BY LOUIS HOWARD PORTER If carpenters are needed it is well and good to train men as carpenters. But to train men as carpenters, and then set them to teaching is wasteful and criminal; and to train men as teachers and then refuse them living wages, unless they become carpenters, is rank nonsense. ––W. E.…
BY DARREN JOHNSON Originally published October 16, 2021; reprinted with permission of Campus News. It’s holiday time, and for those unfamiliar with large American family gatherings this time of year, let me tell you about the kiddie table. Most people who host big dinners in their homes have a big dining room table, usually something…
BY THE COLORADO AAUP CONFERENCE A rumored 25 percent pay raise sounds fantastic until people learn administrators want to phase it in over five years, that a cost-of-living increase will not accompany it, and that the average base pay is only $2,500 per class. To showcase how the “raise” would shake out for impoverished adjuncts…
BY HANK REICHMAN A week after non-tenure-track lecturers at the University of California held rallies at UC campuses statewide in support of their union, the University Council-American Federation of Teachers (UC-AFT), there are signs that at long last the university’s negotiators are being forced to respond to these colleagues’ demands. Thanks to pressure from faculty,…
BY MARK DUCHARME AND MELINDA MYRICK For educators in the Colorado Community College System (CCCS), the word “equity” is a familiar buzzword. Though it’s an admirable goal, and one we very much share, the problem is that it can seem like empty rhetoric— or worse, a cynical marketing ploy— in light of actual labor practices…
BY HANK REICHMAN Today all eyes in higher education are on Georgia, where the state Board of Regents has voted to all but eliminate the protections of tenure for all faculty in that state’s public colleges and universities, thereby inviting the AAUP to make good on its pledge to investigate and, ultimately, censure that board. …
BY THE COUNCIL OF UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA FACULTY ASSOCIATIONS (CUCFA) Hundreds of UC Senate Faculty stand in solidarity with our lecturer colleagues, represented by their union, UC-AFT, in their fight for better working conditions, including recognition as professionals with the right to be rehired. We owe it to them, to ourselves, to our students, and…
BY CATHERINE M. YOUNG Follow the foibles of Claire Park, a Walt Whitman expert and part-time instructor at a small liberal arts college and large public university as she looks ahead to the fall semester and wonders how she will pay her November and December rent if her third class is canceled because not enough…
BY CAROLYN BETENSKY In the middle of a pandemic, faculty activists have accomplished something of real significance. Working with their provost, the town-hall style faculty governance group at Worcester Polytechnic Institute has managed to secure forty-five tenure lines for existing “teaching” faculty. While the idea of expanding tenure to include teaching faculty has been promoted…