifests itself within two core practices in the academy: shared governance and the professionalization of faculty. This study examined the shared governance documents (SGDs) of twenty-three campuses in the California State University system for the levels of inclusion in consultation afforded to each campus’s non-tenure-track (NTT) lecturer faculty, as well as the ways in which the policies of these campus senates reflect professionally equitable language and practices. It was determined that there were large variances between campuses in terms of Lecturer inclusion and professional equity, but the campuses with the highest shared governance inclusion were largely also at the top in terms of professionally equitable language and practice. Recommendations for how to ensure inclusion and professional equity for NTT faculty are offered.