The adjuncts tend to teach core classes at Duquesne, and Cech noted the adjuncts’ lack job security because if their classes do not fill up, they are not guaranteed employment. Adjunct faculty members make up 40 percent of the liberal arts instructors and can earn up to no more than $10,224 in yearly salaries while full-time assistant professors within the liberal arts make a yearly salary of $65,300.

“Part-Timers At Duquesne Unionize With the United Steelworkers“

I’m always thinking that I sound crabby if not permanently angry so I go in search of good news. This piece, from Adjunct Nation, is in fact very good news insofar as it reports on six schools in the Pittsburgh area that are unionizing in affiliation with the United Steel…

Ordinarily, when people speak of income disparity they are talking about individuals or about classes of individuals. The statistics are amazing: the U.S. hasn’t had this wide of a disparity in at least 8 decades.   The disparity is often even more shocking when you compare institutions.  I found two stories in this vein today. On the one hand, the Sacramento, California Public Library system is planning to cut hours in an attempt to prevent lay offs of employees.

In the richest state in the richest country in the world the most basic of public services, the library, has to cut hours (“Sacramento Public Library closures scheduled due to staff furloughs“).  You can just hear the austerity folks chanting their song: “We…

“Students and families are struggling in President Obama’s economy. Nearly half of college graduates are unemployed or underemployed, and laws like ObamaCare have only made it harder for small businesses to hire them. That’s why House Republicans voted to extend current student loan rates and to pay for it by eliminating an ObamaCare slush fund President Obama himself proposed cutting from his budget. It’s time for the president and Democrats in Congress to stop exploiting the challenges facing young Americans for political gain, and start working with Republicans to create a better environment for private-sector job growth.”

Apr 27, 2012, Press Release from the Office of the Speaker of the House, John Boehner

There’s seems to be an emerging consensus…

I just read a piece in the New York Times called “Facing a Robo-Grader? Just Keep Obfuscating Mellifluously.” According to a recent study, automated software can grades essays with “virtually identical levels of accuracy,” as human graders but at a rate of 16,000 essays in 20 seconds. It sounds scary, and you can imagine the evil administrative imagination dreaming of a college system run by a handful of professors and a legion of robots. Robots don’t want health care and won’t demand freedom of speech protections.

This is also good news to Conservatives who suspect that English professors are not doing anything very difficult. Only it’s not, really, unless you are really cynical about how far we might go in denaturing…

The 99% Spring

The 99% Spring