who needs a liberal education?

Eric Hartman (Kansas State) and Antoinette Hertel (St. Joseph’s): Clearer Thinkers, Better People? Unpacking Assumptions in Liberal Education. Who needs a liberal education? Gilbert Meilaender on why we should stop pretending that the liberal arts are important frosting on the cake of an education that is in fact designed for other purposes. 

An excerpt from Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters by Michael Roth. Why Scott Samuelson teaches Plato to plumbers: Liberal arts and the humanities aren't just for the elite. The humanities aren't obscure, arcane or irrelevant — they awaken our souls, influence how we think about inequality, and help us adapt to a changing world. 

re-blogged from who needs a liberal education? - bookforum.com / omnivore ~ head on over and read the rest there

American Anxieties…not just for #adjunct faculty

…COCAL XI and NatGat2014 exuberance not withstanding, malaise and a sense of foreboding abound, face us around every corenr. The feeling is neither exclusively American nor academic, adj-l listserv fretting to the contrary. Just listen to the world news. We --- and our institutions -- are embedded in the world and of it…more than just August doldrums. So here's a bit of a wallow before getting on with coping, rising up and doing. 

From Aspeers, a special issue on American anxieties. Kathleen Geier on inequality, the flavor of the month. David Atkins on the four basic American reactions to record inequality....The over-policing of America: Chase Madar on how police overkill has entered the DNA of social policy. Have we all turned into a bunch of wusses? Kevin Michael Klipfel wonders. From The American Interest, John Allen Gay on the crumbling cultural foundations of American democracy: Democracy rests on a complex set of values — and many of those values are fading.

Is modern culture making us crazier? Martha Stout on the science behind America's deepening disturbance....Why the doom and gloom, America? Today’s crises are no worse than many in U.S. history. Jonathan Chait writes in defense of American optimism.

Read the complete american anxieties at bookforum.com's omnivore.  PS posts on conference, gathering and more are waiting in the wings...and the listserv is posting

Reading Room: #futurelabor when #robots take our jobs

…could be worse than the #adjunct kind we have now. An even more recent Pew report, The Future of Jobs, is referenced in Will Oremus' Slate piece, The New Luddites.. The subtitle "What if technological innovation is a job-killer after all?" is straight from PEW. Jonathon Rees has busy setting up and migrating content to More or Less Bunk's new domain, getting ready for the Colorado AAUP Conference meeting in Durango and prepping a class digital history project to chase MOOCs (he'll be back). Somebody's got to pick up the slack on the bot beat, so here goes ~ with more than a little help from Ominvore's robots/jobs post

From the Journal of Evolution and Technology, a special section on technological unemployment and the basic income guarantee, including Riccardo Campa (Jagiellonian): Technological Growth and Unemployment: A Global Scenario Analysis; John Danaher (Keele): Sex Work, Technological Unemployment and the Basic Income Guarantee; and Gary E. Marchant, Yvonne A. Stevens and James M. Hennessy (ASU): Technology, Unemployment and Policy Options: Navigating the Transition to a Better World. 

Reading Room: the fault lines of american #highered « #Omnivore @bookforum

…another outstanding Omnivore collection of briefly annotated higher education links that I could not decide where to trim so kept them all. All of the topics are familiar and a number of the links will be too, but there are also links I don't recall seeing shared around the adjunct corner of social media. The first chunk is admin related; the next, institution and profession; and the final two about, adjuncts, grad school, academic labor and the job market.

From the New York Times Magazine, Michael Sokolove on the trials of Graham Spanier, Penn State’s ousted president. The coup that failed: Talbot Brewer on how the near-sacking of a university president exposed the fault lines of American higher education. Avoiding disastrous presidencies: Ry Rivard reviews  Presidencies Derailed: Why University Leaders Fail and How to Prevent It by Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, Gerald B. Kauvar and E. Grady Bogue. 

There’s the war on college, and then there’s Rick Perry’s war on the University of Texas. Nicholas Lemann on the soul of the research university. From Polymath, a special issue on being a professor (and part 2). The teaching class: Rachel Riederer on how teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone paying tuition should care. What do college professors do all day? Lisa Wade investigates. 

universities in particular

…follow up to "what bureaucracies stand for:" this round is about universities, academic culture and markets. It is not specifically about contingent academic labor, elephant subtext in the room even so. Read through that lens.

