oh noes not more #COCAL_Updates, #archives & #adjunct ppl who just don't get it

Time to move on. That's why I did (please read my December 2013 statement). The collected Precarious Faculty pages, blogs, collections (manually curated, aggregated by algorithm or a combination thereof), and social media streams/platforms — not just this blog — are an independent information network. Obviously, that mean unaffiliated with any organization or group and working independently. Nor are areas of interest narrowly limited to adjunct advocacy. The "information" part comes from a firm conviction that being well informed -- and informing well -- are the best defenses in our mental arsenal.

But first, as I promised Joe, I'm working on the archives. It's still a work in progress, but here's where I am so far:

• The separate Precarity Dispatches Tumblr page lists all the links to public locations. There still is no Tumblr tag feed for Updates as the tag is still giving me fits. 

• The next link, the complete InoReader clip, displays all Updates with feeds from all public locations, with them most recent displaying at the top and updating automatically. Searching older posts is less convenient. 

• The rest of the links in the first section go directly to Updates collections at individual locations

• Following the comprehensive list of public archive links, the next group of links are to posts about Updates and archiving them.

Students on the Front Lines of Class War

So what does that have to do with #adjuncts, #academiclabor & #NFM's #highered mission? In my opinion, plenty. Perhaps Juan Cole's Truthdig essay How Students Landed on the Front Lines of Class War will help explain why we should be there with them. If not, then at least include it in discussions about our purpose and where it fits in the current cultural, economic and higher education landscape.

Joe Wolf (CC-BY-ND)

By Juan Cole

The deliberate pepper-spraying by campus police of nonviolent protesters at UC Davis on Friday has provoked national outrage. But the horrific incident must not cloud the real question: What led comfortable, bright, middle-class students to join the Occupy protest movement against income inequality and big-money politics in the first place?

The University of California system raised tuition by more than 9 percent this year, and the California State University system upped tuition by 12 perceity.


Follow the link to read the rest of How Students Landed on the Front Lines of Class War.


Juan Cole,  a celebrated Mideast scholar and the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, also blogs at Informed Comment. His Truthdig column appears every other Tuesday.

Whither U: Education in the Time of a 2-tiered System

These tiers are not about tenure (for a change) but not unrelated: the reference is to the increasingly tiered economy, global and domestic and its implications for higher ed. 

Posts in progress, "year of the dangerous meme" and "grow your own" are in drafts. Not the usual ~ after all there are so many calls in so many disciplines and Penn to meet your notification needs, but I have a call to post, plus personal but education related notes on experimental open online courses I am taking, a busman's holiday but covering developments that could change higher ed as we know it. MOOCs may not have that MLA cachet but they make Digital Humanities and HASTAC look retro. 

There's NFM news too, a few items not in time to make the Newsletter, which should be appearing in a few days. I'm one of the BoD you'll meet in this issue's "Meet the NFM Board" feature. Eventually, you'll meet all of us. In the meantime, catch up on back issues in the Newsletter Archives while you are waiting. Otherwise, as a former student at the American University at Cairo, I am consumed with following #Egypt. Back to the newsfeeds...

The Rise of the New Global Elite

Chrystia Freeland, The Atlantic, February 2, 2011.

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This is going to have to be fixed before education is fixed. Because education can't fix this: 

March4 with Bob Samuels and Twitter

UCLA Fights Back!: Demands for #March4 (Bob Samuels in HuffPo)

"A UCLA coalition of students, faculty, community members, and unions has worked together to come up with a set of demands to present to the administration and the media for March 4th."

The first set of issues deals with fighting the privatization of the university. Another group addresses budget transparency, shared governance, and democratic participation. Samuels explains,

"It is important to stress that when students and workers say they are fighting the privatization of the university, they are resisting six inter-related trends:

1) the shifting of costs from the public to the individual; thus while the state reduces funding, the individual students are being asked to make up for the differences through higher fees;

2) the university is being run more like a private profit-centered business than a not-for-profit public institution; in this structure, costs are socialized, while profits are privatized through the rise of an administrative class;

3) the move from a peer review system for public workers to a private model of free agent contract negotiations;

4) The move to individualized, online learning;

5) The student focus on earning individual grades over social learning and collaboration; and

6) the move to have private donors and private corporations fund the research mission."

March 4th sources are picking up. In addition to blogs, mainstream media and several March 4 groups with Facebook presences supplementing their blogs and Ning platforms, Twitter searches may be be the best and most efficient way to search fast breaking updates. Just search the hashtag #march4. Nor is all the action in California.