CSAL, the Center for the Study of Academic Labor, is an official Colorado State University research center focused on issues related to labor policy and conditions. The scholars associated with the Center carry out research, produce scholarship, and create artistric works that address the transformation of academic labor in higher education, especially the increasing reliance on contingent (non-tenure track) faculty.
View reports, analyses, and related publications. CSAL's collection of employment reports, provided by Steven Shulman, provide data and analyses from 2012 through 2022. CSAL's Trends in Academic Employment, developed by CSAL faculty affiliate John W. Curtis, provide summaries of trends in academic employment as well as a working paper examining trends in faculty diversity in relation to degree outcomes for minoritized students. The reports include supporting data files to enable further analysis.
View work including Samantha Tucker Lacovetto's Contingency: A Crisis of Learning and Teaching, and photos from Campus Equity Week's chalk art and responses to chalk art.
In a long-standing partnership with the WAC Clearinghouse, a leading open-access publisher, CSAL publishes the journal Academic Labor: Research and Artistry and the book series Precarity and Contingency.
In spring 2024, activists and teacher-scholars participated in a two-part virtual discussion of the 2024 book Contingent Faculty and the Remaking of Higher Education: A Labor History (2024), and its implications for transforming higher education. The discussions were recorded and posted on YouTube. View this event and others on our page.
From related work by groups at and beyond Colorado State University to the Women and Contingency Database Project (a joint initiative between CSAL and the New Faculty Majority) to the CWPA Labor Resource Center, this website offers access to a wide range of resources on the study of academic labor in higher education.