#Berkeley protests and #occupy Napolitano #highered #edstudies

by Stephen Petrina on February 13, 2014

Doug Sovern, KCBS, February 13, 2014– University of California President Janet Napolitano spent Thursday meeting with students and faculty at UC Berkeley, though many were not pleased she was on campus.

A small, but noisy band of protesters shadowed Napolitano during her day of meetings on campus.

Cal graduate Justin Chiang said Napolitano’s tenure as head of Homeland Security, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, makes her the wrong choice to lead the UC system.

“We want to demand that the UC Regents, who hired Janet Napolitano, to remove her immediately, and replace her with a great educator, who can really champion public education,” he said.

Napolitano said she was too busy to respond to KCBS personally, but her spokeswoman, Dianne Klein, said she is not about to resign because of these kind of protests, and that it comes with the job.

“Berkeley is a cradle of free speech, as is the University of California in general,” Klein said. “This is part of the fabric of the university.”

Napolitano’s visit was her 10th and final stop of a UC campus listening tour that began last year, and she has been met with protesters throughout her tour of the system.

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#UBC mismanaging PT faculty career advancement plan #adjunct #highered #ubced #bced #bcpoli

by Stephen Petrina on February 13, 2014

The Faculty Association of UBC (FAUBC) recently surveyed its members about preferences for the University’s management of its members’ Career Advancement Plan (CAP). Most of the 3,300 faculty members and librarians do not realize UBC manages their CAP, and perhaps most would conclude that their CAP is mismanaged.

In short, the CAP is performance pay—$2m in discretionary salary funds for Management to allocate to a select few FAUBC members each year (i.e., merit pay, performance salary adjustment). A large majority of members do not share in the spoils and the FAUBC’s part-time faculty or Sessional members (approx. 1,000) are excluded by status.

Exclusion, whether systematically or by status, from a CAP is mismanagement by definition: if your career is not advancing according to plan, you may have the employer that manages the plan, UBC, to blame.

Moreover, UBC’s Management does not fairly allocate this exceptionally large amount of potential salary increases. Alternatively, this $2m could be included in an across the board or general salary increase for the Sessionals, adding at least $2,000 per year to each part-time members’ meagre year-end wages. Instead of a divided FAUBC by status, this would mean the Association stands further united.

Just say no way to Performance Pay. Faculty associations, please pay attention.

PAY EQUITY :: Equal Pay for Equal Work :: Pay the Sessionals what it costs for a FT faculty member buyout = about $10,000 per course. Faculty associations, please wake up.

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Cuts to English language learning programs in #BCed #highered #caut #edstudies #ubc #ubced #bcpoli

by Stephen Petrina on February 13, 2014

Cindy Oliver, CAUT Bulletin, January 2014– English Language Training (ELT) programs play an increasingly critical role in Canada’s post-secondary institutions as the diversity and complexity of our student population changes, and with it, the need to address those changes with programs that strengthen language proficiency. Although post-secondary education is primarily a provincial responsibility, the federal government plays a crucial role in the funding of ELT programs across the country. And it’s the looming cuts to the federal government’s contribution to those programs that has united British Columbia’s student organizations and the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators to pressure governments to take a different approach.

On Dec. 16, the federation, along with the BC division of the Canadian Federation of Students held a press conference at the Vancouver Community College’s (VCC) downtown Vancouver campus to announce plans to launch a province-wide campaign to pressure the federal and provincial governments to protect the funding arrangement that sees close to $20 million in federal funding flow through BC’s Ministry of Advanced Education to support a range of ELT programs in BC institutions.

It was no coincidence the press conference was held at the Vancouver campus of VCC; it is the largest provider of ELT programs in western Canada. It’s a role that VCC has excelled at for more than 40 years. And it has become something of a professional hub for a growing number of international students who have come to Canada to begin a new life, but need to strengthen their English language skills to ensure they can fully participate in their new country.

On hand for the press conference was Saeideh Ghassarifar, a foreign trained doctor who enrolled at VCC after immigrating to Canada from Iran. During media interviews, Ghassarifar pointed out she has an extensive educational background in her chosen field — she has three degrees, including a PhD in health care education — but she recognizes that her English language skills need to be much stronger. As she said in one interview, “as a doctor I need to understand and be understood when I am dealing with patients.” For her, the VCC English language programs are critical to her ultimate success in this country.

However, the very programs Ghassarifar accesses at VCC are under threat if the federal government moves ahead with its plans to withdraw funding currently in place under a long-standing federal-provincial settlement services agreement. It is through that agreement that BC receives close to $20 million in federal funding that eventually works its way into ELT programs at institutions like VCC. The change to the settlement program in BC, if it goes ahead as announced, would take effect on April 1, 2014.

