The following letter was published in the Toledo Blade this past week. It was written in response to a seemingly well intentioned and fairly thoughtful op-ed on the increasing tuition and fees being paid students and their families, which unfortunately suggested that faculty compensation and the leverage provided by unionization were among the main culprits:…
In August 2014, Graeme Wood wrote an article for The Atlantic titled “The Future of College?” The tease under the headline is: “A brash tech entrepreneur thinks he can reinvent higher education by stripping it down to its essence, eliminating lectures and tenure along with football games, ivy-covered buildings, and research libraries. What if he’s…
Usually, I save everything I write about subjects like tenure for the blog that you’re reading now. After all, I’m in the AAUP and even if you’re not (and you certainly should be), you’re probably sympathetic to most of the principles that the AAUP stands for otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this blog in the…
Writing under the pseudonym “Aurora Dagny,” a Canadian activist offers four pieces of advice for those working for any sort of cause: “Embrace humility…. Question yourself as fiercely as you question society.” “Treat people as individuals. For instance, don’t treat every person who belongs to an oppressed group as an authoritative mouthpiece of that group as…
Tenured and tenure track faculty share a (broken) system with adjuncts. We are all connected in this system of higher education. It’s time we believe it and start acting that way. Because today is National Adjunct Walkout Day, I said some things on Twitter last night. What follows is the recap, with a few links…
AAUP chapters across the country will be tabling, holding teach-ins, lobby days, films screenings, or other activities as part of National Adjunct Walkout Day this Wednesday, February 25. The day, a grassroots effort, is planned to highlight adjunct faculty labor issues and to insist on fair wages and better working conditions. Participating chapters include Aurora…
This is a guest post from Don Eron, who recently retired from the University of Colorado Boulder as a senior instructor in writing and rhetoric. He is a member of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. In Denver this week, SB15-094, the Colorado AAUP conference’s latest iteration of “equal pay for equal…
Last fall, AcademeBlog reported on the case of Robin Meade, an adjunct instructor and head of the adjunct faculty union at Moraine Valley Community College in Illinois, who was fired in 2013 and banned from campus because she wrote a letter critical of how the administration treated adjuncts. Meade wrote an essay about her experience. On…
This past week, we received “over the transom” the following e-mail from a non-tenure-eligible full-time faculty member. I am reprinting it with his permission but with all identifying details removed. I think that the e-mail itself conveys the predicament of these faculty more pointedly than any paraphrase and comment that I might provide. _________________________ I…