Friday, 24 August 2012
The working conditions of U.S. adjunct and contingent faculty—and, by association, the learning conditions of American college students—came under fire in a report issued Aug. 23 by the Center for the Future of Higher Education. The report, based on a 2011 survey of 500 adjunct faculty, finds two significant issues for those who make up the majority of the higher education workforce. Many are hired "just in time" to teach courses that are to begin three or fewer weeks after faculty are notified, and they have limited access to pedagogical resources.
For example, two-thirds of those responding to the survey reported receiving three weeks' notice or less to prepare for their classes. Almost all (94 percent) of survey respondents received no departmental or institutional campus orientation. In terms of sheer logistical support, respondents reported inadequate access to such basic materials as copying services, library privileges, office space, sample syllabuses and curriculum guidelines.
News Link: http://www.aftface.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=41
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After the above blog post, some new articles appeared elsewhere:
Last week, I wrote that collectively, faculty need to deal with the terrible market for professorships by producing fewer potential professors: admitting a lot fewer students to graduate school. Graduate school doesn’t exploit students the way that, say, a third-tier law school program does -- the students are paid, not paying vast sums for degrees they can’t use. But by wildly overproducing graduate students, academia is doing something just as bad, in a different way: encouraging overoptimistic (OK, maybe arrogant) kids to spend their formative years in the labor market pursuing jobs they aren’t so likely to get, then hiring the excess students as essentially casual labor at low wages.
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After the above blog post, some new articles appeared elsewhere:
Last week, I wrote that collectively, faculty need to deal with the terrible market for professorships by producing fewer potential professors: admitting a lot fewer students to graduate school. Graduate school doesn’t exploit students the way that, say, a third-tier law school program does -- the students are paid, not paying vast sums for degrees they can’t use. But by wildly overproducing graduate students, academia is doing something just as bad, in a different way: encouraging overoptimistic (OK, maybe arrogant) kids to spend their formative years in the labor market pursuing jobs they aren’t so likely to get, then hiring the excess students as essentially casual labor at low wages.
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