The federal government’s rationale for cutting the funding makes no sense. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s austerity rhetoric has permeated every aspect of life in Canada, from oversight of the environment to the muzzling of federal government researchers and scientists. In every case, Harper’s approach has been to diminish the capacity of government to provide information and services that would fulfill the federal government’s part of the social contract with Canadians, a contract that should respect our rights as citizens while ensuring sustainable and balanced growth is shared. During his ten­ure as Prime Minister we have seen no evidence that he intends to keep up his side of the contract.

Just as troubling, however, is that Harper’s reneging on the $20 million in funding for BC programs comes at a time when the pro­vincial government’s commitment to post-secondary education has come under enormous pressure. For most of the past 12 years, core funding of BC’s public institutions, like in many other provinces, has simply not kept pace with the demands of increased enrolment or system-wide cost pressures. Add in the fact that government policy shifts that have allowed tuition fees to skyrocket over that same period — in BC the average undergraduate tuition fee has more than doubled — and the pressures on access and affordability have simply added more barriers to the education that government, business leaders and the broader community all know are critical to our collective success as both a province and a country. Notably, the BC Business Council — hardly a left-wing think tank — has pointed out on numerous occasions that 75 per cent of all new jobs in BC will require some form of post-secondary education (a degree, diploma, certificate or completed apprenticeship). The council notes that currently only two-thirds of BC’s labour force has that education.

The cuts in funding for English language programs are a step backwards. They will hurt students, the very people that BC and Canada need to support and encourage. Our campaign will focus on their stories and highlight the urgent need to keep ELT funding in place. Working together with allies and the broader community we are confident we can make a difference.

Cindy Oliver is president of the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of BC.

Read More: CAUT Bulletin
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Time for action on racial equity in Education at #UBC #ubced #yteubc #bced #bcpoli #edstudies #highered

by Stephen Petrina on February 12, 2014

In a previous blog on UBC Professor Jennifer Chan’s complaint of racial discrimination in her application to the David Lam Chair in Multicultural Education, I suggested a few things:

  • Given that the term of the current Lam Chair expired, it should itself should be left vacant, without a faculty member holding for two years.
  • With administrative terms winding down, the spring will be time for our new Dean, closing in on his third year, to ‘shuffle the cabinet’ and appoint a new administration to take affirmative action on racial equity in Education.

Questions were raised about why I said “time for reflection” when I should have said time for action on racial equity. Point taken.

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Reasonable hostility: Academic freedom & speech under threat #highered #edstudies #criticaled #bced #bcpoli #ubc #yteubc

by Stephen Petrina on February 11, 2014

No disrespect, but… Politic for politic, as faculty and student activism over the last decade was generated in response to administrative measures taken to devalue academic budget lines and increase debt loads, administrators formed policies that shored up their powers to police campus speech and launch investigations. Following an introduction of a Respectful Environment policy in 2008, in anticipation of an upcoming political protest on campus in March 2009, the President of UBC circulated a “Respectful Debate” memo warning students and faculty to “pay special attention to the rules that govern our conduct” for speech. Legislation of respect entangles or snares the left and right in the same finely meshed dragnet attenuating civil liberties. This also recalibrates a network of surveillance media and technologies, challenging nearly all protections in the workplace. Some self-identified centrists or voices of reason welcome the new measures, adopting roles of third persons while reporting to administrators that loose lips sink scholar-ships.

In Canada and the US, these new respectful workplace policies, which anticipate or respond to workplace legislation and court decisions, mean that academic freedom and charter or constitutional rights noticeably contract at the campus gates. Watching postsecondary institution by institution adopt similar respectful workplace policies, the Executive Director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), issued a memorandum in late March 2009 advising vigilance: “the test of ‘disrespect’ identified in these policies is for the most part experiential and subjective – notions like ‘feelings of shame’ or ‘embarrassment’ crop up repeatedly.” He subsequently asserted, “a major problem in Canadian universities is not that too many people are asserting their academic freedom, but that too few are.”

Similar policies in the US are compounded by the Supreme Court’s 2006 Garcetti v. Ceballos opinion that “when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline,” reinforcing managerial discretion and prerogative. Although academic freedom remains a special concern of free speech rights and was deferred by the Court in Garcetti, legal analysts such as Harvey Gilmore concur that “Garcetti has now become the definitive statement on a public employer’s discretion in managing office operations, and that discretion includes controlling an employee’s speech made in the scope of the employee’s professional capacity.”

Following legislation in four other provinces, on 1 July 2012 new legislation in BC came into effect through an amendment of the mental disorder section of the Workers Compensation Act. The new amendment in Section 5.1 provides for potential compensation if the disorder

(i) is a reaction to one or more traumatic events arising out of and in the course of the worker’s employment, or
(ii) is predominantly caused by a significant work-related stressor, including bullying or harassment, or a cumulative series of significant work-related stressors, arising out of and in the course of the worker’s employment.

