An “Englishman in New York”?
7.6 Discussion and Conclusion: Academic Identity of PTAs
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is a lecturer who wants to resign from this private university, they will be scared off (the home base bureaucracy). They will then offer an option to leave the NIDN there if I want to resign” (Adrian, March 2020).
For many private university lecturers, salary is also a significant part of the academic profession. A lecturer’s salary is generally low, which is an anecdote of dosen = kerjanya sak dos, gajinya sak sen (lecturer = a box-full of work, paid in a cent). The discrepancy of pay for PTAs is apparent, ranging from the basic minimum wage standard to teaching hour-based. One lecturer, who is a full-time PTA, said that he was paid about Rp 500,000 a month to teach 10 credits, and he was only paid for five months (George, October 2020). Another full-time PTA said that her institution paid a monthly salary at the level of public university lecturers, while also giving her opportunities to pursue a functional title and lecturer certification (Crystal, July 2018). The problem with pay was a point of debate between group members. There were those who thought that if someone wants to be a lecturer, then they should be ready to accept that without any complaints. The other side said that even academics need to have access to a minimum standard of living and that seeking better pay is justified.
It seems that it is better to be a laborer with a minimum wage that increases annually.
The problem is not all Master’s Degree holders can work in a place that has good career opportunities and financial rewards. (Paula, January 2018)
The academic profession is considered less attractive than being a laborer, despite the high requirements. Despite their graduate degrees, PTAs do not have the bargaining power to negotiate their incomes and do not have the benchmark of a reasonable salary.
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institutions now able to open special entrance schemes for students unable to pass the national public university entrance test. Public institutions can compete with these schemes as they are generally perceived to be of higher quality than private HEIs which are of varied and generally lower quality (Welch, 2007).
Although private universities comprise 96% of the total HEIs and enroll more than 60% of the total higher education students, the level of support is considerably weaker than it is for public universities. Private universities were ignored before the 1990s (Toyibah, 2017). They rely on tuition fees from students to survive, with as much as 90% of their income from students (Welch, 2011). They also have to supplement their income with various grants or efficiencies, mastering the “special art to struggle for [their] survival” (Hadihardaja, 1995, p. 40). Limited incentives or grants are available for private HEIs, but typically the public funding they receive is less than 5% of their revenue (Hill & Wie, 2012), and even as low as 2% (Royono &
Rahwidiati, 2013). Indeed, private institutions experience discrimination in status, a lack of funding and access to other opportunities (Lestari, 2014; Toyibah, 2017), and a systematic injustice created in the system between public and private institutions.
Combining interview data from one small and bounded context with posting data from a larger system enables us to see the diversity of PTAs. Studies of FTAs and PTAs have recognized the variation of PTA categories. Both groups are usually called traditional and non-traditional academics. The non-traditional one covers a different scheme of employment, regardless of the percentage of time spent at work, as long as it is not full-time and usually has no tenure. In this study, the non-traditional academics are the classic PTAs who work under a short-term contract, are paid based on credits taught, and perform only one role formally. However, the institutions’
abuse of the system has created a group of unique individuals: full-time on paper, and part-time for payment.
Classic PTAs have a hybrid identity (Levin & Shaker, 2011): one as a teacher and another as a member of the institution. They love teaching, and teaching is the reason they come to academia. However, the way they are being treated as a member of the institution gives them a negative feeling. Their teacher role gives them satisfaction, while the other does not (Levin & Shaker, 2011). This group has their own “figured world”, described as “keeping one foot inside the door and one foot outside” (Levin &
Shaker, 2011, p. 1481), as their identity as a member of the institution is laden with inferiority: they mainly do teaching instead of research; their courses will usually be coordinated by a tenure-track faculty member; and the overall status of being part-time is a low class in the hierarchy. Thus, while they identify with the teaching role, the non-tenure status is looming over their consciousness, which puts them in a “constant vigilance” mode. Consequently, they manage their own figured world based on the mentioned hybrid mode and develop an identity that is arguably different from their tenure-track faculty.
White used the term “disposable academics” (White, 2012, p. 50) in referring to academics under short-term contracts. These academics are at the bottom of the academic hierarchy; thus, they develop an academic identity that is different from the mainstream academics. Their position as the academic underclass with incomplete roles in the academia—focusing only on teaching or short-term research—brings out
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a different identity that is described as “other” in the institution (White, 2012, p. 51).
The fact that academic identity is more and more determined by the research and publication part further impacts the formation of academic identity of the disposable academics. White does not go further into this group, as she claims that not much is known about this group. However, she argues that the identity performance of this group is “guarded” and “careful” due to their unsafe employment status and the imbalanced power relation with the tenured academics who often act as their course coordinators. White’s review further connects the contemporary changes in higher education with academic identity and strengthens the argument that academic identity is more structurally managed in the current world, with the implication of significant loss of academic freedom, and that status plays a significant role in identity. Status is brought by the position in the hierarchy of academics, the university status, and the research outcome.
Similar to this notion, the academics involved in this study also feel that they are different. They relate to the teaching role well and stay in academia to teach.
The constant vigilant attitude of PTAs may also explain the way some PTAs refer to themselves. There is a tendency that they refer to themselves as “teach/teaching”
(mengajar) instead of “lecturers” (dosen). The use of a verb instead of a noun to refer to the profession is different from the FTAs, who identify themselves as “lec- turers”. Two examples are given. “A lecturer seems like what I’ve said before, having a doctoral degree and doing research … that’s a lecturer. So I said ‘teach’” (Denise, PTA). Another statement shows a clearer connection between “teach” and “univer- sity”. “[I] tend to [say] teach, not a lecturer. Teaching is general, universal. [If I said]
a lecturer, it shows that you are from a university. It shows that you are a clever person (laughing). I don’t want to be seen like that” (Nancy, PTA).
However, Indonesia also has a unique PTA group that does not exactly match the hybrid identity. The existence of legal aliens, academics who are legally full-time but practically part-time, is a sign of a crack in the higher education employment system.
Considered the weakest group in the higher education workforce, these academics have the weak bargaining power to negotiate their working conditions. They are often humiliated by working under substandard conditions, especially in salary. The gap between their working conditions and the full-time academics, especially with the civil servant lecturers in a public university, is very significant. This crack in the tight system brings an injustice to this group of academics, in which their bargaining power for better working conditions is low and their choice to move to better academic opportunities in other institutions is uncertain.
As a tenured (or tenure-eligible) academic, these legal aliens’ role in academia is more than just teaching, and their employment relation involves the government through the home base instruments. They have potentially deeper engagement with the institution as a legal “full-timer”. It is still not clear how they engage with other academic roles to maintain their minimum expected performance, and being legally registered does not always bring positive impacts due to the abusive behavior of some institutions. A follow-up study on this group of academics is badly needed, not only concerning their academic identity but also their basic recognition of human dignity in their potentially abused conditions.
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