Street-Level Educators: The Selective Recognition of Students and Invisible TA Labor

Abstract

Drawing on my experience as a teaching assistant (TA), I expand on Michael Lipsky's concept of the street-level bureaucrat by focusing on how an agency's construction of the client shapes the work of the bureaucrat. I call this selective recognition. The university classifies students into three types: the archetypal student for whom the university is designed, the partially recognized student who receives accommodations, and the unrecognized student with responsibilities that make learning difficult. The result is an adaptation of the TA's three dimensions of the labor process: teaching, administration, and care work. The labor contract stipulates the first and a modicum of the second but not the third. Changing student demographics have increased all dimensions of TA labor, especially administrative tasks and the amount of invisible care work performed. The extractive university relies on this invisible and often overextended labor to dampen and conceal the reality of its own failing mission.