Lesko Blog

  • I Have A Secret

    No Comments
    06 Feb 2010 /  AdjunctNation.com, networking

    Don’t laugh too long and hard when I tell you I have never had a Facebook page. I resisted the temptation for, literally, years. I know people who spend much too much time on Facebook. I also know that I am enamored of such technology, and could get into trouble very quickly. I love Twitter. The new blogs that we launched a month ago are all linked to Twitter, and you’ll see “Follow Me” tags on the top, right hand side of each blog. Click that, and you’ll be able to follow the blogger and her/his posts on Twitter. New post. You get a Tweet. Twitter is highly addictive—but you already know this. Perhaps you’re even among the 35 percent of faculty who are using Twitter in their efforts to keep their students on track and engaged. If you are, let me know.

    Here’s the secret. I have a Facebook page now. The address is http://www.Facebook.com/pdlesko. If you’re on Facebook, and want to pop on over, please do. The more friends the merrier. It’s a great way to connect, and I’m pretty sure there are support groups for those of you who, like me, have the propensity to become addicted to social networking.

    If you do send a “Friend” request, be sure to let me know you’re an AdjunctNation.com visitor.

    Tags: , , ,

  • New Voices Debut On AdjunctNation.com Blogs—More to Come

    No Comments
    16 Jan 2010 /  AdjunctNation.com, on blogging

    I’ve had this idea for a while now. I concluded some time ago that there needed to be more adjunct voices blogging. At InsideHigherEd.com, there is “The Education of Oronte Churm” blog. Oronte blogs somewhat sporadically and indirectly about adjunct faculty. Over at The Chronicle of Higher Education, there are no adjunct bloggers, per se, though the newspaper is publishing essays from about about adjunct faculty with more frequency. It galls me to no end that the Chronicle’s high profile Brainstorm blog employs Marc Bousquet, a tenure-line faculty member, to blog about adjunct issues. So it has been for much too long that full-time tenure-line faculty have taken it upon themselves to serve as the spokespeople of their  non-tenured colleagues.

    With the launch of the new blogs on AdjunctNation, each of which is written by a non-tenured faculty member, the site has give voice to several individuals who will write weekly on a variety of topics that will, I believe, appeal to a wide swath of the Adjunct Nation who visit our site. 

    So take a few moments, and check out the new blogs:

    The New Adjunct, written by Paul Porter, chronicles the launch of the web site “The New Adjunct” for non-tenured faculty throughout Indiana. I thought it might be interesting to see the progress of the group working on this project. Web pages just for non-tenured faculty are few and far between and I welcome the creation of The New Adjunct. 

    Kat Kiefer-Newman pitched Juggling 101 when I sent out a call for bloggers to several thousand individuals registered as AdjunctNation.com Family Members. I thought Kat’s idea was spot on. Adjuncts juggle teaching with many other responsibilities, and Kat is going to write about her busy days, afternoons and evenings. Adjuncting for two different departments, teaching five courses, is just the beginning of her day.

    Check out all of the new blogs here. 

    You can now follow whichever blogger(s) you like via Twitter. When there is a new blog posting on AdjunctNation.com, it will be tweeted to the followers of the blog(s). The AdjunctNation.com Family email alert will let Family members when new blog postings go up, as well. That email alert contains other information, so if you simply want to be alerted when your favorite blog is updated, follow the blogger on Twitter.

    In the meantime, we are going to design and launch the Adjunct Diary Page. Unlike our regular bloggers, on the Diary Page, anyone will be able to sign up and post their own blog content. Diary readers will be able to comment on posted Diary content, and the Diary content with the most views and most comments will be be highlighted on the Adjunct Diary front page. I am very excited about this opportunity for more and more non-tenured faculty to have opportunities to tell their stories.

    Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

  • Welcome to the new AdjunctNation.com and E-Zine

    No Comments
    29 Dec 2009 /  AdjunctNation.com, on blogging, on publishing

    Times are tough for everyone, and I have spent the past 18 years writing about the issues that impact the nation’s 700,000 faculty off of the tenure-track. When I began in 1992, there were 300,000 part-time faculty. Today, the Department of Education estimates that there are between 400,000 and 500,000 college faculty who hold temporary appointments. The remaining faculty off of the tenure-track are those who hold full-time temporary appointments, such as lectureships, visiting appointments and fixed-term teaching jobs.

