More Omnivore on HigherEd and Academic Life

From NYRB, a review essay on universities and academic life. From Minding the Campus, Naomi Schaefer Riley on highly stressed students and the aimless curriculum; Perry L. Glanzer on politics and the demise of the humanities; and The New Yorker takes on the US News College Rankings. From THES, a look at the Top Universities by Reputation 2011. College-rankings race goes global: Now even iPhone applications help calculate colleges' place in the Scheme of Things — far too much weight is placed on cracking the top 100 or 50 or name your tier. 

A look at how journal rankings are "a spectre haunting universities everywhere". Renovation Project: Academe is again awash in talk of a crisis in the humanities. From Wired, last year, a University of Alabama scientist gunned down six colleagues — here's a look inside the actions of Amy Bishop. From First Things, when choosing a graduate program in theology, the best is not always not the brightest; and Go With God: Stanley Hauerwas pens an open letter to young Christians on their way to college. Tea, shortbread, and 3 things worth knowing: If students aren't culturally literate, a welcome diversion can help fill in their gaps of knowledge. 

A review of The Lost Soul of Higher Education: Corporatization, the Assault on Academic Freedom, and the End of the American University by Ellen Schrecker. The escalating arms race for top colleges: SAT tutor, $125 a session; campus visits, $4,000 — why it now costs a fortune to do your parental duty. A review of Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College by Andrew Ferguson (and more and more and more and more and more and more). 

An anti-college backlash: Americans are finally starting to ask, "Is all this higher education really necessary?"

From the Omnivore, the Book Forum Blog: subscribe to Book Forum by rss feed; follow on Twitter and/or Facebook

Found on Craig's List: Work for Desperate Adjuncts:

Even if not a joke and quite plausible - expected even, 'tis a pity I didn't come across this post to an adjunct list in time for an April Fool's blog post yesterday, never done despite stellar material on College Misery (renamed College Ecstasy for the day). 

Intrigued by implications of "I can ace your online courses" (for a price), I wonder how business is and how s/he guards against getting stiffed. Perhaps the threat of exposure suffices and losing paid for (if not earned) credits. And more... 

How would workers in underground services like this organize? If sex workers organize, why not "student ringers" as well? What would their DoL job titles be? Although a LinkedIn group, as well as one of the online adjunct groups, insists on referring to adjuncts as "independent contractors," this is probably not what they have in mind, however inevitable an entrepreneurial outcome. Likewise, this can't be what all the non-teaching ed-wonks have in mind when they prattle on about retention, completion and productivity (without concomitant increase in compensation)

----- Forwarded Message ----

I was looking through the "Lessons" section on Craigslist.com and found this advertisement. I was stunned. I can't imagine how many people have used this person's services. I wonder what other subjects have similar services available. 

"I can ace your online courses

Date: 2011-03-24, 10:12AM EDT

Reply to: 

serv-axpqk-22834910 10@craigslist. org [Errors when replying to ads?]

Do you need help with your online classes? I have a PhD degree and I can help. Leave it to me to do your online tests, quizzes, homework assignments. I can also take the course for you.

All levels of college math, statistics, and physics. Please send me the syllabus or assignments for a quote.

Your satisfaction and confidentiality are guaranteed. You pay through paypal AFTER work is done."

Speak Out & Write Out

Hat tip to KU Xchange and my trusty Google Reader armed and loaded with more feeds than I can usually get through in a day. Checking KU Xchange is always a good bet. Speak Out & Write Out proves that isn't the only good bet by a long shot. I was trying to decide between an open resistance post or cool strategy (playing the game) when I spotted this. It's neither but hopefully will combine a bit of both. Short on swords at the moment anyway, pens (and keyboards) will have to do.

Here's an opportunity  to write and publish on the relationships between quality education and the underfunded,  casualized labor system in higher education.

The journal Open Words: Access & English Studies has put out a Call for Papers for a special issue on contingent labor and educational access. (Full disclosure: I am one of the three guest editors of this issue.) This call is especially timely given the recent attacks on higher education funding.  As tuition increases, our students' access decreases. As budgets are slashed, full-time teachers become an endangered species. Open Words is especially interested in connections with Composition, Rhetoric, Writing, Literature  or Literacy studies.

From the CFP:

We work and live at a time when the American cultural and economic politics are pushing against labor equity and quality education; when colleges and universities operate according to corporate logics that consistently work to dehumanize faculty and students. While these forces come to bear on contingent faculty, open-admissions campuses, and non-mainstream students in unique ways, we also believe that careful analysis of such conditions presents significant possibilities for positive changes across levels and types of institutions. At the risk of sounding cliché, even managerial, difficult situations really do sometimes present unique opportunities.

