Part-Time Thoughts

Put college faculty members in a room and eventually the talk turns to venting about students. Should such discussions about students be discouraged or even banned?

Sara Goldrick-Rab, in her book Paying the Price, shows that this isn’t true. For poor students, a low grade often doesn’t reflect a lack of hard work, intelligence, or responsibility. It reflects that humans can only be pushed so far until…

The AdjunctNation Editorial Team According to reporting on Chicagoist.com, groups demanding better treatment, pay and benefits for adjunct and part-time faculty in higher education held several demonstrations across the city Wednesday,…

by Laura Yeager I tried something new last semester in College Writing I--extra credit.  I've never offered extra credit points in a college class before (I thought it was kind of babyish), but this year, I decided to try it.  And after…

by Diane M. Rubino When I first I started teaching, I knew what plagiarism meant and how it related to schoolwork. But student “cheaters” challenged my beliefs. I also assumed graduate student would submit original work. So it took me by…

When I was adjuncting, I’m sorry to say it, but I gave into despair. I absolutely love to teach—but I’ve taught at eight different universities and came to see them as interchangeable—just as they saw each body in “the adjunct pool” as…

by Tami Strang If you’ve been following education news lately, you’ve probably read at least one article that discusses the struggles that many adjunct instructors are having as they seek full-time employment at colleges and…

by Bridgett McGowen-Hawkins, M.A. Teaching faculty know that social media is no longer just for “liking” photos, updating Facebook timelines, and re-tweeting the latest news from higher education. In her eight-minute podcast…

By Donald Hurwitz GRADE INFLATION. The subject is hardly new, and it is real: GPAs on college campuses sit on the border of A-/B+, and grades have ratcheted up a notch every decade or so. It’s hard to make much of academic administrators’…

By Samuel Hazo Many observers would agree that a lot of universities today no longer champion liberal education but are little more than academic corporations that bequeath to their graduates a degree in debt. Such debts often reach…