#highered newsy stuff 'n such

…a fistful of higher ed news links for Jan14. Last iteration forwarded the IHE's Daily News Updates, so this one forwards the Chronicle's Academe Today (scroll down). The timing, however, skirts the intolerable. What would Aaron Swartz say about the pay wall? 

The list keeps growing. Some listed below are also featured on the #NewFac Web 2.0 blogroll, left sidebar. We may move the list to a separate page, alphabetized, and return to shorter "HE newsies" posts. 

Even so, we're still on the lookout for more higher ed newsletters, preferably online, sans pay wall. 

• Guardian Higher Education Network publishes a weekly newsletter, available by email and online.

• Inside HigherEd publishes a Daily News Update and, at the end of the week, a Weekly News Update. Both are available by email subscription and rss subscription (this takes some of the load off your inbox)

trolling the academented blogosphere

Licensed under Creative Commons  Some rights reserved by davidsilver

...annotated, of course, via brief post excerpts, most but not all from blogs of the academented precariat. I was collecting links to post to the Contingent Academics Mailing List and, mindful of recent admonition not to post full length articles, excerpting briefly from opening. When that post in the making got long, mindful of recent complaints about irrelevant, time-wasting posts, I decided to blog my efforts. Then, if so inclined, I could post the link. 

No particular order other than as they came up in my feed reader. Any perceived organization, thematic or otherwise, is either serendipitous or imagined. However, more than one post on same topic, commenting on same material or from same blogger are listed adjacently.

This could become a feature, but I'd like to come up with a better - and shorter - name. I might even theme or otherwise organize them...

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Ending a Bad UC Week: What Points Might Help Turn Things Around? (remaking the university)

This was one of the worst weeks in recent UC,CSU, and CCC history, as the new Democratic governor dished out triple $500 million cuts to all the segments ($400 m to the community colleges), neck-and-neck for the cutting record of his Republican predecessor.  Comments on this blog and elsewhere suggest that some people think this is a clever political ploy, but many people are on the verge of giving up on the idea that California higher ed will ever recover under our political system.  

Liquidating tenure

Those with it want to keep it. Those without it, want it or at least something resembling security (a tricky concept and contested in these times) and pay equity. Consensus, of the workable kind, in the academy, among professional and labor groups, is in short supply, with stance running to the tier-centric. Everyone has a plan just not the same one.

Love, crave it or resent it, for those in the academy, tenure is an intrinsic part of the culture. From the outside, whether viewed nostalgically as quaint (like high button shoes) or regarded as anathema to American values and Western world civilization as some think they know it, tenure seems more anachronism than necessity.

"Liquidating Tenure" (occasional links & commentary), an academic blog newly added to my "adjunct blog" list, comments on tenure positions from the recently published NYT-staged debate. Isn't the picture illustrating Bruccio's post, both real and totally irresistible?

Blogkeeping (literally): one of our blogs is missing

"One of our ____ is missing!" is such a movies of the week title, isn't it? But yes, one of "our" adjunct blogs is missing. MIA.  It is not "our" (pertaining to NFM) or even mine in the sense of my being the owner/ publisher/ writer. I wouldn't mind misplacing one of those, but they all have their addresses tattooed on their foreheads and know where they live. So, you may ask, if it's not yours, what's the story and what does it have to do with adjuncts, contingents, ad/cons or whatever we are calling ourselves or have been exhorted to call ourselves this week?

Easy... adjuncts write blogs. All manner of blogs, of such variety that the term "adjunct blog" is misleading. It's not a subject category like a "mom blog" (although adjuncts who are moms write those) or a "foodie blog." No doubt there are also ones written by adjuncts.  I hope to add examples to my adjunct blogroll. 

Do you remember my call for adjunct blogs? 

A few months or so back, I started bookmarking them with the tag "adjunct-blog" and combed my bookmarks for blogs tagged both "adjunct" and "blog." Many but not all so tagged would be adjunct blogs. Some of the best blog coverage of adjunct issues is by tenured faculty, former adjuncts more likely associate than full. I shouldn't need to remind you what safeguards tenure and academic freedom are for a cheeky blogger.  

Otherwise, however, blogging is an ideal medium for adjuncts: the price is right and it can be done anonymously.