    Just as the nature of the individual teaching part-time has changed since the late-70s (when 25 percent of faculty were part-time and the majority of those part-time faculty were professionals hired to teach specific courses), the Adjunct Advocate magazine has changed, as well. The publication was in print from 1992-2006. It was then that I decided to make the Adjunct Advocate an electronic publication with an accompanying PDF version. As technology evolved, and it became clear that downloading a PDF no longer appealed to most subscribers, I decided that Adjunct Advocate would exist as an e-zine, online only. Many larger publications followed Adjunct Advocate online, including the Christian Science Monitor and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

    What I was left puzzling out was the relationship between Adjunct Advocate and the magazine’s web page, AdjunctNation.com. As you know, AdjunctNation is not simply a companion site the Adjunct Advocate. It was never meant to be. It was designed to be a place for non-tenured faculty to come to use a variety of resources, such as the message boards, syllabus vault, and of course read the editorial content. Over the past six months, we have been working on the most effective way to leverage the almost 1,000 articles from the archived issues of Adjunct Advocate that readers can find online at AdjunctNation.com, and the idea of blogging combined with an e-zine. Blogs are instantaneous. Andrew Sullivan, who blogs on popular culture for The Atlantic, updates his blog multiple times each day.

    It seemed to me that there should be some way to combine the immediacy of a blog and the aspect of an online magazine. What I came up with and what we launched in November 2009 was the AdjunctNation.com E-Zine. When you visit the E-Zine page you will find a new icon that announces there is current content posted to the site. Some of the content will change over the course of a given month (like a blog) and be moved into our archive, where you can find it using the same article identifiers we have been using for 18 years. You’ll be able to search through features, news, reviews, interviews, profiles, etc…just as you always have, and we’ll be able to freshen content much more frequently!

    We’ve gone from a bimonthly online publication to an E-Zine that offers current content much more frequently than ever before. We’re not modeling InsideHigherEd.com and its daily news updates, but rather still focusing completely on faculty off the tenure-track on more in-depth analysis and reporting. Another change you’ll be seeing is that we are adding more bloggers to the site. At the moment, there are four blogs, you can expect that number of double over the course of the next few weeks. Visitors should look for new content daily on AdjunctNation.com.

    The other main concern I have always had was how to price the Adjunct Advocate so that a subscription was within reach of everyone who wanted one. Over the years, we have given away many subscriptions free of charge to part-time faculty who found themselves unable to pay. In 1992, a subscription was priced at $18 per year. That eventually rose to $35 per year for the print edition. Today, almost 20 years later, the new AdjunctNation.com Site Pass is priced at $20 per year, and includes access to all of the articles in the archive, as well as access to current content for one year. I am pleased most by the ability offer so much to our non-tenured faculty readers for a relatively modest sum. As always, if you find yourself unable to pay, but want to have a Site Pass, email me directly (pdl@adjunctadvocate.com).

    We are also in the process of revamping the e-newsletters. Both will be renamed as email alerts, but content of each will stay the same. Finally, have a look at the JOB-LIST. It is the largest collection of jobs for non-tenured faculty anywhere online. I am delighted at the changes, and at the opportunity to serve the population of faculty off the tenure-track in ways that are absolutely unique and, at the same time, familiar to those who have seen the development of the web site and AdjunctNation.com E-Zine. Adjunct Advocate/AdjunctNation.com has, once again, reinvented what it means to serve up information and resources to the majority of our nation’s college faculty, the ones who teach off the tenure-track. Going forward, we will work together to make AdjunctNation.com and the E-Zine a first stop online for tens of thousands of part-time, adjunct, full-time temporary and visiting college faculty.

    Tags: , , , , , , , ,

  • Excuses. Excuses.

    1 Comment
    25 Dec 2009 /  on blogging

    On the front page of the AdjunctNation.com site, there is a feature called The Daily Excuse. AdjunctNation.com Family members can log in and leave their best student excuses. Those excuses rotate on the front page. I thought it might be fund to post a longer list of the excuses that have been submitted. The names beside the excuses are of the individual who submitted the excuse.  Enjoy the list, and to submit your own student excuses, click here to log in to your account, and then add your classic to the list. You may submit as many as you like, but only the best of the best get chosen. If yours does, it will rotate along with the rest of the daily excuses submitted.

