From the SFRA Executive Committee
Meeting Futures in the Face of An Age-Diverse Academic Labor Market
Ida Yoshinaga
This summer, while catching up with my sf-film viewing, the image of a crusty Dr. Henry Walton Jones, Jr., grumping at the young’uns during Indy’s own university retirement party—after decades of navigating both archaeology and tomb-raiding, adventures which somehow didn’t prepare him for the brave new world of a changeful 1960s!—struck me as prescient for our current era of inter-generational, academic knowledge and job succession.
As we Baby Boomers and older GenXers—perhaps the last PhDs who as a cohort could expect to land full-time, tenure-track jobs with traditional professorial benefits and economic security in the North American – (and part of) Western European academic markets—push back retirement past our 60s, into the 70s and even beyond, especially in the wake of financial anxieties brought about by post-COVID COLA rises (Anft 2023 5-6), new waves of scholars including Gens Y, Z, and Alpha face less certain, if decidedly more inventive, career pathways towards a sustainable academic life. The contingent-labor market is marked particularly by researchers and hybrid scholar-creatives who’re gender and race diverse (for instance, women and marginalized community members strongly characterize the adjuncting pool; see Anft 7; Colby 2023, 2 and 5-6).
Universities, colleges, and other institutions of higher education are adapting to labor-market shifts and their related inequalities—some creating relatively stable, non-tenure-track positions aka “contract-renewable” jobs (usually full-time non-tenure-track; see Colby 1 for data on this type of contingent labor); others offering long tenured faculty buy-outs to retire or choose phased retirement options (Anft 12-15) to as to make space for hiring new (often contingent) faculty; with a few schools even mandating that adjuncts participate in 401Ks (Anft 21).
What does an age- and life-stage-diverse community of science-fiction-studies scholars look like, with its powerful intersectional implications of class, gender/sexual, and race/nation inequality? How do we socialize, share disciplinary or subfield info, network, train, debate, and professionally advance ourselves alongside our colleagues—in short, community-build as we grow the field, in this era? How do we run conferences, assess the work of scholars and artists/writers for speculative-fiction awards, initiate exciting new projects?
We are interested in hearing from those of you with ideas on how we best facilitate members to meet, exchange ideas, and build lasting intellectual relationships with each other, going forward? What does a mid-21st-century academic meeting look like, in other words? And what other types of activities and support can we offer?
You can reach me at ida@hawaii.edu, but—pending President Hugh O’Connell’s announcement of it—I may also show up in person to talk with you at SFRA 2025, which we hope will be held stateside again.
WORKS CITED
Colby, Glenn, “Data Snapshot: Tenure and Contingency in US Higher Education,” AAUP Reports and Publications, March 2023, pp. 1-8, https://www.aaup.org/article/data-snapshot-tenure-and-contingency-us-higher-education.
Anft, Michael, for the AAUP (co-sponsored by the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America), “Preparing for a Graceful Exit: The Faculty-Retirement Landscape,” Chronicle.com, 2023, pp. 1-24, https://connect.chronicle.com/rs/931-EKA-218/images/Retirement_TIAA_InsightsReport.pdf.
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