Mills College, a Selectively Progressive Institution

The Oakland College Has Been Very Progressive on the Rights of Transgender Students but Not on Collective-Bargaining Rights or Adjunct-Faculty Rights   In a very recent post, I commented on Mills College’s becoming the first single-gender institution to admit transgender students [https://academeblog.org/2014/08/26/mills-college-becomes-the-first-single-gender-college-to-admit-transgender-students/]. The college’s progressivism on that issue, however, seems to stand in fairly stark…

Inequality: A Broad Middle Class Requires Empowering Workers

This post was written by Robert Borsage for the blog of the Campaign for America’s Future [http://ourfuture.org/] which has become a driving force behind the New Populist Movement. The group’s report, Organizing to Take Back America: The New Populist Movement, is available at: http://y.ourfuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/New-Populist-Movement-Organizing.pdf. Prepared by Riger Hickey, the co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, the…

Doubling Down on the Exploitation of Adjunct Faculty

In an article titled “Outsourced in Michigan” written for Inside Higher Ed, Colleen Flaherty chronicles the movement among Michigan’s community colleges to outsource the hiring of adjunct faculty and the management of related “payroll duties” to a corporation called EDUStaff. EDUStaff had previously specialized in providing substitute teachers for K-12 systems. So, if you have…

Our Internal and Public Messaging about Administrative Bloat

Bonuses, both for performance and longevity, have become commonplace for higher-ed administrators at both public and private institutions. Indeed, these bonuses have become so commonplace that they now generally go unnoticed and unquestioned. But when such bonuses continue to be given during periods of great budget constraints, while faculty and staff compensation and/or positions are…

Hundreds of University of Illinois Educators Form Union

The following is the text of a press release issued this morning and posted on the AAUP’s web site: For Immediate Release July 9, 2014 Contacts: Howard Bunsis, chair AAUP-CBC or Aviva F. Bowen, Director of Communications, IFT Non-tenure track faculty in Champaign-Urbana join national movement to improve university working conditions and student success CHAMPAIGN –…

Eighty Years Ago Today San Francisco Workers Fought Police and Began a Successful General Strike: What it Might Mean for Us Today

While enjoying my coffee this morning I caught up on the latest Academe blog posts by Aaron and Marty on the important and continuing theme of the exploitation of adjunct faculty.  I then turned to this morning’s San Francisco Chronicle, where I found an absorbing article reporting that today, July 5, marks the 80th anniversary…