    I didn’t turn in my paper because my flash drive went through the washing machine. Hannah Sigur

    I can’t read cursive. Carrie Finn

    I cannot take the final exam on that date 4 months from now. My grandmother’s funeral will be on that day. Jim Harnish

    I didn’t know that the final draft of my essay was supposed to be typed. Deborah Cunningham

    I had a car accident and had to wait for the insurance adjuster. Hannah Sigur

    I won’t be in class today, as they are wheeling me into the E.R. right now, and I was wondering if I could turn it in next week(Sounds of T.V., videogame, talking, laughing in the background). Mark Witsaman

    My printer ran out of ink. Melissa Estelle

    My grandmother’s uncle’s mother-in-law died and we had to go to the funeral in Calcutta last night.  Sharon Martin

    My dog ate my computer. Rebecca Lindsay

    The dog ate my jump drive. Debby Bloom

    My car got towed and my homework was in the front seat. Joan Conrad

    I know you said we were supposed to follow your directions, but I didn’t think you meant me. Joan Conrad

    The roof of my house fell in. I cannot make it to class. Kathy Brooks

    My dog ate my laptop power cord. Stephen D Kempisty

    My house burned down. Stephen D Kempisty

    Thursday is the Warriors home playoff game and I REALLY want to go. The game is at 7:30. I can come and turn in my paper and then go, but I don’t want to hurt my grade. What do you suggest? Judy Juanita

    The “Electronic Dog” (read: computer) ate my homework. I allow one per student per semester; in Week 15, students auction off their unused excuses. Kate McIntire

    My assignment was in the back seat of my car which was confiscated when my cousin used it trying to solicit a prostitute. Carmen Pascaretti

    I was up all night with our new baby. Ronald Lucas

    My cat caught fire. Allan Zwierzko

    I never seen a cow before. I just relocated from Queens. I had to pull over. Sorry I’m so late for class. Liz Burke

    I’m going to be sick tomorrow. Yolanda Williams

    I think I’m going to be sick tomorrow. Yolanda Williams

    “My grandmother/grandfather died and I had to leave town unexpectedly” - I know; it’s not so unusual - except when A THIRD of the class uses this excuse; the sheer numbers make me wonder if our country is in the throes of a pandemic! Brian Cushing

    After two weeks of absence in a four week summer course the student arrives and says: I had car trouble. Thomas Cochran

    Sorry, I’m dead right now, can I turn it in next week? Jade Winters

    I have to go, my cat is on fire. Jade Winters

    I cannot make class today, I have to go to clinic, and if so, get an abortion. (I actually received this one via email from a student who had missed MANY classes in a row.) Jade Winters

    A squirrel ate the spark plug wires on my car. Nannette Crane

    My assignments are late because I am deceased with a death in the family. Tony Leisner

    I don’t do summers. (I got this one from a student who had missed several summer semester classes.) Laura Redic

    I’m having eye problems…can’t see coming to work! Roger Hayes

    I intended to do it correctly, but I didn’t. Ollie Foulk Library-Sub 1

    Unfortunately the desired due date didn’t clearly connect with my calendar. Amanda Harrison

    The Internet wasn’t working. Kirsti Dyer

    I think I remember that I forgot something that I really needed to complete that task for you. Sorry! Amanda Harrison

    I didn’t know where the assignment was supposed to turned in. Yolanda Williams

    I didn’t read the syllabus. Virginia Wood

    I’m sorry I missed class, but my canary had a miscarriage. Nancy Holmes

    My flash drive got sick from a cyber virus and vomited my homework into randomized bytes of data onto my hard drive causing my computer to crash. Robert Berlin

    I don’t know what happened on my Exam! Deborah Thompson

    I had the house sprayed and it dissolved my homework. Donna Reatz

    I missed class because I got my feet stuck in the microwave. I was trying to get the cat out at the time. Jennifer Henschel