From UN Chronicle, a special issue on higher education. Clifford Tan Kuan Lu, Nottingham:  Do University Rankings Matter for Growth? Alexandre Afonso (King's College): How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang.

what bureaucracies stand for

…surely #adjunct-relevant…applicable to universities—administration and departments, non-profit organizations—professional, discipline specific and advocacy, unions as well as the ubiquitous government agencies and legislative bodies with so much say in higher education policies yet so unwilling to pick up the tab. For agencies, think 'roided up committees and take it from there. However we feel about bureaucracy, it's part of higher ed. The better we understand how it works, the better equipped we will be to deal with it, whether at federal policy making level, navigating state systems or just trying to get through to the Nassau Community College Board of Trustee.

Gary E. Hollibaugh Jr. (Georgia) and Gabriel Horton and David E. Lewis (Vanderbilt): Presidents and Patronage. Gary E. Hollibaugh Jr. (Georgia): Naive Cronyism and Neutral Competence: Patronage, Performance, and Policy Agreement in Executive Appointments....William E. Kovacic (George Washington): Why Who Does What Matters: Governmental Design, Agency Performance, the CFPB and PPACA. Gabriel Balayan (American): A Theory of Existence of the Fourth Control Branch of the Government: A Comparative Analysis. Kimberly N. Brown (Baltimore): “We the People”, Constitutional Accountability, and Outsourcing Government....Anne Joseph O'Connell (UC-Berkeley): Bureaucracy at the Boundary....Arild Waeraas (UMB): Beauty from Within: What Bureaucracies Stand For.... and more

Read the rest of "what bureaucracies stand for" at BookForum's Omnivore

#PrecariousFaculty Network Links (weekly)

…this week's collection focuses on precarity, presenting three quite seemingly different pieces but all on this same topic. One is an Australian report on insecure (precarious) in Australia. The other two are about precarious academic labor in the US: student reactions and a poet's reflection on academia as plantation life, more pleasant for professors than their sharecropper colleagues

Lives on Hold: Unlocking the Potential of Australia's Workforce

Report of the Independent Inquiry Into Insecure Work In Australia.  Grant Hobson, a Melbourne based photographer and artist, was asked to produce a series of portraits of people in insecure work for this report:

"Making these images was an exercise in self reflection. These people are, in fact, me. Crippling housing and living costs are compounding the difficulty for artists and creative people to remain independent and productive in our society. Work is a fundamental expression of who people are. If employment in Australia is increasingly insecure, impermanent and dealt to us from the bottom of a deck then the implications are that we are all in for a rough time ahead. I wish to extend my gratitude to all those who graciously volunteered to be photographed as part of this project." Tags: pdf #PFR precarious workers

the university & its challenges

Welcome to the Reading Room, briefly annotated links rounding up the usual higher ed suspects. Institutional pubs, UK and US press, journals and magazines weigh in on university culture, online education, open access, academic publishing, race, gender, movies, adjuncts (thank you, Omnivore!), graduate school, grim futures (so what else is new?) and so on...

Leon Botstein (Bard): Resisting Complacency, Fear, and the Philistine: The University and Its Challenges, The Hedgehog Review, Summer 2013. From Notre Dame Magazine, a special issue: Is college worth it? Male academics rarely suffer more than a bit of rudeness, but women have it far worse, according to Luke Brunning. 

the university as we know it?

…briefly annotated articles from diverse sources (e.g. not just higher ed media) on academic news, trends and culture shamelessly reblogged from Book Forum's blog Omnivore (for the omnivorous reader, part of the academic job description, n'est-ce pas?). Neither unfamiliar topics nor adjuncts either today. Never disappointing, other themed collections cover politics, science, history, contemporary culture, philosophy, sundry topics from the Zeitgeist and more.  perhaps a fresh perspective or so. Still, perhaps someone among us should drop Book Forum a thoughtful note about Omnivore's shameless neglect of the academic precariat? I'm game. Are you? 

Eric Royal Lybeck (Cambridge): The Ideological Organization of University Systems: A Theoretical Framework. From The American Scholar, how to do what you do? Paula Marantz Cohen on how the life of a professor isn’t what it used to be. Smart, poor kids are applying to the wrong colleges: How an information mismatch is costing America’s best colleges 20,000 low-income students every year. Jordan Weissmann on how Washington could make college tuition free (without spending a penny more on education).

The online university of spam: Andrew Leonard on how a bizarre email from BachelorsDegreeOnline.com exposed the sleazy side of for-profit college recruitment. Does the rise of the “massive open online course” spell the end of the university as we know it? Keith Devlin on MOOCs and the problem with instructional videos. From TNR, will online education dampen the college experience?

the university as we know it? - bookforum.com / omnivore

no sanctuary in the ivory tower

Jonathan Olson (FSU): The Quest for Legitimacy: American Pentecostal Scholars and the Quandaries of Academic Pursuit. From Journalist’s Resource, a research roundup on affirmative action in university admissions. Price of a bad review: A university librarian finds himself sued for questioning the quality of an academic press. Blow up Media Studies: Emma Park reviews Blow Up the Humanities by Toby Miller. 

