A few hours ago, Aaron posted a story about the situation at Northern New Mexico College. I’m told that this is a blog written by Northern New Mexico faculty. Here are some low-lights: 1. “In the last 60 days, Northern New Mexico College has removed or lost over 25% of its full-time faculty. In addition, 4 program directors,…
Writing for the New York Times (June 24, 2014), in a column titled “The Reality of Student Debt Is Different than the Cliches,” David Leonhardt reviews a recent study released by the Brookings Institute. These are the main assertions: (1) Student debt, on average, has actually not increased significantly. (2) Because the earnings of college…
Past president of the AAUP and continuing activist Cary Nelson contributes to the current “Room for Debate” feature in The New York Times, “Lofty Salaries in the Ivory Towers.” He writes: When a college or university president has an annual salary 50 times what some faculty and staff earn, the institution delivers a powerful message about…
On May 16-18, the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education’s 7th National Gathering drew nearly 100 faculty, student and organizational leaders to the Desmond Hotel in Albany, New York, where the organization held panel discussions and workshops surrounding a theme of “Building Alliances for Access, Equity and Quality.” The increasing problem of student debt was…
This “book” seems very analogous to the sections of the WalMart and McDonald’s websites that are devoted to “career opportunities” with those companies–as if any significant number of those in the corporate management have worked their way up from stocking shelves, working the cash registers, or putting together sandwiches. Of course, adjunct faculty have invested so…
Yesterday Inside Higher Ed published a brief item entitled “Skeptical Reception for New Book on Becoming Adjunct.” The article reported on a new 51-page book, available for free via the Internet, with the remarkable title Become a Part-Time Professor: live and teach anywhere you like. Needless to say, more than a few “part-time professors” have…
Fast food has become a global industry, and now the labor unrest in that industry has gone global. Businessweek has provided a fairly thorough overview of the scope of the protests that occurred yesterday in 33 nations: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-15/scenes-from-the-fast-food-worker-protests-spreading-overseas Robert Reich has provided a succinct statement of why these workers deserve broad support: http://fastfoodglobal.org/main/why-support-the-fast-food-strikes/ And the advocacy site Low…
Action Follows March Protest at NY State Department of Education, Letter Ignored by Governor Cuomo Mary-Faith Cerasoli, an adjunct professorof Spanish and Italian who made national news by protesting her poverty-level conditions while teaching at two New York colleges, made an emergency room visit to Winthrop-University Hospital today after holding a five-day hunger strike on…
One of the things the assessment gurus of corporate-style education don’t like is the idea of professors in complete control of the curriculum and pedagogy in their own classrooms. They want everyone “to be on the same page,” feeling that education has no value unless done in unison. This is the thinking behind most cries…
Writing for Bankrate.com, Christina Crouch has surveyed in some detail “Three Radical Plans” for reducing college costs [http://www.bankrate.com/finance/college-finance/rethinking-college-costs-radical-plans.aspx]. The first two of these “three radical plans” have been addressed previously in posts to this blog: the “pay it forward” plan that originated in Oregon, that has been adopted or adapted in some form in 15…