Category: <span>Writing</span>

A Holiday Gift for the Rest of Us

December 22, 2008 6:00 am \ Leave a Comment \ by Ray Watkins

After Obama picked many centrist, conventional Democrats—and even Republicans—to his Cabinet, his choice for labor secretary is refreshing. Hilda Solis is a progressive with a will to fight and to work with grassroots labor, environmental and immigrant worker movements.

Labor leaders across the board applauded the appointment of Solis, who serves on the board of American Rights at Work, a labor-founded but more broadly based advocacy group. Her ties to labor are deep, going back to at least her state senate days, when she also became a crusader for environmental justice.

In These Times, David Moberg, December 18, 2008

I keep thinking about all of these claims and counter claims about Obama’s cabinet and administrative choices and what they signal for the future of progressive politics. A lot of this speculation seems all tangled up in the identity and cultural politics that, for good or ill, Obama seems determined to muddle up.

Most of what eventually happens will depend very much on Obama’s ability to convince a group of very differently minded people to work together. The open question, of course, is to what end. I think progressives ought to skip these debates altogether. It’s all media hype anyway.

Instead, I think we need to focus on a few specific changes that have the greatest potential for a multiplier effect. That’s why Hilda Solis seems like a real holiday gift. I think the Employee Free Choice act, which Solis surely supports, is out best bet to create a powerful movement that isn’t dependent on Obama.

I would love to see the numbers of people without health care reduced to a few million; I want true national heath care even more. I think a green economic program is great; even better would a rebirth of railroads. If Obama manages the first, and we have a stronger labor movement, we can get the second too.

Posted in: Economics, Online Places, Writing

The Balance of Power: “Education in the Balance”

December 19, 2008 10:46 am \ Leave a Comment \ by Ray Watkins

Data from the two surveys show that between 1995 and 2005 the number of tenured and tenure-track faculty members in US postsecondary education remained almost unchanged, while the number of non-tenure-track faculty members, both full-time and part-time, increased dramatically. These data about changes in the number and especially the mix of full- and part-time, tenure-line (tenured and tenure-track) and non-tenure-line faculty appointments should be considered in relation to the growth in student enrollments in higher education that occurred over the same period. … We recommend that there be a regular survey and update on staffing practices in English and other modern language departments at least every ten years, so that changes in staffing patterns and the categories of faculty employment can be tracked and reported. Reports about the composition and characteristics of the faculty in English and other modern languages should also be developed from the National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF) as further studies in the NSOPF series become available…

Between fall 1995 and fall 2005, student enrollments in degree-granting postsecondary institutions grew by more than 3,225,000 (22.6%), from 14,261,781 to 17,487,475 (Digest, table 175 and table 190)…

Given what is essentially zero population growth in the tenure-line faculty, increases in student enrollments are being accommodated by increases in the non-tenure-track faculty. Although across higher education, tenure lines have not been eliminated in favor of non-tenure-track positions, in the context of a student population and a non-tenure-track faculty that continue to increase, a tenure-line faculty that never grows becomes a diminished, and diminishing, segment of the faculty. As a result, tenure-line faculty members become an intellectual and educational resource rationed out in scarcer portions to an ever larger student body.

“Education in the Balance: A Report on the Academic Workforce in English“

In the 1990s Graduate Student Union activists, myself among them, made a lot of noise at the MLA each year, protesting the growing use of part-time and graduate student teachers in universities. Among other things, we convinced (forced) the MLA to gather a factual portrayal of employment in our field. We thought these numbers would convince many who just thought graduate students were bothersome kids.

Not surprisingly, each survey demonstrated that the activists were correct. Step by step, universities were de-skilling their workforce. As this report emphasizes, this is largely done by omission rather than commission. As the universities grow, in other words, new non-tenure track positions are created. In effect, the U.S. university system, long plauged by heirarchies of race and gender, has created a hierarchy on top of a hierarchy.

At the top are the tenure track professors with generous salaries and benefits, including, among other things, the ability to avoid teaching lower division courses. At the bottom of the top, as it were, are part-time faculty (many if not most without Ph.D.s) and graduate students. They still benefit from the facilities and they can, if they are graduate students and very fortunate, attempt to leverage their experiences into tenure track positions.

“In general,” the report concludes, “it appears that an MA or an MFA is accepted across all institutional sectors, four-year as well as two-year, as an appropriate degree qualification for teaching the lower division.” The emphasis here, of course, is on “lower division.” The conservative view is that there are too many Ph.D.’s out there for what is needed. As the report makes clear, the glut is created by administrations’ hiring practices.

There are differences between Ph.D. granting institutions and M.A. granting schools and so on. Nonetheless the pattern is consistent: “…the full-time positions are part of a larger argument about … a teaching faculty (largely off the tenure track and outside the tenure system, located in the lower division) and a research faculty (almost exclusively tenured or tenure-track and charged with the preparation of majors and graduate students).”

One layer down, in two-colleges, the trend is the same: no growth in tenure track Ph.D.s and more part-time and non-tenure track employment. The report may suggest that we’ve fought this trend to a standstill. Or, more cynically, that the privileged tenured professors are adept at protecting their positions but either uninterested or unskilled at stopping the (unfortunate) transformation of their field.

Posted in: Composition, Language, Writing

of Montreal – Id Engager

December 17, 2008 6:00 am \ Leave a Comment \ by Ray Watkins

Posted in: Writing

What a Class Barrier Looks Like

December 12, 2008 9:06 am \ Leave a Comment \ by Ray Watkins

Students who start California community colleges as first-time students hoping to get a certificate, a degree, or transfer to the four-year college sector have only small chances of success: approximately one in four degree seekers beginning community college in 1999-2000 completed their program in six years (Moore and Shulock, 2007, p. 7). And the prospects are worse for those who start in pre-collegiate courses. These students may not even get to the transfer-level courses in those fields, much less actually graduate or transfer. According to the Center for Student Success, “Only one-quarter of students initially enrolling in a reading fundamentals course in community college ever enroll in a transfer-level English class, and only 10 percent of students beginning in a basic math course ever enroll in a transferable math course” (2005, cited in Moore and Shulock, 2007, p. 12).

Indeed, most of our SPECC colleges cite a figure of around 10 percent who move successfully from the lowest level precollegiate course to a transfer level course. Beyond dimming students’ outlook for completion, the inability to successfully complete the most basic level courses also has tremendous implications for literacy and numeracy more generally. Although the SPECC campuses focused on pre-collegiate programs for this project, it is clear that all programs, including technical and vocational programs, benefit when their students are able to read well, communicate clearly in writing, and handle basic calculations.

Listening to Students About Learning, Andrea Conklin Bueschel

As the cliche goes, we don’t talk about class in the U.S. because we believe that everyone is equal. Or, at least, everyone is given an equal chance to succeed or fail on their own merits. It has never worked that way, of course, because all sorts of things can give you an advantage, big or small.

Our main conduit of opportunity, and so in many senses the source of the great fog obscuring our social and economic system, has long been post-secondary education. There’s nothing false in the idea; people with college degrees make much more money than people who don’t. It’s that simple.

What’s less obvious is the way that our post-secondary education system, with it’s complicated hierarchies and multiple points of entry, is also a barrier. The number cited in this California study are remarkable. As many as 90% of the students who enter community colleges never take transferable classes.

That’s only a measure of success insofar as we define success in terms of a four year degree. That may not be true in every case, of course. But it is still a good indication of the strength of a class barrier. What’s the solution, according to the authors? Listen to the teachers and students.