The “Government-Education Complex” Defined

Don't let the picture of a grade school classroom that accompanies this article about the "Government-Education Complex" mislead you. The same complex fortified by foundations, armed with learning analytics algorithms and directed by managers bereft of teaching experience stalks HigherEd and the academic labor that makes it work. Adjuncts, lecturers, contract and tenured faculty are the boots (loafers, pumps, moccasins) on the ground teaching in classrooms. The Campaign for the Future of Higher Ed is working to make sure teaching voices are central to any discussion and the future and quality of higher education. The New Faculty Majority supports and joins the Campaign as an active participant and voiced for bring adjuncts/contingent faculty and other underrepresented NTTs.

Since the launch, the Campaign initiated a discussion group and scheduled a conference in Boston. In the meantime, let's do our homework - get intel: learn as much as possible about the "Complex" and its major players, analyze their arguments and formulate classroom-room, learning-centric alternatives.

While we're at it, let's add pictures showing our classrooms.

The “Government Education Complex” is the interlocking set of interests that control the vast majority of American education dollars, education policy, and the steady increase in unnecessary education job creation. The explosion of spending, debt, and taxation we’ve witnessed in the last 25 years was used to fund the growth of this Complex.

The complex is made up not only of associations of administrators and teachers unions, but an interconnected network of bond dealers, builders, architects, law firms, textbook companies, and other service providers who profit off of the overproduction of service contracts, debt, public employment and bureaucracy....

Like the Military Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned of, the “Government Education Complex” is politically powerful, and completely self interested in perpetuating itself....[but] has failed to provide our society with the educated populace we are paying for.

The “Government-Education Complex” Defined

community college classroom

Together at last!

Even ready to pumpkinate and with I concentration at low ebb, I noticed this item in my rss reader. It grabbed me, brought me back to life. The piece deserves better and more intelligent comment than I can manage just now. On the other hand I have to post this one before I forget about it, lose tracking of watching it and especially bringing it the attention of our own corner of the precariat. Can use this? Could it be an answer to similar questions plaguing New Faculty Majority?

"Here’s one to watch. Down in New Zealand, a country with an unusually cohesive (though struggling) union movement, affiliates of the national union federation have launched an innovative thing called “Together“. We’re calling it a thing because it doesn’t really fit into any of the usual drawers. It’s not a union, not an NGO, not an organisation, not a network, not an association, club, sect, faction, fraction, tendency or movement. What it is, above all else, is a potential solution to several of the quandaries that unions have been trying to solve for at least 10 years."

Together at last! « NewUnionism's Blog

We interrupt this blog to bring you a tweet review

It's been quiet here, hasn't it? I haven't been blogging but I have not been totally idle on the New Faculty Majority social media presence and content curation/management front. I'm spending more time and posting more directly the the NFM Facebook page, followed by dipping into the twitterstream more often.

To better coordinate NFM cyberspace manifestations, I've been experimenting with embedding Tweets as ‘Clickable’ in a(n edited) screenshot image: aka Tweeter's Digest Condensed Tweets. This tool (I may try another tomorrow or another day) captures screen images one at a time (in reverse chronological order, unfortunately) and embeds links so you can follow them directly from here. It can also include tweets from other accounts I follow. That strikes me as far more interesting than posting just @NewFacMajority tweets. Next time, ditto the rest of the social media lecture ... and now on with the Twitter Show