#adjunct Links & Commentary from #KeithHoeller (weekly)

…Issue #1 blogging materials and words from and on behalf of legendary (but social media averse) adjunct activist, Keith Hoeller. This project is still in Beta, so expect changes. I edited the the auto-blogged bookmarks to tidy up format, added the vintage image of a 1907 classroom, and rearranged the order to lead with the NY Times OpEd, related links and commentary, including a copy of Keith's unpublished letter to the editor, plus a link to the published response letters—all above the fold. And there is still plenty to read after it, maybe too much. Have patience while I work out the kinks. I'm getting my blogging mojo back. With that comes more and better content posted more often. I'll work on the shorter posts thing too. Promise...

another view on the “future” of higher education

…Year's end is, traditionally, a time of reflection, taking stock and then thinking ahead, making predictions, resolutions. Needless to say, these are stock themes in blogging the Janus season, higher ed not excepted. So unless someone throws me a must blog bomb, re-blogging selected posts and, in the case of overflow, ad hoc link collections from the feed reader's bounty will be my holiday break. Time, energy and especially inclination permitting, I'll probably fit in my own reflections and 2013 wish list somewhere along the way here or elsewhere. This view is from orgtheory by fabiorojas

Average folks and higher education researchers have conflicting views of academia. Average folks believe that most college teachers are tenured professors and that most students are residential students who play ultimate Frisbee on the quad. Higher education researchers have a different view. We know that most teachers are actually part time adjuncts and graduate students. Residential college is for the top of the pool. Most students are part time commuters or community college students. The mistake that people make is that the most visible forms of higher education (e.g., elite research universities and liberal arts schools) are the most common.

This split between folk wisdom and what the experts know is evident in David Purcell’s comment:

Community Colleges: Who is having this Warhol Moment?

National leaders, in higher education, and these people called "practitioners," where do they come from? Consider, for instance, the following:

“Many of the full-time faculty who created the current levels of success for community colleges are retiring in hordes, with only a few graduate programs to prepare their replacements.”

Wow, not just a dearth of qualified replacements, for this community college version of the “greatest generation,” but also a dearth of grad programs that can bring them up to snuff.  This alarming, but not entirely accurate, news is from a article in a series on “completion rates,” sponsored by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and attributed to “national educational leaders and practitioners.”

The specific leader here, who has constructed his views around the idea that community colleges are enjoying their “Andy Warhol fifteen minutes of fame,” is Dr. Terry O’Banion of Walden University, a private for-profit. According to Modern Language Association’s handy site on the academic workforce, Walden employs exactly zero full-time tenure or tenure track faculty among its employees and, among the 1800 faculty reported, only 100 full-timers.

What to make of such an educational leader, then, when he writes  this:

SSTF vs REAL Student Success

Here is a forward from the CPFA discussion group via Pamela Hanford, CPFA Director of Publications and editor of CPFA's Community College Journal.  Clearly this is part and parcel of the same process that standardizes curricula, turns teachers into facilitators and imposes the for-profit model on public education... oh, and kills the spirit too in both teachers teaching to the model as well as students conforming to it.  It works both ways: learning conditions are teaching conditions too. 


Keep the COMMUNITY in College. Read Nick Vasallo's letter below, watch the video, sign the petition, and share! Visit and like REAL Student Success on Facebook.

CC President is Hardly a Tireless Advocate for Faculty

My title here is in regard to a recent article in a local on-line paper about Dr. Joseph Hankins, President of Westchester Community College, one of my workplaces.  Dr. Hankin is a very nice man, with a terrific sense of humor—let's see how all that works out—who is now being celebrated for his 40-year tenure as chief exec at WCC.  

My strong view is that, whatever his other virtues, he cannot count among them that he's been a tireless advocate for faculty, least of all the adjunct faculty who do most of the teaching at WCC. Indeed, Dr. Hankin has presided, in his decades of leadership at WCC, over a continuous decline in the professional status of the faculty—the core of any college or university. When he arrived, there were roughly as many full-time as part-time faculty teaching at WCC. At this time there are perhaps 15% of the total faculty who enjoy full-time employment status and the professional courtesies and benefits that go along with that fast-disappearing status.

None of this, of course, is any surprise to NFM members and friends: I invite any and all who have suffered from the continuing degradation of the faculty, and especially the exploitation of adjunct/contingent labor, to share in this space or elsewhere their stories. Dr. Hankin is surely not the only community college—or university—president who is being celebrated for his many achievements even while the status of the key contributors—faculty—continues to be undermined.

Some attention to such matters is particularly appropriate as Campus Equity Week (October 24-30) approaches.

Cheers,  Dr. Al (Trevithick)

Westchester Community College, LaGuardia Community College, and Fordham University; New Faculty Majority, and blogger at http://cringingliberalelite.blogspot.com/.

Catching up with California: links for September 15 & 16

By Michael Meranze from Remaking the University: excerpts from links for September 15

• The LAT has more info on UCOP's Magic Never-Ending Tuition Machine.
• Community Colleges across the nation face increasing financial strains. So do students.
• California Student Default Rates: They are highest at for-profits.
• SAT scores are down. Whatever that means.

and September 16

• Even the Regents don't seem to buy UCOP's Magic Tuition Machine But they are happy to raise executive salaries.
• Regent David Crane thinks UC should become more like a private university.
• Berkeley Public Education Coalition responds to Tuition increases.
• Regents discuss Graduate Funding
• And the LAO is skeptical that UC needs so much money. (h/t Dan Mitchell)
• Is the renovation of Cal Stadium a huge financial mistake? (h/t Catherine Cole)
• The Defense has rested its case in the Irvine 11 case.
• Cutting Administration may not be everything. But it sure isn't nothing.
• If you want to improve K-12 education you need to work with teachers not attack them

Applications for Unemployment are up, the economy is down, and the political class is pushing for more cuts to government spending. Have a great weekend. More for you to read tomorrow...

CC Summit: ubi sunt precariat?

…And other community college faculty for that matter, although the precariat teaches an even higher % of courses there than in 4-year colleges and universities. Announcement hoopla aside, mostly we were pumped because an adjunct, albeit one with health insurance and connections, would be presiding over the summit.  A dry season of silence followed our euphoria, but now that summitry approaches, there is a White House statement/press release posted on the White House Community College page (a temp page, it would seem)

When summit press releases (many copies of the same) hit my reader, I checked the page, thought "how disappointing" - but without surprise. The signs were there all along, no matter what we all hoped or how much possibility we saw in a summit preside over by an adjunct. We all sent messages that went, for the most part, unanswered, and apparently ignored.

The White House said Wednesday that the summit will provide a forum for community college administrators, business leaders, philanthropists, government officials and students to discuss how these schools can help the U.S. have the most educated work force in the world.

Says it all... invisible again + career ed focus, business as usual ... sighing deeply, but I'm not slinking off into silence and hope you won't either. There is a site just for gathering ideas and opinions, as well as commenting and voting on them. Crowdsource it ... bring on the folksomonies. Go there: if you don't want to leave your opinion, leave a comment. While you are there, vote for every post advocating for adjuncts and other ideas you want considered. Last I checked (yesterday), pro-adjunct positions were #1 and #2 in the pack.