BY DESIREE ZERQUERA I am often home alone in the evening with our two young children, carrying the weight of after school activities, dinner, bathtime all alone, holding our lives together while my husband, the professor, teaches late at another lecture or event or seminar or student meeting. I’m often up alone in the mornings,…
BY KATHLEEN M. ROMERO There is an undeniable level of prestige associated with achieving a Carnegie Classified level one research (R1) label for institutions of higher education. This status opens new doors to funding, innovation, and research opportunities, and elevates universities to an elite level. Achieving R1 status rebrands universities, offering the perception of a…
BY VERONICA VALENCIA GONZALEZ For decades, universities have served as bastions of knowledge, advancing research and shaping the intellectual foundation of society. Yet, in their pursuit of cost-cutting measures, these same institutions have systematically devalued the very people responsible for that progress: the faculty. The suppression of wages for professors; the erosion of tenure; the…
BY JANE S. GABIN Despite the heroic efforts of union organizers, higher education in this country remains a discouraging miasma for applicants, teachers, and families. Representatives of national groups who could take steps to stop or reverse this trend seem unwilling or unable to do so. Several years ago, the president of the National Association…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last week I was scheduled to participate in a Round Table discussion of a recently published book, Contingent Faculty and the Remaking of Higher Education: A Labor History, edited by Eric Fure-Slocum and Claire Goldstene, in a session sponsored by the Labor and Working Class History Association at the Organization of American…
BY CAPRICE LAWLESS Most community college faculty are paid poverty-level wages and so can’t afford the laptops they need to teach, especially when they teach remotely. Even so, neither state lawmakers nor college administrators budget for them. Perhaps, I thought, a national initiative might provide them the technology they need to serve the nation’s most…
BY JONATHAN REES We’ve been arguing over salaries at my university. Sometimes we get cost-of-living adjustments, but those almost never keep up with inflation (even during years when inflation is low). There’s a model developed by our Faculty Compensation Committee designed to allocate additional funds on the basis of equity, but what is equity, anyway?…
BY COLUMBIA FACULTY UNION, COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO This statement was submitted by the Columbia Faculty Union, Local 6602 IFT/AFT, representing part-time faculty at Columbia College Chicago, on Monday, October 30, as they began a strike. In the heart of Chicago, the Columbia Faculty Union (CFAC) represents a diverse group of faculty members, many of whom…
BY HANK REICHMAN I usually admire American Prospect editor Robert Kuttner’s writings, but a short piece published online today, “The Republican Attack on Tenure,” got my hackles up a bit. Most of the piece is fine, calling appropriate attention to the assault on both tenure and academic freedom being waged by the GOP in red…
BY HANK KALET There has been a strike wave across academia that is altering the landscape for those of us who teach and work in higher education—and Rutgers is poised to join the party. Strikes at The New School, the University of California system, the University of Illinois Chicago, and threats by faculty, adjuncts, and…