For legal preparation for this legislation now common across Canada, universities such as UBC folded a large scope of potential infractions into their respectful workplace policies. What stands as protection for disability or “mental disorder” and against “bullying or harassment” under the law is extended in higher education policy to common modes of academic speech—commentary and criticism—that might be articulated in the wrong tone.

Offices of Human Resources introducing or monitoring respectful workplace policies oversimplify speech by stressing, “it is not what you say but how you say it that counts.” Repeated in HR across higher education and curiously by some administrators, this folksy maxim come respectful workplace policy draws on centuries of etiquette texts. “Rather than seeing public talk occasions as needing politeness or civility, a better norm” Karen Tracy proposes, “is reasonable hostility.” She effectively hashes out parameters for democratic communicative practice and flips this “aphorism on its head, it is not merely how something is said, but what a person says that matters.”

Only certain types of face-attack are legitimate and desirable in local governance situations. ‘Reasonable hostility’ is the name for acts that are. Reasonable hostility involves person-directed attack; it is remarks that imply disrespectful, undesirable things about others. Targets of reasonable hostility will judge speakers uttering those remarks to be rude, disrespectful, unfair, and so on…. A speaker might be cognizant that his or her remarks may have this effect, but their purpose is to express outrage about a wrong.  The speaker sees self’s central aim as witnessing a truth or expressing righteous indignation.

Faculty and students are bookended by a reformalization of academic speech on one side and a normalization of administrative equivocation, deception included, on the other. Can voices of critique and voices of liberty speak together, with reasonable hostility, as a voice of truth? Can the left and right speak (together)?

Read More: Petrina, S. & Ross, E. W. (2014). Critical University Studies: Workplace, Milestones, Crossroads, Respect, Truth. Workplace, 23, 62-71.

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UI Urbana faculty line up on sides to unionize #highered #criticaled #edstudies

by Stephen Petrina on February 10, 2014

Christine Des Garennes, The News-Gazette, February 2, 2014– On one side you have an award-winning, internationally-known scholar. On the other side you have an equally respected researcher and professor with just as many publications and grants to his or her name.

One believes establishing a faculty union would protect and strengthen the university. The other insists a bargaining unit for faculty would weaken the institution.

Can anyone win this debate?

Efforts to form a faculty union on the University of Illinois’ Urbana-Champaign campus in recent years have for the most part entailed discussions in offices and meeting rooms. But as union organizers ramp up their activities — asking people to sign a statement of support (an announcement disclosing numbers is expected soon) and distributing promotional literature — the discourse, if you will, has intensified.

Not long after the Campus Faculty Association, the group behind the unionization effort, delivered to every faculty member a brochure unveiling some of its more prominent supporters, an opposing group ratcheted up its campaign. That group released its own list of notable professors and their reasons for coming out against a faculty union.

Meantime, university officials, including Chancellor Phyllis Wise, have said publicly they don’t see a need for a faculty union and that having one would only make dealings between the faculty and administration more confrontational. And about 140 miles north on the UI’s Chicago campus, the nascent UIC United Faculty is in its 17th month of negotiating with administration for its first contract after organizing back in 2011.

Whatever happens in Urbana, it’s likely the debate will continue for some time.

One union, two contracts

In the U.S., more than 350,000 college and university faculty are represented by collective bargaining units, according to the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College City University of New York.

Because of a Supreme Court ruling in 1980, which stated that faculty at Yeshiva University acted as managers or supervisors rather than employees, few unionized faculty are found at private institutions, said William Herbert, executive director of the center and former deputy chairman of the New York State Public Employment Relations Board.

The majority of unionized faculty are at public institutions, and about 43 percent are at four-year institutions. In Illinois, there are about 20,062 unionized faculty. Unions are found at state universities like Southern Illinois and community colleges such as Parkland College.

“It’s safe to say that when there is an effort to organize on a campus, it’s democracy in action, and democracy in action takes many different variations,” Herbert said.

Illinois has a public sector collective bargaining statute, which allows employees to unionize. And the process can entail a gathering of what Herbert called “a showing of interest to establish support for unionization.”

“That can lead to voluntary recognition by the employer or, if employer refuses to recognize, then a petition can be filed” with the Illinois Educational Relations Labor Board.

To prove a union has support, organizers can hold an election or a card check in which faculty would sign (or not) cards stating that they favor union representation. If at least 50 percent plus one of all eligible faculty sign authorization cards in favor of forming a union, eventually the union would be able to negotiate a contract.

The Campus Faculty Association has indicated it could go the route of the card check.

“I think it’s going to go much more smoothly here,” compared with the Chicago campus campaign, said CFA President Harriet Murav, UI Professor of Slavic languages and literatures. “This is a campus that has a reputation for excellence. This is the flagship campus … and I don’t think administration would want to impede what we have going on here, in terms of research, teaching and public service excellence. I think the whole country will be watching closely.”

