Colleges Are Deeply Unequal Workplaces

As colleges unveil their reopening plans for the fall, concerns about the safety of faculty teaching in classrooms populated with young adults have taken center stage. But largely left out of the conversation have been the people actually getting campuses up and running: the staff.

Over the past few months, the pandemic has exposed long-standing fissures in the campus workplace. Faculty and staff occupy two very different worlds—a chasm like few others in the American economy. Though they work for the same employer, faculty, by definition, enjoy more job security and power to shape how the university runs, while campus staff continue to be far more vulnerable.

Since the pandemic began, of those employed by American colleges and universities—have been hit with the brunt of furloughs and layoffs. Some 250 schools have instituted furloughs, but two-thirds have taken that action only for staff, according to Chris Marsicano, the founding director of the College Crisis Initiative at Davidson College, which is tracking how institutions are responding to the coronavirus. About half of the colleges that enacted layoffs did so only for staff. The difference in how faculty and staff have been treated during the pandemic may be most visible in the flexibility each group has in working from home: Of more than 900 colleges that have allowed employees to work remotely, 300 have extended that benefit only to faculty.