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…
I should begin by stating that I am in favor of any proposal that provides free higher education at public colleges and universities. In fact, I am in favor of any proposal that reduces the cost to students without compromising the quality of instruction. I think that the president’s proposal will help community colleges because…
This is the first post in what I hope will be a series, in which conference and chapter leaders comment on the issues that they are trying to address and the initiatives that they are trying to organize and to promote. I intend to contact conference or chapter leaders directly to invite them to participate,…
In a feature article for University Business, Ioanna Opidee provides an overview of the major trends related to postsecondary teaching that we might expect in 2015. Opidee focuses on what she asserts will be four increasing areas of emphasis: 1. Academic Return on Investment 2. Competencies at the Core 3. Flipped Classrooms and Evolving MOOCs…
One of the first contributions to the Academe blog this year was Hank Reichman’s “How NOT to Oppose the Academic Boycott of Israel.” He wrote: Clearly, college and university presidents have the right to speak out on issues of public concern, especially as these relate to higher education. And while their statements may or may not represent…
When I returned to teaching more than a dozen years ago, I taught a great deal of developmental writing. At that time, the City University of New York (CUNY) used an entrance exam for First Year Composition (FYC) placement whose prompt instructed students to write a persuasive letter, generally addressed to either school (often college) or…
Inside Higher Ed recently ran an article on a 25% increase in the teaching loads for full-time non-tenure-eligible writing faculty at Arizona State University. The article, written by Colleen Flaherty is titled “One course without Pay,” and the full article is available at: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/12/16/arizona-state-tells-non-tenure-track-writing-instructors-teach-extra-course-each The writing instructors, none of whom were willing to be identified…
Pacific Lutheran University argued that SEIU should be prevented from organizing a collective bargaining unit for adjunct faculty at the institution for two reasons: the faculty promote the religious mission of the university and the faculty have managerial rights as described in the “Yeshiva” decision. On both counts, the NLRB (with one member providing a…