Read More: The News-Gazette

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Administrative bloat @ 28% boom in #highered #criticaled #edstudies #ubc #bced

by Stephen Petrina on February 10, 2014

Scott Carlson, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 5, 2014– Thirty-four pages of research, branded with a staid title and rife with complicated graphs, might not seem like a scintillating read, but there’s no doubt that a report released on Wednesday will punch higher education’s hot buttons in a big way.

The report, “Labor Intensive or Labor Expensive: Changing Staffing and Compensation Patterns in Higher Education,” says that new administrative positions—particularly in student services—drove a 28-percent expansion of the higher-ed work force from 2000 to 2012. The report was released by the Delta Cost Project, a nonprofit, nonpartisan social-science organization whose researchers analyze college finances.

What’s more, the report says, the number of full-time faculty and staff members per professional or managerial administrator has declined 40 percent, to around 2.5 to 1.

Full-time faculty members also lost ground to part-time instructors (who now compose half of the instructional staff at most types of colleges), particularly at public master’s and bachelor’s institutions.

And the kicker: You can’t blame faculty salaries for the rise in tuition. Faculty salaries were “essentially flat” from 2000 to 2012, the report says. And “we didn’t see the savings that we would have expected from the shift to part-time faculty,” said Donna M. Desrochers, an author of the report.

The rise in tuition was probably driven more by the cost of benefits, the addition of nonfaculty positions, and, of course, declines in state support.

Howard J. Bunsis, a professor of accounting at Eastern Michigan University and chair of the American Association of University Professors’ Collective Bargaining Congress, wasn’t surprised by the conclusions of the study.

“You see it on every campus—an increase in administration and a decrease in full-time faculty, and an increase in the use of part-time faculty,” he said. With that trend, along with rising tuition and falling state support, “you’re painting a pretty fair picture of higher ed,” he continued. “It’s not what it should be. What’s broken in higher ed is the priorities, and it’s been broken for a long time.”

Read More: Chronicle of Higher Ed

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The just-in-time professor #highered #edstudies #criticaled #ubc #bced

by Stephen Petrina on February 10, 2014

THE JUST-IN-TIME PROFESSOR:
A Staff Report Summarizing eForum Responses on the Working Conditions of Contingent Faculty in Higher Education
January 2014

The post-secondary academic workforce has undergone a remarkable change over the last several decades. The tenure-track college professor with a stable salary, firmly grounded in the middle or upper-middle class, is becoming rare. Taking her place is the contingent faculty: nontenure-track teachers, such as part-time adjuncts or graduate instructors, with no job security from one semester to the next, working at a piece rate with few or no benefits across multiple workplaces, and far too often struggling to make ends meet. In 1970, adjuncts made up 20 percent of all higher education faculty. Today, they represent half.

Read more: The JIT Professor

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Step 1 is acknowledge the problem: Plight of adjunct faculty #highered #edstudies #criticaled #bced #ubc #ubced

by Stephen Petrina on February 10, 2014

Audrey Williams June, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 7, 2014– Maria C. Maisto, president of New Faculty Majority, answered via email select questions submitted by viewers of The Chronicle’s online chat about adjunct issues. The questions and her responses have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Q. Some adjuncts have access to health-care benefits already and don’t need to be covered by the Affordable Care Act. Do you support an exemption so that we could keep our current teaching loads (and paychecks) rather than face colleges cutting our hours so they don’t have to cover us?

A. In this scenario, is the institution getting an exemption from the employer mandate, or is the adjunct with health insurance getting an exemption from having his/her workload reduced? (Don’t like the latter.)

As we indicated in our comments to the IRS, we think that (1) institutions should not be allowed to avoid or circumvent the letter and spirit of the law, namely that no one should be uninsured; (2) educational quality and commitment to the mission of education, particularly as a public good, should be driving institutional response to the ACA, so avoiding excessive course loads is actually a good thing if it is accompanied with the kind of compensation that reflects the real importance of the work. Since these aims can conflict with one another in this context, administrators need to closely collaborate with faculty, with unions, and with students to craft solutions for each individual institution that achieve both aims in a financially sustainable (and legally compliant) way.

Personally I believe with many of my colleagues that fighting for higher course loads may be beneficial for some individuals in the short term but highly problematic for the quality of education and the profession in the long term. I realize that can be hard to face when one has had one’s course load and income reduced, but it’s something that we have to confront honestly as members of the educational profession. And I think it’s reprehensible that so many of our colleagues continue to be forced into positions where their personal economic survival is being pitted against the professional responsibilities to which they have committed as educators.

Q. I don’t think universities will do anything drastic to improve the plight of adjuncts overnight. But what are some ways in which universities can gradually move toward better treatment of adjuncts?

A. Step 1 is to acknowledge the problem—it’s a huge first step. Do a self-study to find out what the conditions actually are on one’s campus and how they compare to conditions locally, regionally, and nationally. The most important aspect of this step is to LISTEN to the contingent faculty on campus (including through anonymous surveys) and to commit to protecting their right to give honest answers—no retaliation allowed. There are good resources at the Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success.

