The following announcement has just been disseminated by the Department of Labor. _________________________ NLRB Invites Briefs Regarding Religious University Jurisdiction and Faculty Member Status February 10, 2014 The National Labor Relations Board is inviting briefs from interested parties on two questions: whether a religiously-affiliated university is subject to the Board’s jurisdiction, and whether certain university…
So says Richard Vedder in “New Analysis Shows Problematic Boom In Higher Ed Administrators,” an article by Joe Marcus appearing last week on Huffington Post. Marcus writes: Universities have added these administrators and professional employees even as they’ve substantially shifted classroom teaching duties from full-time faculty to less-expensive part-time adjunct faculty and teaching assistants, the figures show.…
An “On the Issues” Post from the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education [http://futureofhighered.org. _______________ In November, the Democratic staff of the House Committee on Education and Workforce launched an electronic forum to gather comments from contingent faculty members about their working conditions and the effect of those working conditions on students. The recently-released…
Testimony of Rudy Fichtenbaum, Ph.D. President of the American Association of University Professors Before the House State, Veterans, and Military Affairs Committee Representative Su Ryden, Chair February 3, 2014 Good morning Chair Ryden, Vice Chair Salazar, Minority Caucus Chair Conti and distinguished Committee members. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify before your…
Dissident Voice describes itself as “a radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and justice.” It presents a perspective that most readers would describe as Far Left. Although I am generally not put off by the articles that appear in it, some of them are written from points of view that are considerably more radical…
Adjunct academics have been ignored, dismissed, underpaid, and exploited, but now somebody finally fears them. Unfortunately, it is a group of NIMBY residents in Evanston near Northwestern University who worry that adjunct faculty might live near them and lower property values. The Southeast Evanston Association expressed fears in an email about a proposed extended stay…
This post is cross-posted from Yellow Dog with the permission of its author, Jeff Rice of the University of Kentucky. First person narratives about the adjunct experience in academia are being published – it seems – daily. Today, I came across a link from a Facebook friend about a Fairbanks, Alaska adjunct on food stamps. A link to…
This is a guest post by Ellen Schrecker, a professor of history emerita at Yeshiva University. She also is a former editor of Academe and served on the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. Her article, “One Historian’s Perspective on Academic Freedom and the AAUP,” is in the January-February issue of Academe. Since I no longer edit…
Inside Higher Ed today posted an article by Colleen Flaherty called “Congress Takes Note.” It deals with a new report, “The Just-In-Time Professor: A Staff Report Summarizing eForum Responses on the Working Conditions of Contingent Faculty in Higher Education” from the U.S. “House Committee on Education and the Workforce Democratic Staff.” Its conclusions are all what we have known for…
The most disturbing consequence of the contemporary belief that any sort of ‘progress’ in education stems from individual initiative and can be proven by testing is the devaluation of the teacher. Problem is, we don’t learn on our own; learning always involves community. Language itself builds from–and builds–community, and learning is dependent on language. And…