In a piece published last week by Huffington Post, Laurie Jones and Wanda Evans-Brewer ask and answer that rhetorical question in promoting a new short film called Professors in Poverty. The last three paragraphs of the article are particularly strong: “The sub-contractor business model is becoming increasingly popular in our “shared economy” society. But is…
In one of my recent reviews of recent news items on higher education [https://academeblog.org/2015/10/23/u-s-higher-education-news-from-september-29-2015/], I opened with an item on the elimination of continuing contracts for faculty at Florida State College. Now the member of the college’s board of trustees who initiated that change of policy has been emboldened to advance a proposal that faculty…
Writing for Nation of Change, Paul Buchheit has provided a very succinct but comprehensive overview of how corporatization has had a very damaging impact on higher education. In his article “Higher Education: Capitalism at Its Most Despicable,” Buchheit focuses on five inter-linked phenomena that are undermining the value of higher education because they undermine the…
As part of Campus Equity Week, Brave New Films has released this terrific short film about the very real poverty of many faculty in contingent positions: Contains some illuminating stats comparing presidential salaries to adjunct wages, and personal stories from adjuncts–mostly women, which reflects the reality that contingent labor issues are also women’s issues. It’s…
Today launches Campus Equity Week, during which groups plan local actions to draw attention to working conditions of faculty. Campus Equity Week is an annual event started by the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor, a grassroots coalition of activists in North America working for contingent faculty: adjunct, part-time, non-tenured, and graduate teaching faculty working to bring greater awareness…
Being antagonistic to corporatization should not necessarily be conflated with being broadly antagonistic to corporations. Universities and corporations have long had mutually beneficial relationships that have caused relatively infrequent controversies. And, just to be clear, although some faculty with more progressive political values have been very skeptical of those relationships between their universities and corporate…
By Robin Meade I won! On September 17, the Illinois Education Labor Relations Board (IELRB) made its final ruling in my case against Moraine Valley Community College (MVCC). It all started in August of 2013, when I was fired by the administration at Moraine Valley Community College for writing a letter to the League of Innovation in…
The American professoriate once ranged from professionals who taught a course as an adjunct—a contribution to their professions, the compensation being almost nothing—to the regular (but generally poorly paid, often relying on family fortune to sustain them) faculty who generally assumed lifetime security at institutions whose operation their colleagues dominated. That changed over the decades starting…
One of the most disheartening events of this past summer on the Academe blog was the rise of invective in the comments that started with our posting of a guest commentary by a group of scholars with particular connections to–or interests in–India. The vituperation exhibited astonished me, and it came in the dozens and then hundreds (to…
In the late afternoon on Thursday, September 24, between 80 and 100 faculty and students at Miami University attended a presentation by CBC Chair Howard Bunsis on the university’s finances. The event was hosted by the relatively new but quickly growing AAUP advocacy chapter at the university. The presentation received fairly detailed coverage in the…