Most important: Commit to change and get broad campus and community buy-in. Don’t assume that anyone is not a potential ally. Ground the work in the research and understanding that transforming the working conditions of contingent faculty will benefit students, the campus, and the community in the long run.

Q. What do you say about claims that colleges would have to raise tuition to pay adjuncts more and give them health benefits?

A. I think that’s a scare tactic that has been effectively challenged by the kind of work that the American Association of University Professors has done to analyze the audited financial statements of colleges and universities. Money is there, and faculty and administrators and students should all be working together to put pressure on states to reinvest in higher education. See also Delphi’s “Dispelling the Myths.”

Q. Does New Faculty Majority want colleges to turn adjunct jobs into full-time jobs?

A. NFM believes that part-time faculty, especially those that have been long-serving, should be given first preference for full-time jobs that open up. But we also believe that part time should really mean part time—100 percent pro rata compensation—it should not mean full-time work for less than part-time pay. On this issue we have to be careful to remember that people who need part-time work are often caregivers, especially women, and people with disabilities, so we don’t want to forget about them in our recognition that there is a need for full-time positions and a huge number of people who are willing and able to fill them.

Read More: Chronicle of Higher Ed

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Overuse and Abuse of Adjunct Faculty #highered #adjunct #edstudies #criticaled #ubc #bced #bcpoli

by Stephen Petrina on February 10, 2014

Richard Moser, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 13, 2014– The increasing exploitation of contingent faculty members is one dimension of an employment strategy sometimes called the “two-tiered” or “multitiered” labor system.

This new labor system is firmly established in higher education and constitutes a threat to the teaching profession. If left unchecked, it will undermine the university’s status as an institution of higher learning because the overuse of adjuncts and their lowly status and compensation institutionalize disincentives to quality education, threaten academic freedom and shared governance, and disqualify the campus as an exemplar of democratic values. These developments in academic labor are the most troubling expressions of the so-called corporatization of higher education.

“Corporatization” is the name sometimes given to what has happened to higher education over the last 30 years. Corporatization is the reorganization of our great national resources, including higher education, in accordance with a shortsighted business model. Three decades of decline in public funding for higher education opened the door for increasing corporate influence, and since then the work of the university has been redirected to suit the corporate vision.

The most striking symptoms of corporatization shift costs and risks downward and direct capital and authority upward. Rising tuition and debt loads for students limit access to education for working-class students. The faculty and many other campus workers suffer lower compensation as the number of managers, and their pay, rises sharply. Campus management concentrates resources on areas where wealth is created, and new ideas and technologies developed at public cost become the entitlement of the corporate sector. The privatization and outsourcing of university functions and jobs from food service to bookstores to instruction enrich a few businessmen and create more low-wage nonunion jobs. Increasingly authoritarian governance practices have become the “new normal.”

Read More: Chronicle of Higher Ed

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Academic job market decimated, crashing #highered #edstudies #criticaled #caut #aaup #bced #bcpoli

by Stephen Petrina on February 10, 2014

Oftentimes, the academic job market for full-time (FT) faculty is inversely related to economic recessions. Not anymore. In this prolonged Great Recession, turned Great Depression II in parts of North America and across the world, youth have been particularly hard hit, more pronounced by race. The most common description for this current economy for youth is “a precipitous decline in employment and a corresponding increase in unemployment.” In Canada and the US, unemployment rates for the 16-19 year olds exceeds 25%. At the same time, one of the most common descriptions for postsecondary enrollment and participation in Canada and the US is “tremendous growth at the undergraduate level… the number of graduate students has grown significantly faster than the number of undergraduate students over the last 30 years.” With “school-to-work” and “youth employment” oxymoronic, corporate academia and the education industry are capitalizing on masses of students returning to desperately secure advanced credentials in hard times, but no longer does this matter to the professoriate.

If higher education enrollment has been significant, increases in online or e-learning enrollment have been phenomenal. Postsecondary institutions in North America commonly realized 100% increases in online course enrollment from the early 2000s to the present with the percentage of total registrations increasing to 25% for some universities. In Canada, this translates to about 250,000 postsecondary students currently taking online courses but has not translated into FT faculty appointments. More pointedly, it has eroded the FT faculty job market and fueled the part-time (PT) job economy of higher education. About 50% of all faculty in North America are PT but this seems to jump to about 85%-90% for those teaching online courses. For example, in the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Master of Educational Technology (MET), where there are nearly 1,000 registrations per year, 85% of all sections are taught by PT faculty. In its decade of existence, not a single FT faculty member has been hired for this revenue generating program. Mirroring trends across North America, support staff doubling as adjunct or sessional teach about 45% of MET courses in addition to their 8:30-4:30 job functions in the service units. These indicators are of a larger scope of trends in the automation of intellectual work.

