SoCafe's Business Model SoSucks

Ok, “sucks” is a totally immature way to respond to anything, but geez (insert eye rolling here and that pffffft sound), a company that wants to charge adjuncts $395 for certification in “10 core competencies?” Is that like the Ten Commandments of Adjunct Teaching?
1. I am the Dean your Dean
2. You shall have no other teaching gigs before mine
3. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Dean
You get my drift…. SoCafe’s 10 core competencies include:
Interact effectively with a diverse student population.
Provide student feedback in a manner that supports learning

How does one test faculty on those things in order to issue a certificate? The student feedback one I find particularly interesting, because I actually think the way we give feedback to our students is crucial in whether or not our students succeed in our courses. Faculty at cocktail parties who regale colleagues with witty tales of ripping into their students without a scrap of humanity leave me cold. Hell, they leave me hoping such faculty will choke on the olives in their martinis and stop giving the rest of us a bad name.
I am not against certification, per se. I am against this particular form of certification, because it’s just a way for SoCafe’s owners to make $395 from adjuncts who hope employers will give a rat’s tail about such certification. Here’s the truth: the adjunct who’s available, and who answers the phone first is going to get the course. If the guy’s who’s got SoCafe certification happens to be in the bathtub when the phone rings, the department Chair is going to move right on to the next person on the adjunct roster. No questions asked.
This method of hiring sucks big time. Rather than outsource certification, college and university officials should be encouraged, pushed, shoved and threatened at briefcase point by the national faculty unions to start hiring all part-time faculty the same way full-time faculty are hired.
That change would be totally phat my fellow faculty friends.

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