universities in particular

…follow up to "what bureaucracies stand for:" this round is about universities, academic culture and markets. It is not specifically about contingent academic labor, elephant subtext in the room even so. Read through that lens.

From UN Chronicle, a special issue on higher education. Clifford Tan Kuan Lu, Nottingham:  Do University Rankings Matter for Growth? Alexandre Afonso (King's College): How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang.

Class Warfare: #Adjunct Profs address inequities of pay/work conditions

…pick of the day, an authentic voice…for sure the best, freshest piece on this topic I've read in a long time—and, like Prufrock, I've seen them all. 

The army of part-time professors teaching at the region’s colleges are merely working stiffs at the bottom of an enormous and lucrative enterprise.

Read all of Class Warfare: How Adjunct Professors Are Investigating Pay Conditions and then read it again. PS looks I'm getting the hang of short posts but may have gone too far the other direction.

what bureaucracies stand for

…surely #adjunct-relevant…applicable to universities—administration and departments, non-profit organizations—professional, discipline specific and advocacy, unions as well as the ubiquitous government agencies and legislative bodies with so much say in higher education policies yet so unwilling to pick up the tab. For agencies, think 'roided up committees and take it from there. However we feel about bureaucracy, it's part of higher ed. The better we understand how it works, the better equipped we will be to deal with it, whether at federal policy making level, navigating state systems or just trying to get through to the Nassau Community College Board of Trustee.

Gary E. Hollibaugh Jr. (Georgia) and Gabriel Horton and David E. Lewis (Vanderbilt): Presidents and Patronage. Gary E. Hollibaugh Jr. (Georgia): Naive Cronyism and Neutral Competence: Patronage, Performance, and Policy Agreement in Executive Appointments....William E. Kovacic (George Washington): Why Who Does What Matters: Governmental Design, Agency Performance, the CFPB and PPACA. Gabriel Balayan (American): A Theory of Existence of the Fourth Control Branch of the Government: A Comparative Analysis. Kimberly N. Brown (Baltimore): “We the People”, Constitutional Accountability, and Outsourcing Government....Anne Joseph O'Connell (UC-Berkeley): Bureaucracy at the Boundary....Arild Waeraas (UMB): Beauty from Within: What Bureaucracies Stand For.... and more

Read the rest of "what bureaucracies stand for" at BookForum's Omnivore

#PrecariousFaculty Network Links (weekly)

…this week's collection focuses on precarity, presenting three quite seemingly different pieces but all on this same topic. One is an Australian report on insecure (precarious) in Australia. The other two are about precarious academic labor in the US: student reactions and a poet's reflection on academia as plantation life, more pleasant for professors than their sharecropper colleagues

Lives on Hold: Unlocking the Potential of Australia's Workforce

Report of the Independent Inquiry Into Insecure Work In Australia.  Grant Hobson, a Melbourne based photographer and artist, was asked to produce a series of portraits of people in insecure work for this report:

"Making these images was an exercise in self reflection. These people are, in fact, me. Crippling housing and living costs are compounding the difficulty for artists and creative people to remain independent and productive in our society. Work is a fundamental expression of who people are. If employment in Australia is increasingly insecure, impermanent and dealt to us from the bottom of a deck then the implications are that we are all in for a rough time ahead. I wish to extend my gratitude to all those who graciously volunteered to be photographed as part of this project." Tags: pdf #PFR precarious workers

BYOP & because it's the weekend: introducing @hewjrtaken

…H.E. Whitney Jr., whose Adjunct World video short shorts and comics on Facebook and Tumblr  create a comic odyssey detailing the fortunes of the Disposable Adjunct and Apartmentless Larry in higher education…plus digital art at Graphimetrix,

line of fire

0:34, line of fire, adjunct life, leaf blower

hungersaurus

0:42, An Assistant Dean's Demise