    I resized my screen and THAT part of the Syllabus didn’t show. Vincent Cornish

    It’s not my fault. You didn’t remind me. Kathy Brooks

    My brother was stabbed in a bar fight. Donald Duvall

    Actual conversation with student: Me: Where is your exam? Student: Oh, I didn’t take it. Me: What do you mean you didn’t take it? Student: I mean I took it, just not physically. I took it mentally! Me: Mentally? Student: Yup. Emm C

    From same student: 1. Didn’t know when classes started. 2. Got lost on way to campus. 3. Hurt knee, may need mri. 4. Child sick and need to give 4 nebulizer treatments only during classtime. 5. Car accident. 6. Grandfather passed away. Emm C

    Tags: , , , ,

  • 10 Courses and Counting

    3 Comments
    15 Dec 2009 /  contracts, employment, hiring

    College administrators rend their garments and wail about student retention. Turns out, though, fretting over student retention is much like fretting about fried food: No matter the depth of concern over the problem, at the end of the day no one wants to believe that gorging on French fries is unhealthy. I just finished reading the ubiquitous piece from the ubiquitous adjunct on “how to teach 10 classes.” The author, a blogger, uses the moniker “Piss Poor Adjunct.” A few years ago, the ubiquitous adjunct was Jill Carroll. She wrote “How to Survive as an Adjunct Lecturer: An Entrepreneurial Strategy Manual.” Jill, who holds a Ph.D. from Rice University, also wrote a monthly column for The Chronicle called “The Adjunct Track.” Interestingly, unlike Piss Poor Prof, Jill Carroll encouraged her adjunct readers that the time saved by following her handy tips could be used to squeeze in time to research and write.

     Jill never did find that tenure-line job she talked to me about when we spoke, and she left teaching. To add further irony to what happens to adjuncts who leave academe, all of the links to her columns printed in The Chronicle of Higher Education go to a page with a message that reads: “Page Not Found.” The titles of Jill Carroll’s pieces, however, should give you a good idea about what her message was:

     “Avoiding Adjunct Burnout”

    “Don’t Go the Extra Mile, Except . . .”

    “How to Be One of the Gang When You’re Not”

    “Being a Professional in an Unprofessional Climate” (my favorite).

     Carroll wrote that one could make a living wage as an adjunct by teaching a large number of courses each semester; Piss Poor Prof suggests the same thing. The latter adds the twist of making use of technology, such as online grading programs and course web sites, in order to be able to burn through, say, 250 assignments that need grading. I actually think the organizational suggestions made by Piss Poor Prof and Jill Carroll border on the brilliant. For instance, Piss Poor Prof suggests accepting papers only in electronic format and then grading them in electronic format, as well. It’s a new world, Goldie. The days of sitting down over a mountain of essays with your favorite fountain pen has gone the way of arranged marriages in Anatevka.

     Much as I like and admire the moxie of Jill Carroll and Piss Poor Prof, I am stopped by student retention. I can’t get past my belief that it’s impossible to teach 10 courses in a single semester as well as teaching a total of two or three courses. Put another way, simply because someone devises a strategy to squeeze in 10 courses in a semester doesn’t mean it should be done. In fact, I am of the opinion that college administrators’ blithe ignorance about the teaching loads of the non-tenured faculty whom they employ borders on the criminal. Airlines have to document pilot readiness, and the FAA says pilots of large aircraft cannot fly more than 100 hours per month. Shouldn’t colleges be required to vouch for their faculty readiness?

     You might say that my analogy is flawed: crashing an aircraft with 200 people aboard is very different than teaching 10 courses with 200 students enrolled and losing the certain percentage of them who drop out. College drop-outs don’t drop dead, right? Wrong. Lack of an undergraduate degree condemns one to a lower socio-economic class, statistically. Drop-outs face lower lifetime earnings prospects coupled with whatever debt ($11,000 per year, on average) they’ve accumulated during their college “experience.” Finally, college graduates enjoy better long-term health and, as a result,  a longer life expectancy, according to a 2008 piece written by Phil Rockrohr for the Chicago Booth School of Business (http://www.chicagobooth.edu/news/2008-05-14_beckerbrownbag.aspx).