No sanctuary in the ivory tower: Why didn’t MIT defend Aaron Swartz? Chris Lehmann investigates. 

Nicole Allan and Derek Thompson on the myth of the student-loan crisis: Are rising debt levels really a cause for national panic? The Dean of Corruption: Cecilia Chang, the St. John’s fund-raiser who committed suicide after her epic fraud was exposed, tried to keep her superiors happy with gifts of watches, vacations, custom suits, and fine wine — it worked, for a while.

no sanctuary in the ivory tower - bookforum.com / omnivore

academe on the brink

…a stroll through academic culture & how it looks outside the Ivory Silo™ as well as from the inside…Sunday reading, time enough another day for the difficult, weighty and unpleasantly tangled plus more agreeable relevant professional announcements ~ more on 

• IRS weighing in on ACA and PTF workload (cadres of the unhappy no matter how it goes), 
• Green River CC intra-union conflict (oh noes, not again, but yes: uglier, more divisive, increasingly less conducive to civil discourse + gratuitous sideswipes at NFM), 
• @FutureofHE working papers on funding higher ed, 
• rounding off with calls for papers and upcoming conferences with contingent faculty sessions, even whole conferences just for us. 

So read on and enjoy. I'll do the same...

a straight path into academia

…more Omnivore, a selection of briefly annotated links about academia…highly readable equivalent of "Calgon take me away" for higher ed bloggers. Yes, wedo have our own news and plenty of it: from a new adjunct pages; an important new education column that we hope to feature regularly; chapter news; the impending arrival/revival of the NFM Newsletter; a new installment in the saga of Green River intra-union conflicts ~ to the saga's chronicler working on a new article about the New Faculty Majority (presumably our Foundation  as well). All sufficient unto the morrow, a new day...

From the Los Angeles Review of Books, the academy in peril: A symposium on Blow Up the Humanities by Toby Miller (and more).

universities are vast copy machines

…linkalicious Omivore is back on the #highered beat in time for year end reflections, plus an informal tutorial by example on elegant link annotation. This O covers more than higher ed: its beat is global and eclectic: politics, science, culture. social sciences, economy, geopolitics, arts, law, ethics, and more…

From Boston Review, pomp and exceptional circumstance: Malcolm Harris on how students are forced to prop up the education bubble. What's your preferred way of finding a paper in your field? Scott McLemee looks at a report on the available options. Siva Vaidhyanathan on how universities are vast copy machines — and that’s a good thing. 

Scholars say higher ed leftist bias helped Obama win. Are the liberal arts useful? Samuel Goldman wonders. Blaine Greteman reviews Speaking of Race and Class: The Student Experience at an Elite College by Elizabeth Aries with Richard Berman. Will state colleges become federal universities? Richard Vedder investigates. Students aren’t the only ones cheating — some professors are, too; Uri Simonsohn is out to bust them. 

Robert Dingwall on why open access is good news for neo-Nazis. Questioning Clay Shirky: It's time to start challenging the popular critique of higher education — and the way the views of many academics have been belittled or ignored, writes Aaron Bady. From PhD Comics, Jorge Cham on the fingerprint of stars. A look at 5 mind-blowing academic theories as taught by classic movies.

universities are vast copy machines - bookforum.com / omnivore

yourself an academic

…it's been a while since we rolled out Omnivore's succulent & succinctly annotated links for a virtual visit to the Reading Room, which I've noticed that it is not the most popular NewFac chez Facebook item, hence dropping the tag from the title. I don't doubt that those who do click through will be pleasantly surprised, even delighted. 

A new issue of Academe is out, including Thomas P. Miller on the academy as a public works project; and Marc Bousquet on how we are all Roman porn stars now: Are we fighting the good fight through our service or just creating a spectacle of super-exploitation? The university as welfare state: Paula Marantz Cohen on why you should want kooks teaching your kids. 

#HigheredNews: post-election musings on what it means for us

…from #Academe Today & @InsideHigherEd's Daily News Updates (in particular, Four More Years, A Status quo Congress & more). From California, Changing Universities' Bob Samuels writes "We Won the Battle, Now the War," and Remaking the University's Chris Newfield delivers a, "Bullet Dodged by Ballot." Snarky and smart Lawyers, Guns & Money offers briefly annotated election reflection links, Victory, include education,. Robert Valiant has launched a website to gather information about who funded campaigns for charters and vouchers and against teachers, unions and public education.

