MOOC Skeptic’s Toolkit: Sample Letter #3, to a Parent

The purpose of the letters in this toolkit is to provide material that can be edited to be sent to listserves, to be posted on blogs or to be shared on social media sites, and to be submitted as op-eds to campus or community newspapers. Some of the letters may be too lengthy to be…

Letter to Pope Francis from Ana M. Fores Tamayo on Behalf of Adjunct Justice

His Holiness, Pope Francis PP. 00120 Via del Pellegrino Citta del Vaticano Dear Pope Francis: I do not know how to begin this letter, so I will just let you know what is happening, in general, with the faculty in Higher Education here in the United States, as in the rest of the world; I will…

Addendum to Aaron Barlow’s “To My Tenured Colleagues”: To My Adjunct Colleagues

I initially was going to post this as a comment to Aaron’s post, but it became too lengthy to seem a reasonable “comment.” Like Aaron, I myself and many others among us who now hold tenure-track positions have had some experience as adjunct faculty. I taught at four institutions for six years while finishing my…

To My Tenured Colleagues

Why is it that we, the lucky ones, try so hard to divorce ourselves from those who have not had the same breaks? Why do we, the tenured ones, look away when we see adjuncts grading papers while sitting in a stairwell? Why do we, the lordly observers, think of ourselves as the master teachers…

Writing “Academic Freedom from Below”

This is a guest post by Jan Clausen, a co-contributor with Eva Swidler to the newest volume of the Journal of Academic Freedom. Professor Clausen teaches in the Goddard College Master of Fine Arts in Writing Program and serves as chair of the union bargaining team for the latest round of faculty contract negotiations. She is…

Wright State’s New NTE Bargaining Unit Approves Its Initial Contract

The president of AAUP is also a very fine contract negotiator. This is the article on the new contract written by Meagan Pant that appeared in the Dayton Daily News: Nearly a year after voting to join a union, Wright State University full-time faculty not eligible for tenure have their first contract, which offers them raises, creates…

Change Requires Discipline

This is a guest post by Adrianna Kezar and Daniel Maxey. Kezar is professor at the University of Southern California and director of the Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success; Maxey is dean’s fellow in urban education policy at USC’s Rossier School of Education and Pullias Center for Higher Education. Their article, “Change Requires Discipline,” appears in the…

Adjunct Faculty Association at Nassau County Community College Strikes and then Suspends Strike

At the outset, I want to apologize if I have gotten any of the details of this story wrong. It’s very complex, and I have had to piece it together from a number of sources. The Adjunct Faculty Association had not gone on strike since 1982. The Taylor Law makes public-employee strikes illegal in New…

Ohio Conference President, John McNay, Testifies before Ohio House’s Higher Education Reform Study Committee

On Monday, September 9, Ohio Conference AAUP President John McNay delivered testimony [full text provided below] to the Higher Education Reform Study Committee–a new standing committee started in the Ohio House of Representatives over the summer. The committee has embarked on a “road show,” traveling all over the state to public and for-profit colleges to discuss…

A Critique of Richard Vedder’s Recommendations for Higher Education, Made in Response to President Obama’s Recent Proposals

Part 3: Reduce the Cost of a Degree by 40% by Reducing Labor and Capital Costs. [Explanatory lead to the first post in this series: Richard Vedder is distinguished professor of economics at Ohio University, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. In an…

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