    Losing a student is serious business. That’s why oodles of college administrators get paid six-figure salaries to fret about student retention at higher education conferences held in winter in such dismal locales as San Diego and Phoenix. Is there a way we can fret a little less about how to retain low-income and minority students, whom studies tell us need mentoring and individual attention from faculty in order to thrive? Should we do another study? Get a grant for a mentoring program? Give tenured faculty release time to advise? Sure. And while we’re at it, we might think also staff courses with non-tenured faculty whose total teaching load is (gasp) equal to that of the tenure-line faculty on campus, and pay them (gasp) pro-rata salaries and benefits so that they’re not forced to be “entrepreneurs” or piss poor adjuncts.

     

    Tags: , , , ,

  • Easy Come. Easy Go.

    No Comments
    07 Dec 2009 /  conferences, professional development

    The session presentation was titled “Optimizing the Use of Part-Time Faculty.” Titles like this make me queasy, because “optimizing” people generally goes well for those doing the optimizing and badly for those who find themselves “optimized.” I was at the NISOD conference in Austin, Texas. It’s the first time I’ve attended (well, exhibited, actually), and can tell part time faculty reading this blog that few disciplinary conferences offer the quality of the sessions at NISOD. Add to this the number of presentations that focused on part-time faculty (including the one above), and, well, I encourage you to attend.

    Back to the “optimization” of part-time faculty as envisioned by Dr. Jim Hammons, Professor and Program Coordinator in the Higher Education Leadership Program at the University of Arkansas. Unlike the sparsely-attended presentations at CCCCs and MLA that deal with part-time faculty management, Hammons’s room was jammed with about 50 people—program directors, Department Chairs, deans, provosts and college presidents. Hammons told me he’d given a similar presentation the year before that had drawn 100 people. NISOD had invited him back for an encore presentation.

    Hammons, a fan of the Socratic method, questioned his audience: Who were they? For how many part time faculty were they responsible? At one point, as he spoke about best practices in hiring, he asked a simple question: “How many of you check references of part time faculty applicants?” In a room of 50, five hands went up. Hammons was non-plussed, but I was stunned. Hammons explained that many a disappointing hire could be avoided by simply checking references. Well, duh! You can’t get hired to sling coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts without having your references checked, but evidently you can find a post at your local college teaching astrophysics part time without having a prior employer vouch for your ability to teach how one calculates the luminosity of a star.

    Granted, the statistical sampling of employers referred to above was in no way scientific. Be that as it may, I think Dr. Hammons may have stumbled on one reason why the “quality” of part time faculty suffers, and turnover is problematic at some schools. Hiring processes directly impact the quality of hires, and as a rule in higher education part time faculty are hired using less than optimal practices. Perhaps, then, recent studies concerning the “problems” associated with the overuse of faculty off the tenure-track are less about the faculty studied, and more about the unstudied hiring practices of the institutions.

    So while national education unions employ academic researchers to document the impact part time faculty have on higher education, and while those same higher education unions call for the use of fewer part time faculty in order to improve the quality of higher education, perhaps the answer has been staring us all in face all along: drastically retool and improve hiring practices when filling positions off the tenure-track. By doing so, if Dr. Hammons’s experience is any marker, we’d solve many of the “problems” for which faculty off the tenure-track are routinely blamed.

    I’ve actually thought for many years that higher education unions ought to have pursued the bargaining strategy of, say, requiring all hires off the tenure-track to have terminal degrees, or requiring those same hires to be put through most of the same rigorous procedures and standards used when hiring on the tenure-track. In other words, I think education unions should concern themselves with the qualifications and quality of their members when negotiating hiring and rehiring terms. To have bargained, instead, for retention based on seniority has been a monumental failure for part-time faculty—these bargaining strategies, after all, were crafted for the 1930s assembly-line worker at the Rouge Plant. At the moment, thanks to this outmoded strategy, unionized part timers in Washington, California and Oregon are bearing the brunt of forced layoffs. Easy come. Easy go.

    As for Dr. Hammons’s workshop, he outlined best practices for part time faculty hiring that include a multi-step hiring procedure, comprehensive orientation of part-time faculty, written job descriptions, evaluation, as well as mandatory professional development programs. If this sounds radical, well, it’s not. As Dr. Hammons pointed out, it’s how most large corporations in our country find, train and retain all of their employees—both full and part time.