Given these practices across Canada, in the field of Education for example, there has been a precipitous decline in employment of FT faculty, which corresponds with the precipitous decline in employment of youth (Figure 1). Education is fairly reflective of the overall academic job market for doctorates in Canada. Except for short-term trends in certain disciplines, the market for PhDs is bleak. Trends and an expansion of the Great Recession predict that the market will worsen for graduates looking for FT academic jobs in all disciplines. A postdoctoral appointment market is very unlikely to materialize at any scale to offset trends. For instance, Education at UBC currently employs just a handful (i.e., 4-5) of postdocs.

To put it in mild, simple terms: Universities changed their priorities and values by devaluing academic budget lines. Now in inverse relationship to the increases in revenue realized by universities through the 2000s, academic budgets were progressively reduced from 40% or more to just around 20% for many of these institutions. One indicator of this trend is the expansion of adjunct labor or PT academics. In some colleges or faculties, such as Education at UBC, the number of PT faculty, which approached twice that of FT in 2008, teach from 33% to 85% of all sections, depending on the program.

Another indicator is the displacement of tenure track research faculty by non-tenure track, teaching-intensive positions. For example, in Education at UBC, about 18 of the last 25 FT faculty hires were for non-tenure track teaching-intensive positions (i.e., 10 courses per year for Instructor, Lecturer, etc.). This was partially to offset a trend of PT faculty hires pushing Education well over its faculty salary budget (e.g., 240 PT appointments in 2008). Measures in North America have been so draconian that the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) was compelled to report in 2010 that “the tenure system has all but collapsed…. the proportion of teaching-intensive to research-intensive appointments has risen sharply. However, the majority of teaching-intensive positions have been shunted outside of the tenure system.” What is faculty governance, other than an oligarchy, with a handful of faculty governing or to govern?

Read More: Petrina, S. & Ross, E. W. (2014). Critical University Studies: Workplace, Milestones, Crossroads, Respect, Truth. Workplace, 23, 62-71.

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Professor Stuart Hall, 1932-2014 #edstudies #criticaled #ubc #bced

by Stephen Petrina on February 10, 2014

Beautiful Mind, 1932-2014

Rykesha Hudson & Elizabeth Pears, The Voice, February 10, 2014–  JAMAICAN CULTURAL theorist Stuart Hall has died aged 82, according to reports.

Hall, who grew up in Kingston, Jamaica, studied at Oxford and emerged as one of the Britain’s leading sociologists.

Last autumn, Hall was brought to the big screen, in The Stuart Hall Project, a documentary and labour of love from acclaimed director John Akomfrah, for whom the academic is a personal hero.

Akomfrah said: “Stuart Hall was one of the few people of colour we saw on television who wasn’t crooning, dancing, or running…he was a kind of rock star for us [black teenage bookworms], a pop icon with brains whose very iconic presence on this most public of platforms – television – suggested all manner of ‘impossible possibilities’.”

Hall retired from public life in recent years due to health problems including kidney failure.

One of the first to pay tribute to the “intellectual giant” was Professor Gus John. He told The Voice: “I have been hugely influenced by his work.

“In the last half a century or so, he was an intellectual giant. His work on the state and its relationship with people has been very influential in our struggles.

“His work on culture and imperialism was powerful and influential. He is a huge loss to Britain and the world.”

Also paying tribute to his life and work, Martin Bean, vice-chancellor of The Open University said: “His loss will be felt right across the world of academia and sociology as a whole.

“Stuart was one of the intellectual founders of cultural studies, publishing many influential books and shaping the conversations of the time.

“It was a privilege to have Stuart at the heart of The Open University – touching and influencing so many lives through his courses and tutoring.

“He was a committed and influential public intellectual of the new left, who embodied the spirit of what the OU has always stood for; openness, accessibility, a champion for social justice and of the power of education to bring positive change in peoples’ lives.”

PRAISED: Members of the academic world have hailed Hall’s contribution

Dubbed the godfather of multiculturalism, Hall was born on February 3, 1932, in Kingston, Jamaica, to a light-skinned, middle class family.

From an early age, Hall identified himself as an outsider. In his own home, he was quite literally the black sheep being “at least three shades darker” than the rest of his family – “the first social fact I knew about myself”, he admitted.

Educated at the all-male Jamaica College, one of the island’s elite establishments whose alumni includes the late Jamaican Premier Norman Manley and late PM Michael Manley, Hall was different from the majority of young men of his age.

And unlike his fellow West Indians who formed the Windrush Generation, Hall arrived in Britain in 1951 not looking for menial work but as a Rhodes scholar – a recipient of funding from the Jamaican Government – to read English Literature at Merton College, University of Oxford.