With that frame in mind, we invite contributions for our Spring 2012 issue addressing relations of contingent labor, open access, and non-mainstream students; manuscripts (generally 15-25 pp., although we will review longer submissions) might consider these questions, or use them as provocations to ask and answer others:

• How does the increasing reliance on adjunct faculty on open-admissions campuses (and/or campuses serving largely non-mainstream student populations) impact students' learning conditions? Faculty's working conditions? Academic freedom? Curricular control? And how are these situations complicated at institutions employing graduate teaching assistants?
• Why is the casualization of academic labor happening more quickly, or to greater degree, on open-admissions campuses and campuses serving non-mainstream students? What strategies do faculty, both contingent and permanent, and students have at our disposal to respond to the inequitable conditions facing us?
• How do the interests of open-admission, community, vocational/technical, and branch university campus faculty coincide/overlap with the interests of students and administrators? How do these interests differ?
• How is the trend toward hiring non-tenure track faculty affecting the teaching of writing? As PhDs in literature, for example, are pushed out of tenure lines into these non-tenure lines, how do their (probable) lack of familiarity with composition scholarship and theory, and differing professional commitments to teaching writing, impact students, programs, and other faculty on our campuses? And, how is this trend affecting literature programs and the degrees to which they can address the interests and concerns of their 'non-mainstream' students?
• To what extent are contingent faculty involved in curricular and/or professional development, and to what extent can/should they be? How might departments/units balance the desire to involve contingent faculty in curriculum development, or placement (for example), with the minimal (if any) compensation most units offer for the work? How does this problem become more complex on campuses serving large populations of non-mainstream students with large numbers of contingent faculty?

 

Defend Public Education Actions: Mar 31, April 4 & 5

From Defend Public Educuation, group: upcoming actions: March 31st, Day of Walkouts and Strikes; April 4th, nationally coordinated We Are One actions; April 5th, national and nationwide teach-ins. 

Adjuncts may feel more vulnerable to the effects of administrative displeasure. I'm already hearing accounts, even from the normally bold: intimidation; threats too veiled to act on even if the option were available, repressive policies blocking free expression. Students can't be de facto fired by not-rehiring. 

Still, please find a way to show your support, come up with a workaround: wear red; sport a jaunty We Are One button on your lapel, hat or tote; meet outside class; add a discreet signature line to your email; post a badge to your blog; use it for your Facebook profile picture April 4. 

Think lit too. UPR students and faculty staged a 100 Years of Solitude marathon: how cool is that! 

---

March 31st - Day of Walkouts and Strikes

March 31st is a national day of walkouts and strikes against the attacks on public education. For years, education has been on the back burner while the federal government has been spending millions on bailouts and wars. State governments have accepted the budget shortfalls and subsequent cuts as necessary. These shortfalls were created by years of massive tax breaks to the rich on the state and federal level and exacerbated by the current economic crisis. These cuts and spending on wars and bailouts created the budget shortfalls that are being exploited to attack public education. On March 31st, students will walk out of class to raise their collective voice and fight back against the massive budget cuts. Facebook

April 4th - We Are One Actions: Nationally Coordinated Local Actions

Unions are organizing series of local actions in solidarity with people in the Midwest who have been facing intense attacks on public workers and their democratic rights. The fight to democratize and defend public education and the fights of workers is the same fight. We call for students and activists to support and initiate a wide and creative variety of actions on April 4th.

Join us in solidarity with working people in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and dozens of other states. Local Actions / Facebook

April 5th - National Teach-In: National Webinar Teach-In on the budget cuts

TUESDAY, APRIL 5TH, 2011, 2:00 – 3:30 PM (EST), National Teach-in Live Streamed from New York City, coordinated with 3:30 – 5:00 PM (EST), Local Teach-ins and Strategy Discussions on participating campuses. "National Teach-in on Debt, Austerity and How People Are Fighting Back" will be held at the Judson Memorial Church in New York City, beginning at 2:00 PM EST. Admission is free. 

Speakers from schools and communities around the country will be hosted by moderators FRANCES FOX PIVEN and CORNEL WEST in New York City through a live web cast that you can join by organizing a teach-in on your own campus.

Website / Facebook

 

Live from Indiana: Regional #CommunityCollegeSummit

markeysav on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

The "off line" screen probably means the summit is into breakout sessions. Catch videos for morning sessions and lunchtime presentation on the Ivy Tech live stream page at http://www.livestream.com/markeysav. Check agenda for speaker names and speaking order

Procastr morning sessions:

• 9:00 am (opening remarks, 26 min)
• 9:45 am (speakers, 1 hr, 53+ min)
• 11:30 am - 12:15 pm, panel

Lunchtime presentation

• Introduction (3.5 min)
• Presentation (42+ min)

On Twitter, @NewFacMajority. Search #communitycollegesummit or "community college summit"