“Universities increasingly seeking revenues from partnerships with the corporate sector. What are the problems, what are the principles? Since York is pursuing such partnerships and relies on them for its planned expansion to Markham, we need to be aware of what can happen and what we can do.” 2013 Report by Canadian Association of University Teachers.
Category Archives: Articles
Life in the Accelerated Academy: anxiety thrives, demands intensify and metrics hold the tangled web together. Reply
“At all career stages, though perhaps most harmfully amongst PhD students and early career researchers, a sense of commitment to a calling helps license acquiescence to precarious and exploitative labour relations which make a lie of the ideal of collegiality still alluded to within the academy.” Life in the Accelerated Academy by Mark Carrigan on The London School of Economics and Political Science.
Interview with an Adjunct Organizer: “People Are Tired of the Hypocrisy” Reply
“The debate over working conditions for adjunct faculty was recently reignited by the death of Margaret Mary Vojtko on September 1. Vojtko, who had a long career as an adjunct professor at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, died penniless after being fired from the university in the last year of her life. Her story served as a reminder of what has become a massive underclass of underpaid contingent labor in academia.” Interview with an Adjunct Organizer: “People Are Tired of the Hypocrisy” by Moshe Z. Marvit in Dissent.
Activity based budgeting: Cautionary tales from the US Reply
by Justin Podur: “…another shock is coming to the university community: the SHARP budget model, or “activity based budgeting”. Like other damaging shocks to the community, this is being prepared in secret, away from the eyes of those who will be affected by it. Details of the budget model are embargoed, and faculty are told only vague promises that the model will provide additional transparency. Units have been threatened that when the new model comes in, there will be huge new deficits that are an artifact of the new way of accounting for things.” More…
The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much Reply
“…a major factor driving increasing costs is the constant expansion of university administration. According to the Department of Education [US] data, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009, which Bloomberg reported was 10 times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions.” The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much by Paul F. Campos on The New York Times.
Warwick University to outsource hourly paid academics to subsidiary Reply
“Teach Higher is a company which will effectively outsource hourly paid academic staff, whereby they will no longer be employed directly by the university but by a separate employer: ‘Teach Higher’. Teach Higher has been set up by Warwick University-owned ‘Warwick Employment Group’, and is about to be piloted at Warwick University. But it is a national company, which intends to be rolled out across UK universities.” Warwick University to outsource hourly paid academics to subsidiary on Fighting Against Causalisation in Education.
Essay on Earning Tenure and the Responsibilities of Faculty Life Reply
“My biggest concern as I face down another 25 years or so in this profession is not that I will become disaffected or stalled in my research. It’s whether or not I can convince my fellow tenured colleagues to agree that we not pull the ladder up behind us and abandon the others in the interest of careerist gain.” Tenured and Happy by Cynthia Wu on Inside Higher Ed.
University protests around the world: a fight against commercialisation Reply
Once considered a radical institution, York now pursues aggressive divide-and-conquer strike-breaking tactics. On March 9, the university made a ‘final offer’ that largely appealed to senior contract faculty, a clear attempt to split the union. Teaching assistants and graduate assistants rejected the offer and remain on legal strike More…
YU Talk 