Only Contingent Faculty to be Affected

…a new study from #newfac house anthro, specializing in the study of NOTTSPASMS investigates this group's troubled and all too often invisible relationship with main stream media. Excerpts below. Alan Valerick writes, 

Cool picture of Roy from here. What if we all wore 

shades like that, all the time  even at night teaching \

off-campus? Would they notice us?

I've done a study. It shows that most higher ed faculty jobs are stressful because 1) most of them are adjunct or contingent and therefore low-paid, low benefit, and insecure, and 2) because most of what is ever written about adcons (Ed note: alternate synonym for NOTTSPASMS. See above link) is stupid or, if not stupid, just sort of “too bad and tough luck.” 

And now, I've done the study for you and you may now put my study up against what Huffington Post calls "A controversial new survey from CareerCast" that "insists college professors have the least stressful job in America."

So, that's stressful.

You know, perhaps it's because of more pressing problems—that pesky time-in-seat aspect of the credit hour, for example—but, whatever the cause, it's clear that some of our pals in "journalism," or whatever it's called, are having problems with higher education reality....

Guest Post: Alan Trevithick responds to faculty trends

A shortened and tamer version of this appears, retitled, in this month’s Anthropology News (AN), which is a monthly publication of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). Although the NFM web address, the article still gets NFM in front of the AAA, an important academic professional organization representing anthropology, a major discipline.

Canary, Eagle, Phoenix: How to Respond to Faculty’s Fall

A mournful trend: the steady replacement of full-time tenure or tenure track faculty - call them  “traditionals" - with part-time and/or limited contract instructors, “adjuncts” or “contingents.” Call them adcons.  First most evident at community colleges, this trend is now everywhere. For instance, see Nichols and Nichols' Money over Mind, Inside Higher Education, about Vassar College. 

All disciplines are blighted, as Marshall Sahlins noted in a 2008 AN issue, that in the country at large, “70 percent of all faculty are adjuncts,” and this “academic demi-monde” has been “noticeable enough” more recently even at University of Chicago.

First the canaries die. Then the eagles start keeling over.