Reading from #adjunct, #EdBlogNet, etc blogs…featuring @PlashingVole on public #media #education

…and more from the PF blogrolls including (but hardly limited to) Dave Greene on How AFT blew it, Rich Moser on The Green Party and the 2016 Election, Bryan Alexander on How students choose majors during recessions and Steven Krause on Twitter, tenure and what students don't know (nor the general public either). All domestic...

The vole's Bye Bye Beeb takes it global, addresses #ShockDoctrine too in case anyone has been sleeping through the international news and still doesn't realize all the assaults on public education or anything smacking of the public good are happening everywhere. 

The Plashing Vole writes:

Starbuckaroo & #adjunct comment blitzing too

Skeptical all-agog-ness at news of Starbuck's (not quite) free higher ed degree offer abounds on adjunct enclaves around the tubz. On the adj-l list, which had been quiet until Anna Spiro posted a link to the NYT Starbucks OpEd. Conversation picked up. Ana Fores posted,

I wrote a letter, which was published, and I encouraged folks on Adjunct Justice to join me & write in, to give their own point of view. I am sure some heeded the call, but I don't know who.  

If we want to have our voices heard, we need to do so in the mainstream media, especially in papers such as the New York Times with its huge readership. Write in your comment. I think they may still be taking them!

CFHE Conference January, 2014…

The CFHE Conference in Manhattan, hosted by PSC CUNY, was fantastic and a great success. The PSC staff went out of their way to accommodate the over 100 attendees, and Mike Fabricant ran the tightest, yet most informative and collaborative, conference possible. I am sure I speak for all attendees when I offer a resounding THANK YOU!

The conference began Friday evening with a unique dinner featuring tastes from all over the world and a comprehensive discussion of the accreditation battle at City College of San Francisco. It is amazing how corrupt an accreditation board can be.

Saturday morning began with a panel discussion on 'Effective Higher Ed Campaigns'.

On Being Interviewed as a Road Scholar

…reflections from +Joseph Fruscione (GWU Writing Program). More media ~ higher ed, mainstream, national, local, print, radio, television ~ are interviewing not just the usual "leadership" or spokespersons but Payless running shoes on the ground adjunct and contingent faculty. The genre ("Interview with an adjunct"), its terrain and conventions, are new. Some but not all experiences have been positive. Let's learn or write them ourselves: own the genre and speak with our own voices. Be ready: you could be next. Joe Fruscione writes about his experience, offers good suggestions:

Sometimes, ditching MLA sessions and walking the book exhibit can lead to good things. In 2009, talking with an editor led to a book contract. In 2013, a conversation with Maria Maisto—whom I’d never met landed me in the middle of a news story about contingent university faculty, “road scholars” as the producer called us before my on-camera interview for PBS NewsHour.

Checking email after teaching my second class on the first day of spring semester classes, I saw “Interview for PBS?” on a subject line and, intrigued, jumped at the chance. After a few threads between Maria, the producer, and me, a phone interview was scheduled for the next day. Although never hesitant to accept the invitation,

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....