Confessions hits the beltway

Beltway Blips covers the Twitterverse reception of "Confessions of a Tenured Professor"  by NFM Board member Peter DG Brown. Coverage (including my tweet on those same tweets) is ongoing, updated as new tweets appear ... Visit, vote, share, link.... let's keep this going viral and in the mainstream social media, not just buried in the academic press. If I'd blogged the article as planned and expected when it came out, we'd have missed this. As good as the article is, and good it is, the reaction, commentary, comments, blog posts, tweets, shared links, and so on complete the story... Please join the conversation by adding your comments.


insidehighered.com - 4 days ago

InsideHighered: Confessions of a Tenured Professor 

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I must confess right off that I did not become a contingent labor activist until I turned 60, a mere six years ago. Until then, I was a fairly typical senior professor, passionately involved in teaching my students and interacting with my tenured colleagues on a variety of faculty governance 

REACTIONS (four pages so far)


Just  few among many blog reactions, these collated by Beltway Blips

Bad Feminist Bitch. Ph.D. — Thank god for this must-read piece in IHE today. I very seldom keep up with academic news any more, but an old Internet friend posted the link on FB. It happens that she herself is also an unemployed adjunct, but I probably only clicked it because in my head she's filed under the category "mommy" rather than "academic"--I met her online via a mommy forum--and "mommy" is where most of my identity lies these days. ...

Why Does Academia Treat its Workforce So Badly? Megan McArdle :: The Atlantic — A piece on adjuncts in Inside Higher Ed has been attracting a lot of attention among academics of my acquaintance.  Its description of academic life is shcokingly brutal--shocking even to me, who knows enough PhDs to be acquainted with the dismal facts: ... 

[my note: the Atlantic piece includes copious comments, some must read and others more likely to infuriate. Review them and add your own]

Academic Labor Market Exploitation Outside The Beltway | OTB — ... This might seem a ridiculous question, given that most people think professors are overpaid, underworked prima donnas who can never be fired.  But she cites Peter D.G. Brown’s recent Inside Higher Ed piece explaining that, if it was ever the case, it’s not longer true: ...

[Not Yet] Summer School for X-Fac

Excerpted from Marc Bosquet's Aug 2, 2009, Brainstorm column in CHE, also crossposted at How the University Works. I have no idea why an August 2009 column would take so long to show up in my rss reader, so don't ask... but I'm glad of it.  Good reading list even if referenced articles and topics are from last summer. I've already recommended Chris Newfield's splendid and indispensable Remaking the University, with Journal of the Edu-Factory Collective high on my "to-blog" list. Academe and Workplace, please note, have long been listed on our sidebar. "X-Fac" in subject line refers to recent thread on naming at adj-l list and Marc's determination to replace familiar but demeaning and/or inaccurate standbys. I'm not sure what with, hence the "X"  ... that or for X-men who teach.... Summer School For Faculty Possibly you're tired of beach reading--or perhaps you couldn't afford the beach this year? You say you'd like to get beyond the "Thank you, sir! May I have another?" school of governance?  I have a few suggestions.

Resist, Mobilize, Transform

Protect Your Education RGB 8.5x11, originally uploaded by Nick Bygon.

Please click through the image above (or link beneath to read Nick Bygon's comments on his poster for the March 4th Day of Action in Defense of Public Education and all Public-Sector Services, supported and endorsed by the California Federation of Teachers (CFT), the California Faculty Association (CFA), AFT 2121, UESF, the San Francisco Labor Council, Community College students and unions, and dozens of public education and public-sector unions.

"Resist, Mobilize, Transform" surely applies to the New Faculty Majority's mission as well as it does to protecting higher education ~ which we, especially as "The New Majority," are part of too.

Do you recall that well-used and by now well worn favorite of pundits: "as goes California, so goes the county"? It's not just an old pundit's tale. California's higher ed dilemma is either coming to your campus or has already arrived.

If you don't feel you can support the proposed actions (not place to tell you what to do or how ~ and vice versa), at the very least you owe to yourself and your profession to be as well informed as possible, which means reading more than just the mainstream media and the established/ establishment academic press.

The following are my personal picks from the many excellent independent online sources out there:

• Remaking the University (Chris Newfield)
• Changing Universities (Bob Samuels)
• How the University Works (Marc Bosque)
• Student Activism (Angus Johnston)
• University Probe (Charlie Schwartz et alia), a critical forum on Research Universities, their finances, their governance... their futures

To be sure there are more ... all worthy of listing. And who knows, may well get their hat tip or even a blogroll of their own.

Do you have favorites to recommend? Please submit them, preferably annotated...