1975
James Sledd conducts his survey of TAs across the university, with particular emphasis on the Department of English. He also contacts two media sources, the Daily Texan and the Austin American-Statesman, reporting that TAs are insufficiently trained and exploited and further alleging that the teaching practicum that should train new teachers is a sham course put on the books so faculty can get credit for teaching classes that never convene and so students can meet the required 9 hours of graduate credit per semester.
In 1975 the University of Texas at Austin has begun its transition from a teaching to a research university. The Vietnam war has ended, and the university has begun to adjust policies to a world in which draft deferments are no longer front and center in the minds of students and faculty. Simultaneously, enrollments at the already large university are increasing dramatically. UT English professor and former composition director James Sledd is writing about labor issues related to the exploitation of lecturers and graduate students. With colleague Neill Megaw he proposes to the English Department that will require tenured and tenure track faculty to teach a writing course, lower or upper division, at least once every three semesters, or one class for every nine they teach. The measure is defeated. The tensions over teaching versus research, and the labor of teaching writing, set the stage for conflicts that ensue in the following years.