Read More: The Voice

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Equity, Governance, Economics and Critical University Studies #criticaled #edstudies #ubc #bced #yteubc

by Stephen Petrina on February 10, 2014

Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor
Equity, Governance, Economics and Critical University Studies
No 23 (2014)

As we state in our Commentary, “This Issue marks a couple of milestones and crossroads for Workplace. We are celebrating fifteen years of dynamic, insightful, if not inciting, critical university studies (CUS). Perhaps more than anything, and perhaps closer to the ground than any CUS publication of this era, Workplace documents changes, crossroads, and the hard won struggles to maintain academic dignity, freedom, justice, and integrity in this volatile occupation we call higher education.” Workplace and Critical Education are published by the Institute for Critical Education Studies (ICES).

Commentary

  • Critical University Studies: Workplace, Milestones, Crossroads, Respect, Truth
    • Stephen Petrina & E. Wayne Ross

Articles

  • Differences in Black Faculty Rank in 4-Year Texas Public Universities: A Multi-Year Analysis
    • Brandolyn E Jones & John R Slate
  • Academic Work Revised: From Dichotomies to a Typology
    • Elias Pekkola
  • No Free Set of Steak Knives: One Long, Unfinished Struggle to Build Education College Faculty Governance
    • Ishmael Munene & Guy B Senese
  • Year One as an Education Activist
    • Shaun Johnson
  • Rethinking Economics Education: Challenges and Opportunities
    • Sandra Ximena Delgado-Betancourth
  • Review of Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think
    • C. A. Bowers
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Podcast CBC: The income gap between tenure faculty & adjunct contract professors in Canadian universities #ubc #ubced#bced #criticaled #edstudies

by Stephen Petrina on January 27, 2014

The Current, CBC– If you’ve got a university student in the family, increasingly they may be being taught by a highly educated professional who can’t get full time work. Or make a living wage. Today, Project Money looks at impoverished professors.

Many people who’ve earned advanced degrees are astonished at how little some universities value their graduates.

“Our working conditions are your learning conditions. I will give you an A plus right now if you promise to agitate on behalf of adjunct equity and rights.”

Fordham adjunct professor Alan Trevithick teases students

In Canada, climbing the Ivory tower has never been harder. More people graduate with PhDs, but full-time tenure track faculty positions are harder to get. Many highly educated Canadians struggle to find adequate-paying work that meets their credentials.

And for those who dream of chalk-boards, lecture halls, and tweed jackets… the best they can get is work as a part-time instructor.

It’s estimated that about half of all teaching in the country is done by contract professors — instead of permanent full time professors.

  • Beth Parton left teaching in search of greener pastures… along with stable work and good pay. She is a former university professor with a doctorate in religion and culture. Beth Parton was in Toronto.
  • Elizabeth Hodgson is a tenured professor at the University of British Columbia but spent 9 years teaching there as an adjunct professor. She is also a member of the Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee at the Canadian Association of University Teachers. Elizabeth Hodgson was in our Vancouver studio.
  • Ian Lee says there are many reasons adjunct professors are falling behind. He is an Assistant Professor in Strategic Management and International Business at the Sprott School of Business. Ian Lee was in Ottawa.

Listen: CBC The Current

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Time for reflection on racial equity in Education at #UBC #ubced #yteubc #bced #bcpoli #edstudies #idelnomore

by Stephen Petrina on January 26, 2014

The Ubyssey‘s coverage of the UBC Professor Jennifer Chan’s complaint of racial discrimination in her application to the David Lam Chair in Multicultural Education has been outstanding. Jonny Wakefield’s feature article on the background and Sarah Bigam’s synoptic article on the final dismissal of the case provide models for media.

The case law assembled for this will be indispensable to future complainants on employment equity and protected ground of human rights:

The term of the 2009 awardee of the David Lam Chair expired in December 2013.  Respondents in this case (Beth Haverkamp, David Farrar, Jon Shapiro, Rob Tierney) finished or are winding down their terms. It is time for the Faculty of Education to phase in a period for reflection on racial equity within the ranks. The Lam Chair should itself should be left vacant, without a faculty member holding for two years. Leaving a Chair vacant is not at all uncommon in Universities. In Education, for example, the David Robitaille Chair in Mathematics, Science, and Technology has been dormant and vacant since 2010. With administrative terms winding down, the spring will be time for our new Dean, closing in on his third year, to ‘shuffle the cabinet’ and appoint a new administration to take affirmative action on racial equity in Education.

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Racial discrimination complaint against UBC dismissed #ubc #ubced #yteubc #bced #bcpoli #edstudies #idlenomore

by Stephen Petrina on January 26, 2014

Photo by Steven Richards, The Ubyssey

Sarah Bigam, The Ubyssey, January 15, 2014– The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal has dismissed the complaint of a UBC education professor who says she was the victim of racial discrimination.

Jennifer Chan argued she was denied appointment to the David Lam Chair in Multicultural Education, which was granted to a white candidate, in part because she is Chinese-Canadian. The tribunal dismissed her complaint after four years of legal proceedings.

On Dec. 19, tribunal member Norman Trerise determined that, based on the evidence before him, the case had no reasonable chance of success at a hearing.

