Reblog: Punching the Adjunct Time Card [+ a Call to Data!]

…by Irreveranting Professor (gr8 nic on so many levels!) who writes at the Adjunct Project: 

I’ve been inspired by Moneyball! At the time I saw the movie, which was last fall, I was a contingent teaching graduate statistics to counseling students. Right after I saw the movie, I was inspired to use it to help my students see the application of statistics in the “real world,” and even with counseling students using this movie worked!  They learned and were excited! Obviously, I wasn’t paid to take work to the movies or to take the movies to work, but the connections worked for the students. 

With [Josh's] recent blog tying Moneyball to the world of the contingent faculty member, I saw a whole new spin on the movie. 

Irreveranting wants to collect contingent/adjunct professor records, code and process them (anonymity guaranteed) to quantify all our teaching hours. Not only would this confirm shared narratives, informal anecdotes and suspicions but provide real data for advocacy, the kind that can't be blow off as "not counting." Interested in participating? Already have existing logs of your time and tasks? Email: irreverantprofessor@gmail.com

Read the rest of Punching the Adjunct Time Card.

DOL Doesn’t have a Clue: Handbook Description of Higher Ed Teaching a Work of Fiction

Accordingly, Matt Williams writes,  

I have created a petition addressed to U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis requesting that the DOL revise and update their characterization of the profession. Please take a moment to add your name to the petition.

Setting background for his petition, Matt explains, reposting from his akronadjunct blog,

How can our own government get it so incredibly wrong? The U.S. Department of Labor publishes occupational outlook data in its Occupational Outlook Handbook. This publication (available online at http://www.bls.gov/ooh/) reports median and average salaries for various occupations along with details about types and amount of education typically required to enter professions, typical working conditions, total number of jobs, growth or contraction outlook, etc.


The DOL OOH (pronounced “doooh!”…the L is silent) identifies the median salary for college professors (i.e., postsecondary teachers) to be $62,050. The median wage is the wage at which half of the workers in the occupation earned more than that amount and half earned less. Median wage data are from the BLS Occupational Employment Statistics survey.

New to the higher ed beat? Read this.

links from the Educated Reporter blog for following higher ed news. No, you may not agree with the editorial stance of every source listed. So what. Since when did depending on mainstream corporate media and cherry picking sources for consensus constitute good research?

I'd add academic, labor and other blogs to the source list but that's another post. What sources would you add? The Educated Reporter, Linda Perlstein, public editor for the Education Writers Association, writes, 

Last week I posted resources I think are helpful for K-12 reporters to stay abreast of national issues. Today, here is what I recommend to new higher ed reporters: 

• —You simply cannot cover the beat without signing up to receive daily bulletins from Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle of Higher Education. It would be like obsessing over celebrities without reading People and Us. Touring Provence without visiting Aix or Arles or Avignon. (Oh wait, I did that once, but I had my reasons.) Everything on IHE is free, and the Chronicle gives journalist free subscriptions and is very generous about lifting you over the paywall for links and such.
• —Lumina Foundation send out links to the day’s higher ed headlines—unfortunately, only the headlines, but it is something.
• —Blogs worth reading: Joanne Jacobs on community colleges at Hechinger, Quick and the Ed, the New America Foundation blogs, Mike Kirst’s College Puzzle, Center for College Affordability and Productivity, and, if you are into admissions issues from a consumer perspective, The Choice at the New York Times.

What am I missing? 

Comment:

Other worthwhile bulletins:

• _University Business Magazine's daily newsletter, which thoroughly rounds up higher-ed news stories sandwiched between job postings, new product announcements and contracts: http://bit.ly/awGikF
• _ The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities compiles top headlines and links daily ... even though today its Twitter feed promoted an opinion piece in a North Dakota newspaper that badly distorted a recent AP story on collegiate learning. www.naicu.edu/rss/newsroom.asp
• _ The American Council on Education's Division of Government and Public Affairs sends out headlines/links twice a week: http://bit.ly/i2Rgpr 

You won't miss much if you get these.

via educatedreporter.com  and x-posted to The New Faculty Majority  via email from Academentia