     

    Tags: , , , , , ,

  • Just You Wait Henry Higgins!

    2 Comments
    17 Nov 2009 /  research

    Eliza Doolittle sputters in response to yet another petty humiliation: “Just you wait, Henry Higgins!” 

    As the saying goes, revenge is a dish best served cold. To whit, I have heard faculty off the tenure-track pinpoint the exact day when that meal will be served. It’s the day when students, parents, voters, politicians etc… realize that 70 percent of college faculty are getting the short end of, well, everything. When that happens, look out! Just you wait, Henry Higgins!

    Sadly however, I think Americans are as unaware of the plight of part time faculty today as they were in 1990. So aren’t part timers able to spin their own message. Why can’t they seem to whip up a tsunami of attention and support? After all, they’re highly-educated people; they teach public relations, marketing, labor relations, and writing. Wouldn’t you think people with such skills could get Americans to focus on the “adjunct problem?” Yet here we sit, no closer to the reckoning today than we were decades ago—hundreds of thousands of Eliza Doolittles waiting to throw slippers at the Henry Higgins that is higher education.

    The answer isn’t pretty. To begin, according to a recent job satisfaction study conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago, out of 500 job categories, teaching scored among the most highly-rated jobs in terms of overall job satisfaction. Thus, while studies document an adjunct faculty job satisfaction “gap,” compared to the job satisfaction ratings of those at the bottom of the job satisfaction list, part time faculty job satisfaction levels are stellar. 

    Next, higher education has dropped off our mainstream media’s journalistic radar. The number of mainstream newspapers with weekly coverage of higher education has been reduced to a few usual suspects. In the EU, higher education gets daily coverage in scores of national newspapers. So, as higher education is reduced to a supplement in the daily diet of Americans, the plight of part time faculty becomes even less likely to make the cut when editors decide what is news.

    The final reason that faculty off the tenure track haven’t managed to capture the spotlight and shine it onto their issues has to do with the fact that since the early 90s, tenure-line faculty have spoken out on behalf of their non-tenured colleagues. For example, SUNY’s Dr. Peter D.G. Brown, has taken on both the union and the institution on behalf of the college’s 8,000 part timers. Dr. Eileen Schell, Associate Professor of Writing and Writing Program Director at Syracuse University, has focused her research and writing on labor issues that impact faculty off the tenure-track for over a decade. Dr. Cary Nelson stepped into the spotlight on behalf of adjunct faculty when he published Manifesto of a Tenured Radical in 1997. This reliance on the tenured consiglieri has been a double-edged sword. 

    Why? When tenured faculty frame the national discussion of what it is faculty off the tenure-track want and need, part-time faculty end up disempowered. Then, what happens when adjunct activists disagree with the advice of their tenured consiglieri? Adjunct activists have been attacked in print and online by their tenured friends for suggesting faculty off the tenure-track need to chart a course different than that suggested by some of the current tenured consiglieri. 

    The last reason is somewhat obvious, but tenured faculty in the humanities (the discipline from which many of these tenured consiglieri have sprung) shouldn’t be relied upon to explain part time faculty woes to America. Yearly, tenured and tenure-line faculty in the humanities cram MLA panel discussions aimed at developing strategies to better communicate to the rest of America the need for humanities research and teaching. Yet, we regularly read pieces such as the one published in February 2009 in The New York Times: “In Tough Times the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth” (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/books/25human.html?_r=1). Sigh.

    So who’s going to make sure that the day of reckoning comes—that Henry Higgins gets what’s coming to him and Eliza Doolittle gets her due? I don’t know. Of one thing I am certain, however. Faculty off the tenure-track must star in their own higher education drama. Until they speak for themselves and shape the research and national discourse surrounding their own exploitation, it will be impossible to whip up the tsunami of attention and support necessary to make any truly substantive changes in how temporary faculty are hired, evaluated, valued, rewarded and compensated.

    To quote Henry Higgins: Damn! Damn! Damn! DAMN!

