Everyone’s an Adjunct

…the consultants called for a narrow set of career-oriented majors, large teaching loads for faculty members and more hybrid (mixed online and in-person instruction) courses, and for recruitment to focus on traditional-aged, “driven” undergraduate students (the university’s current student body is composed largely of transfer students). Bain also recommended low tuition and increased enrollment.

“No Thanks, Bain” Kevin Kiley

“A significant number of these faculty members were part of a household that fell below the 2009 median household income in the United States: 21.6 percent reported a household income under $35,000, and 30.2 percent reported a household income under $45,000,” said the report. (According to the American Association of University Professors, an associate professor at a master’s-level public university had an average salary of $60,612 in 2010-11.)

“Non-Tenure-Track Economics,” Kaustuv Basu

In all the Republican convention hoopla in the next week, I have a feeling that the steady dissolution of U.S. higher education is not going to come up at all. The same bizarre logic that dismantled the old system– the idea that a business or profit model and not a public service model should be central to education– continues to be presented, again and again, as if it were a new idea, and as if we had no idea what the results would be. The definition of insanity, according to Einstein, is doing the same thing again and again and expecting the results to be different.  The sweater-vest make over shouldn’t fool anyone. In the Republican future, everyone’s an adjunct.