Yes, I'm till pushing academic news aggregation posts even if they don't have the bling or get the clicks of single items. Being informed matters and the day after a presidential election is a for read news day. Besides #nanowrimo and #digiwrimo = #wrimo all month long: I have not fish but other words to fry. Expect rewarmed leftovers, reblogs and otherwise recycled posts. Upside: more posts.

Academe Today Wednesday November 07, 2012 Subscribe to this newsletter  The 2012 Election: What Obama's Win Means for Academe

Reading Room: Omnivore's Choice

…sans explanatory or exculpatory head note of substance, a bit dated  (the last one was more recent). Trying to get back on daily post regimen (bless you Bill and Alan), resorting to working my way through hitherto neglected drafts. Joe latest COCAL Updates were on the schedule for today, but they take rather a bit of reformatting and link checking and I passed my coherence timeline before getting to them. Tomorrow maybe. Also simmering: a piece on injustices and not forgetting them when they drop below the fold or off the monitor. Looking after and calling attention to individual injustices matters as much if not more than surveys, participating in studies, conferences and strategic alliances. Save a life and save the world. 

From THES, Alan Ryan on the faith in education that inspired “Great Books” collections. From Slate, which pop culture property do academics study the most? Bound for glory: A look at academic terms misused and overused in popular vernacular. From TLS, a review of Debates in the Digital Humanities. 

Reading Room: Pushback on campus

It's been a busy week with the multifaceted and still dizzying responses to Debra's famous #5steps post, CHFE/NFM "Professor Staff" report, articles on MOOCs in higher education☜ a link just one of many) springing up like mushrooms in mainstream and highered media, implications for both future of higher education in general and contingent academic labor in particular, my own immersion (another post for another time, perhaps on another blog, sundry NFM projects in various stages and no others that slip my mind at the moment. Overload. Antidote: a trip through unrelated but higher ed relevant links. Welcome to the Reading Room.

Tom Medvetz (UCSD): “Scholar as Sitting Duck” : The Cronon Affair and the Buffer Zone in American Public Debate.  review Crazy U  by Andrew Ferguson and  In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic by Professor X. Welcome to College Insurrection , aimed to give conservative and libertarian student writers a larger platform and audience.     

If you didn’t know any better, you might think that the main thing conservatives learn in college English classes is how to complain about college English classes. From Radical Notes, Raju J Das on academia as a site of class struggle. 25 years later, Allan Bloom is just as misunderstood and necessary as ever. Richard Thompson on the conservative pushback on campus. A survey finds that social psychologists admit to anti-conservative bias.    

It might not be seismic, but there is a shift in academia away from the faddish and back towards the traditional. Jonathan B. Imber on misunderstanding intellectual diversity. Agnotology, the art of spreading doubt, distorts the scepticism of research to obscure the truth — areas of academic life have been tainted by the practice.

Pushback on campus is not the only reader's treat on Omnivore, the inestimable and always eagerly anticipated Book Forum blog

Reading Room: The college identity crisis

Preserve, change or adapt, we are working for a voice in the university now and to come. So then, what is our idea of the idea of the university, contemporary, ideal, historical? What shaped the university and higher education as we have experienced it and know it now? What challenges does it face?

Peter Kemp (Aarhus): The Idea of University in a Cosmopolitan Perspective. Davide Cantoni and Noam Yuchtman on how universities helped transform the medieval world. From H-Net, a review of Twentieth-Century Higher Education: Elite to Mass to Universal. A review of The Constitution Goes to College: Five Constitutional Ideas That Have Shaped the American Universityby Rodney A. Smolla. 

Reading Room: Omnivore on #HigherEd

....From Touchstone, man up, lady down: Perry L. Glanzer on the demise of ladies and gentlemen in higher education. From Christianity Today, the missing factor in higher education: A cover story on how Christian universities are unique, and how they can stay that way....Findings that run against the grain of assumptions: the essays in Military Culture and Education are a collective effort to “bridge the gap between the academy and the military”.... 


Read the complete collection at Omnivore

Reading Room: Omnivore on #highered systems

...the whole collection as is. Some but not all sources are journals and media from the Mundo Bizarro of highered. Others are main steam media and studies from outside the profession. All are informed. Consider this homework, prep reading for bigger picture, context for whatever the #CFHE gathering yields and is willing to share and seeing other perspectives, perhaps even ourselves, our profession, as others see it.

Eli Meyerhoff (Minnesota), Elizabeth Johnson (Wisconsin), and Bruce Braun (Minnesota): Time and the University. Robert Rhoads (UCLA): The U.S. Research University as a Global Model: Some Fundamental Problems to Consider. Study abroad? Why American students head north. What country has the best higher education system?