Anyone concerned about adjunct issues and looking for reasons to spend time online yesterday (instead of, say, grading papers) found them:
- "The Just-In-Time Professor: A Staff Report Summarizing eForum Responses on the Working Conditions of Contingent Faculty in Higher Education" was issued by the US House of Representatives Education and the Workforce committee (read more about it in Inside Higher Ed, a story that got boosted by HuffPo.
- James Hoff, the adjunct professor profiled in the NY Times earlier this week agreed that he isn't the problem (and had more to say about what the problem is).
- Tressie McCottom points out in Slate that "there’s been a labor crisis in higher ed for a long time. It just hasn’t always been a crisis for everyone in higher ed." Disregard the cheesy headline that Slate slapped on it: the article describes how the phenomenon now being called a "crisis" has been institutionalizing and magnifying racial injustice in higher ed for a long time now.
- And from Joe Fruscione, an eloquent explanation of the issue in Hybrid Pedagogy, with more links.
Days like yesterday, it feels like higher ed could change.
What replaces "adjunct spackle" though?
Huge classes taught exclusively by tenure-stream faculty?
Mechanized teaching (not the same thing as online teaching, which is labor-intensive if done well)?
Eroded gen. ed requirements?
Adjunct activism needs to take place alongside activism about college teaching, and about what it looks like when it's done right.
Adjunct activism needs to take place alongside activism about college teaching, and about what it looks like when it's done right.
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