Faculty Have a Branding Problem

…as New Faculty Majority VP Matt Williams reminds us on his blog, Akron Adjunct, no words minced in title, posts or here as reposted from Matt's blog (also listed in the blogroll on the left sidebar). There's a lot more than just posts on The New Faculty Majority blog. After this cautionary tale, we're waiting for the higher education faculty version of A Christmas Carol. Consider CCAC course cutting shenanigans as the trailer. Stay tuned for the next installments.

College faculty in America have a branding problem.  When even the Vice President of the United States disses you publicly, scapegoating you as the reason that college tuition has skyrocketed over the past twenty years…and when the vice president is supposed to be your ally…and when the vice president’s wife is a community college professor (i.e., he should know better)…well…like a Jeff Foxworthy joke…you might have a branding problem.

More Magical Thinking

You should all really have a look at this Inside HigherEd column: "Castes and Higher Ed" by Gloria Nemerowicz. It is just another in an apparently endless line of “reformist” essays featuring a tenderness of feeling for the poor and the downtrodden, conjoined to a faith in the power of higher education that is rendered ridiculous by some inability or unwillingness to look at the caste system in our colleges and universities. Look:

“Income and wealth inequality in the United States, which has become even more pronounced since 1967, continues to interfere with the national need for an increasingly sophisticated and skilled workforce and citizenry.”

Yikes! Does this author really not know that at least one very sophisticated and skilled workforce—the one doing all the higher ed teaching—is, well, you get the idea.

Furthermore, In regard to the author’s own institution, while the Pine Manor College website claims, no doubt truthfully that "The College employs nearly 200 individuals, including full- and part-time faculty and staff," the US Department of Education reports via IPEDS that PMC has 53 employees whose primary task is instruction, and almost half of these are part-time.

DO have a look and make polite comments in response.