    Tags: , ,

  • The New Faculty Majority

    No Comments
    09 Nov 2009 /  politics, unions

    In September, there were pieces in The Chronicle (http://chronicle.com/article/An-Activist-Adjunct-Shoulde/48348/) and on InsideHigherEd.com (http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/09/10/maisto) about the New Faculty Majority. September, it seems, is the time of year when people’s thoughts turn to adjunct faculty and what should, could, would be done to address the “adjunct problem.” This past September, we read about the New Faculty Majority, a group founded by SUNY-New Paltz tenured faculty member Dr. Peter D.G. Brown, whom I know and respect very much for his work on behalf of SUNY’s adjuncts.

    The group’s official launch was clunky. It went public without a name. Let me digress and explain that in the mid-90s, I launched a group called the National Adjunct Faculty Guild, a membership organization that provided, among other benefits, access to health care. The dues were modest, and the membership grew. We held three conferences. Attendance at the conferences was modest, between 50-100 people. I disbanded the NAFG after six years. It became obvious that though the members wanted and needed access to health and life insurance, they were unprepared to pay even modest premiums. They also clamored for a national union—a task I was unprepared to tackle.

    So I was pleasantly surprised when I spoke to an adjunct activist who told me of the formation of the New Faculty Majority. Since then, I’ve been watching and waiting to see the next steps the group would take. The other day I visited the group’s web site and came away puzzled, disappointed and dispirited. The group has a laudable list of goals now: job security equity, benefits equity and compensation equity. Equity? Why not parity, I wondered? Equity is the concept the academic labor unions have been trying to cram down the throats of their members over the past several years. If you need a quick lesson on the difference between the two, check out this piece (http://www.adjunctnation.com/blogs/part-time-thoughts/?p=86).

    Then, I looked at how the group intends to be funded. This is from the New Faculty Majority web page: “In January 2010 we plan to begin membership dues in order to establish a national office, with an executive director and a small staff. (Unlike most of our employers, we shall certainly provide our own employees with a living wage and benefits.)” A national office with an executive director and a small staff? Ok. So what do the members get in return for helping launch a bureaucracy? The benefits page answered that question: “All of us will benefit from a thorough reform of employment practices in higher education. The benefits of NFM are not services per se but the power of our numbers. We are working to restore the profession of teaching and to ameliorate the substandard conditions and terms of employment now allotted to the majority of higher education faculty.”

    In short. No services, per se.

    So let me understand this New Faculty Majority structure and system. Adjuncts pay money to a group so the group can pay for a national headquarters, hire an executive director and a staff. This sounds terrifyingly familiar. The members keep the bureaucracy in the manner to which the bureaucracy will quickly become accustomed.

    How nice for the executive director and the small, but well-compensated staff.

    What, I wondered, could have driven the group so far off course short of the organization having been co-opted by members of the education unions. Then, I went and studied the list of NFM leaders. Ah, the answers were all there: UUP, AFT, NEA, AAUP, UC-AFT. Then I studied the list of the kind folks who had agreed to serve on the group’s “Advisory Board.” Three out of the eight members of the board were from the AAUP.

    What was next, I wondered? An invitation to AFT-Washington’s Sandra Schroeder to come and “advise” the group?

    Well, yes, it turns out that the New Faculty Majority has, indeed, put feelers out to the President of the AFT-Washington. I can only imagine Schroeder’s terms. The New Faculty Majority would, of course, have to endorse the AFT’s FACE farce. The New Faculty Majority would endorse a legislative boondoggle that seeks to, at base, reduce te numbers of the New Faculty Majority. 

    The New Faculty Majority has morphed into the same old thing: a group that takes money from adjunct faculty in order to, first, feed and clothe a bureaucracy. The group’s goals are perfectly acceptable. Those involved, however, can see no other way to get there than by plodding down the failed course charted by America’s higher education unions over the past 35 years.  

    Tags: , , , , , , ,

  • Community Colleges Score a $12 Billion Dollar Bribe

    2 Comments
    25 Aug 2009 /  politics

    If you are an adjunct at a community college, you teach in a system that has come to rely increasingly on faculty off the tenure-track. At the moment, nationally, about 70 percent of faculty employed at community colleges teach off the tenure-track. You also teach in a system with one of the most abysmal rates of student graduation. In some state community college systems, less than 20 percent of students graduate within three years. It’s enough to give heartburn to anyone concerned about post-secondary education in the United States. However, I’m not sure there are enough community college administrators losing sleep over the low graduation rates at their institutions. If there were, we would have long ago had some very frank discussions about reforms of the community college system in our country.

