Professionalization in the Academy

Academic professionalization, excerpted from Louis Menard's The Marketplace of Ideas. Bookmark: http://harvardmagazine.com/2009/11/professionalization-in-academy

Bookmark notes: "The Ph.D. Problem," on the professionalization of faculty life, doctoral training, and the academy's self-renewal:

"[T]he modern academic discipline reproduces all the salient features of the professionalized occupation. It is a self-governing and largely closed community of practitioners who have an almost absolute power to determine the standards for entry, promotion, and dismissal in their fields. ....Since it is the system that ratifies the product—ipso facto, no one outside the community of experts is qualified to rate the value of the work produced within it—the most important function of the system is not the production of knowledge. It is the reproduction of the system.... It is the academic's job in a free society to serve the public culture by asking questions the public doesn't want to ask, investigating subjects it cannot or will not investigate..." + pages of comments

Thanks to Kibrolv at Open a Vein for blogging this one (post title, "the octopus") for me to pick up his link on RSS reader, read article, bookmark on NFM bundle and then share here (tweet later too). More bookmarks at http://delicious.com/vcrary/NFM. Blogged via Delicious.com

Book Review: Wannabe U: Inside the Corporate University

Wannabe U by Gaye Tuchman, reviewed in UK academic press, Times Higher Education, is an indictment of today's academy that strikes a chord with reviewer Susan Bassnett. It did with me and (I hope) will with you.

"tough, honest, highly entertaining - and also a serious examination of what is happening in one typical US state university with aspirations to a greater role on the international academic stage....This book is based on the American university system, but the patterns of behaviour that it outlines will be all too familiar to administrators and academics in universities all over the world."

IHE: DNA Swab for Your Job

Picking up traction indeed ~ from Matt's press release to ACLU, CBS News blog & now IHE. Can CHE even NYT be far behind? The topic and issues should be to alternate press tastes as well. 

DNA Swab for Your Job via Inside Higher Ed on 10/29/09: U. of Akron says all new employees must be willing to submit to an unusual test for academic employment. Adjunct leader quits in disgust.

Aside from obvious questions of ethics and legalities, how do such requirements affect adjuncts more adversely than full time and tenure faculty? Maria Maisto observed that, should DNA sampling become a widespread policy, an adjunct teaching at multiple campuses might be required to submit 5-6 samples. Also, one might ask who pays for testing? Most states require fingerprinting for K-12 teachers and staff ~ often paid for by the school district. Substitute teachers (non contract) and volunteers pay for their own testing.

From the Department of Ill Wind and Cloud Linings: this suggests (indeed screams out for) street theater treatment and CEW activities (ripped from the headlines as it were). Put a jar of swabs and a stack of lab sample envelopes on your tables...

Blog post on impasse in Montgomery College negotations

Thanks to Anne McLeer, SEIU Local 500, Director of Research/Strategic Planning, for permission to cross post from adj-l. There’s a lot going on in the “adjunctverse” these days ~ CHE surveys, Southwestern College shenanigans, Akron U imposing DNA sampling, AAUP & AFT “conversion” proposals, California budget woes ~ more than I can keep up with so any help readers can offer is more than welcome.

---

Part-time faculty at Montgomery College Maryland have declared impasse in their negotiations with the College over the issue of pay raises. Here is a link to an excellent blog on the subject by Maryland political blogger Adam Pagnucco. Please read the blog and comment.

 

http://maryland-politics.blogspot.com/2009/10/seiu-local-500-declares-impasse-with.html

 

The SEIU 500 Coalition for Academic Labor will be hosting a “Forum on Part-time Faculty Unions: A National and Local Movement” on Nov 7^th in Washington, DC (flyer for the event)

 

Southwestern College students protest class cuts (& what the Administration did)

AAUP is taking an interest in this one after we brought it to their attention on adj-l. Click through to the blog post for comments.

Southwestern College Students Protest Class Cuts (And What the Administration Did Afterward) via The Writer's Washroom by Nickolas on 10/24/09

On Thursday, October 22, students at Southwestern College in Chula Vista chose to protest against the unilateral actions of the school president and its Board. The protest was civil and held in the fifty yard-by-fifty yard zone that the school calls its "Free Speech Area."


It should also be noted that the Free Speech Area is hidden away between several buildings and is invisible to any road, parking lot, or driveway that surrounds the campus. To a member of the voting public - such as myself - who showed up to watch the students, it was difficult to find. I, like others, had to park and wander the campus until we found it.

For the last Board meeting, President Chopra refused to move the venue from the tiny room it usually used to the auditorium it regularly uses when it expects a big crowd. He knew that students, professors, members of the public, and the press were coming to express their displeasure at his budget-slashing plans, so more than one hundred people – like me – stood outside and listened to the meeting on little speakers, while police guarded the doors.