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Unconventional Wisdom
Why We Decided To Form An Adjunct Union at Our Community College
by Luke Niebler On my first day teaching at the Community College of Allegheny County in Pittsburgh, I was wracked with the normal anxieties of a new college instructor: What if the students don’t like me? What if my lesson plan falls…
It's Student Evaluation Time—Are Student Evals Worthless?
by Rebecca Schuman It’s student evaluation time again—and I should be the last professor in the world to complain. With slight exceptions for “caring too much” and courses that meet “too early” (9:10 a.m.), my evaluations are quite good.…
If You Think The Treatment of Adjuncts Doesn't Impact Tenured Faculty, Think Again
by Jonathan Rees While this piece from the NYT‘s business section is designed for any worker, it should have special relevance for academics: These are the kinds of comments I hear in my work as a consultant: • “I’m overwhelmed, and with…
The Tipping Point: Research Suggests A College Education Is No Longer Worth the Time & Money
by Marty Nemko We have, for decades, accepted that graduates earn $1 million more than non-graduates over their lifetime. That statistic is misleading for a number of reasons. For example, it’s retrospective to an era when only the best and…
The Next Higher Education Woe That Will Be Blamed on Adjuncts
By P.D. Lesko Over the course of the past three years, adjunct and part-time faculty have been systematically scape-goated for any number of problems plaguing the Academy. Students dropping out like flies? Why, blame the adjuncts. As I…
In Defense of the Liberal Arts
By Victor Hanson The liberal arts face a perfect storm. The economy is struggling with obscenely high unemployment and is mired in massive federal and state deficits. Budget cutting won’t spare education. The public is already angry over…
The SEIU Assault on American Colleges and Universities
By Al Kaltman Unheralded and virtually unnoticed, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has been pushing its way into the halls of America’s universities and colleges. Not content to restrict its activities to food workers and…
Lowering the Price of Higher Education
by Shai Reshef In an effort to earn a college education, students around the world find themselves facing mounting debt. According to data recently released by the Federal Reserve, American students owe almost $830 billion in student loan…
Online education: You get what you pay for
by Brian Fogerty In a June appearance on "The Daily Show," Governor Tim Pawlenty outlined his vision of higher education of the future: "Do you really think in 20 years somebody’s going to put on their backpack, drive a…
Do Tenured Theologians Have a Duty to Focus More on Academic Labor in Higher Education?
by Tom Beaudoin originally printed in America, the National Catholic Weekly, February 2010 When people find out that I am a college professor, one of the first questions they ask with increasing frequency and directness over the past year…