    Now, President Obama’s plan to funnel 12 billion dollars to the nation’s community colleges to foster their “mission,” is making headlines. He’s calling it the “American Graduation Initiative.” In a move that is no surprise on August 14th, the New York Times reported that Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he would allocate $50 million dollars to New York’s community colleges if elected to a third term. Is this just throwing money into a hole and setting it on fire? David Brooks, in a July 2009 op-ed piece, argues that Obama’s plan will tie the billions to necessary reforms. Brooks also writes, “four-year colleges receive three times as much federal money per student as community colleges. According to a Brookings Institution report, federal spending for community colleges fell six percent between 2002 and 2005, while spending on four-year colleges increased.”

    My Aunt told me a story not too long ago when we were talking about how to best motivate kids to get good grades in school. She told me that one of my cousins had asked how much money she was going to give him if he brought home a reportcard with good grades. Her reply was simple and direct: he was not getting good grades for her, but rather for himself. I think about her as President Obama plans to give 12 billion dollars to the community college system in our country, and tells us that the money won’t be wasted because it’s tied to “reforms.”

    I have just one question: why does the community college system in our country need a $12 billion dollar bribe in order to carry out reforms necessary to improve graduation rates industry-wide? Shouldn’t the community college system simply be required to carry out the necessary reforms and improve overall graduation rates? After all, aren’t students supposed to graduate?

    Tags: , , , , , ,

  • Summertime

    No Comments
    21 Jul 2009 /  on holiday

    At our house, summer is always somewhat hectic. The kids have summer camps, and I try to squeeze in time to work in between their entreaties that I come out and play with them. We live in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It’s a wonderful town in the summer. There the Summer Festival, with free music and  movies, and very expensive, never very tasty, food. The Summer Festival is still referred to as Top of the Park, even though it has long since moved from the top of a University of Michigan parking garage, to in front of U of M’s H.H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies (the school from which I graduated). Then, we have the Townie Festival. In summer, most of U of M’s 40,000 students generally leave, and those of us who are left are referred to as “townies.” So, the July Townie Festival is a chance to meet up with friends and find a parking spot. 

    We live within biking distance of a large public pool, and just a few minutes away from the Huron River, where we kayak frequently. A slightly longer car trip into the surrounding countryside will take us to a small lake, where we can swim for hours along with, maybe, 6-10 other people on the packed, sand beach. It’s a magical spot, and just a couple of weeks ago, we kayaked around the lake until late-evening and watched the full moon rise over the water. While floating in our kayaks, necks stretched back so we could see the Big Dipper, we were treated to several shooting stars.

    There are plenty of distractions from work. As for work, what we’re doing at the moment is planning changes for the web site. As I’ve written, visitors click through two dozen pages, often. In a typical month, we serve up between 2-3 million pages.  That’s an impressive statistic. Insidehighered.com has much more traffic than we do, but the average visitor to that site views just 1-2 pages.

    I know that for many of you reading this entry, summer is a time of anxiety. You didn’t get any summer courses, and your letter of re-appointment is probably not going to get mailed out until the beginning of August. I remember the summers when I taught part-time. I lived in an apartment complex, and to help make ends meet, in exchange for rent in the summer, I tended the pool. The job was, actually, fun, and it helped pay the rent five months out of the year. I was almost 20 years younger, of course. I know there are many part-time faculty out there working summer jobs to make the ends meet until September. I also know that there will be some of you who won’t get a letter of re-appointment. If you don’t, remember that your education and teaching experience make you a great catch for many kinds of employers outside of Academe.

    When I was in graduate school, and the years after, I thought I would spend my entire career teaching in a college classroom. That thought went through my mind every time we went to Top of the Park this summer, and I sat on the lawn in front of the Rackham building.

    I miss teaching, sometimes, but not enough to realize that leaving the profession was the best decision I ever made.

    Tags: , , , , , ,

Previous Page
Get Adobe Flash playerPlugin by wpburn.com wordpress themes