Sinead O’Connor – The Wolf Is Getting Married (Live Graham Norton Show)
That Sort of World
In reality, instructors off the tenure track account for more than four-fifths of the faculties of two-year public colleges, more than two-thirds of the faculties at private four-year colleges, and more than half of the faculties at public four-year colleges.
“Accreditation Is Eyed as a Means to Aid Adjuncts,” Peter Schmidt
This ought to be a shocking statistic for anyone who works for a living. Academia used to be the cutting edge of employment standards in many ways; it didn’t always pay well to be a teacher but you did have some job security and benefits. One problem is that the language is so obtuse; “off the tenure track,” means, by and large, part-time workers who can be fired at will. Imagine we could say this of doctors: “Part time and temporarily employed doctors and nurses now account for more than four-fifths of medical personal in clinics, and more that two-thirds in hospitals…” Would anyone say that their lack of full-time salaries and job security has no impact on the quality of care?
It has to have an impact on the quality of care, just as it has an impact on the quality of teaching now. Teaching is self-selective. In most cases, if you are want to be a teacher– even more than a doctor– it’s because you like helping people. That’s not to be sentimental about teaching; there are plenty of ego-maniacs and lots of greed in academia and I doubt there’s any more or less incompetence than in any other field. As the numbers show, though, teachers will pursue their vocations even knowing that their work won’t be well compensated and even when conditions are bad. As a profession, teaching serves goals larger than the person. That’s what’s satisfying.
I think, then, that the real question is why we seem to have to resort to this argument about the quality of education when we ought to be able to simply talk about the quality of work. We should be able to say that, in any profession, the majority of people ought to be employed full-time, have some say in their working lives, health care, and the tools they need to do the work they need to do. We believe these things because we want that sort of world. We don’t need to pursue silly, obvious arguments that suggest that people can, if pressed, do almost any sort of work well even when they have no health benefits, or job security, or say in their jobs. That should be our assumption.
Hogan’s Run: Doing Well by Doing Bad
I’ve lost jobs immediately after receiving excellent assessments from both colleagues and students. In one case, one or two teachers were able to manipulate the system for their own obscure purposes. That sort of petty, narcissistic power is probably always obscure if not inexplicable. In the second case, it was administrative power run amok. That too was obscure, but my guess is that they went for whoever talked the most.
I didn’t have the power– I should say “we” didn’t have the organizational power, that is, the faculty involved didn’t have the power–to fight either case but in each case my treatment was rewarded with severance pay. There’s no real justice, this seemed to be saying, but at least you can leave with a little money. Academia isn’t a meritocracy any more than any other job. Merit is just the pretty paint job covering up the nastiness lying just beneath the surface.
There’s no surprise in the news that the University of Illinois President Michael Hogan would be paid off with a nice stipend. The difference, of course, is that he is leaving after completely messing up his job, and he was given a year off, and full pay for the next several months, and nearly a $300,000 tenured faculty position too. One month of his current salary is greater than a year’s median salary in the U.S. Things are different up in the 1%.
Hogan will no doubt spend the next year considering head-hunter offers or book deals and then quietly move on. We still have questions that need answers. Did Hogan use spoofed email to try to influence a faculty debate? Did he use his henchwoman, Lisa Troyer, to spoof the email? Why would a university administrator know how to spoof email? Was she paid off with a tenured position too? Is this sort of deceit common practice?
Dirty Three / Nick Cave – Sea Above, Sky Below