“There is really nothing to support that race, colour, ancestry or place of origin played a role in the outcome of the selection process,” Trerise wrote.

He determined that the decision likely came down to the differences between the hiring committee and Chan’s definitions of multiculturalism, since “breadth of representation of multicultural education” was a criterion for the position.

Chan asserts that five of the six members of the hiring committee were not experts in multiculturalism.

“It’s huge pity because if [Trerise] had moved the case to hearing, then obviously the crucial thing would have been to hear the experts in the field, which the hiring committee never did,” Chan said.

Chan first brought her complaint to UBC’s Equity Office in 2009 after being denied the position. The office ran an investigation and then dismissed the complaint, which led Chan to bring her case to the tribunal in May 2010.

“I was disappointed all along the way. I think one of the most disappointing things … would be the UBC Equity Office’s way of handling the whole thing.”

Chan alleges that the VP equity at the time, Tom Patch, had hired a friend of his to do the Equity Office review which dismissed her case.

UBC made multiple attempts to have the case dismissed, but in January 2012, the tribunal ruled that Chan’s case would go to a full hearing, which was originally scheduled for September 2013.

In March 2012, UBC applied to the B.C. Supreme Court for a judicial review of the complaint on the grounds that the case had already been dealt with by UBC’s investigation through the Equity Office. The Supreme Court ruled that the tribunal had not considered whether UBC has sufficiently dealt with the complaint and their decision not to dismiss the complaint “was based on a misapprehension of the evidence and on irrelevant factors.” The court directed the tribunal to reconsider its decision.

Chan asked for the tribunal to include in its reconsideration evidence that she had obtained after filing her original complaint, and UBC said it should not consider materials submitted after that point. The tribunal sided with UBC.

Chan said that, had the case gone to hearing, the additional information would have helped her case.

Chan has no plans to continue pursuing this case.

“In terms of the legal realm, it’s really over,” she said.

“Dr. Chan is a respected scholar and a valued member of the UBC Faculty of Education,” wrote UBC director of public affairs Lucie McNeill in an emailed statement. “UBC took her complaint very seriously and investigated her allegations thoroughly under the procedures set out in UBC’s policy on discrimination and harassment.

“The tribunal’s findings in December concur with our own, and that is gratifying.”

Although the complaint was dismissed, Trerise did decide that UBC’s Equity Office investigation was not a proceeding in the legal sense.

“There, we won, and it’s extremely important in the sense that even though this case is dismissed, this part … is going to set a legal precedent for future complaints,” Chan said.

Chan hopes that her case has drawn attention to greater structural issues. In August 2012, only eight per cent of 110 education faculty members belonged to a visible minority. Chan said inexperience in the legal realm, high legal fees and mental health issues caused by stress affected her and may impede others from who file similar complaints.

“We’re talking about a huge structural gap in the Canadian equity scene here. There’s no effective and efficient system for any equity complaint, and for me that is very serious. Canada tends to project this image: we’re a multicultural country, we take equity seriously. I walk through this process — no. This, for me, is a mirage.”

Read More: Ubyssey

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Aboriginal rights forum Dalhousie U #idlenomore #edstudies #bced #ubc #ubced #bcpoli

by Stephen Petrina on January 26, 2014

IDEALaw: Aboriginal Rights in the Spotlight

Canadian Civil Liberties Association–January 25, 2014–On January 24th-25th 2014 academics, practitioners, community members, and students have been gathering at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University to discuss and examine the state of Aboriginal rights in Canada. The biennial IDEALaw conference has never seen a comparable response in numbers and media interest. The line up of speakers, cultural events, and discussion focus of the conference has created a buzz in Halifax.

Organized by students, the conference attempts to address a number of pressing issues facing Aboriginals. Environmental concerns, poverty and criminal law issues, and police and institutional responses to protest are all on the bill. The conference was develped to encourage discussion and openness to new approaches, different perspectives, and engaging the public in legal and political action in response to community concerns. While the conference is ongoing, all talks thus far have addressed the chilling effects of organised and concerted rights abuses on the civil liberties and human rights of Aboriginals in Canada and abroad.

The conference opened with a fascinating and rousing talk by Sheila Watt-Cloutier on human rights. Her experience as head of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference and own experiences as an advocate for Inuit in Canada and overseas gave a fascinating and “on the ground” perspective on alternative ways to perceive climate change. Her commentary on and analysis of the success attached to the ICC’s Petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Seeking Relief from Violations Resulting from Global Warming Caused by Acts and Omissions of the United States set the tone for continued discussion into the night. Of particular interest to most was the role of democratic and social rights and their protection in communities facing significant and overwhelming changes due to environmental impact.

Read More: CCLA

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January 28 National Day of Teach-ins focused on First Nations Education Act #idlenomore #ubc #bced #bcploi #occupyeducation #edstudies

by Stephen Petrina on January 26, 2014

IDLE NO MORE + DEFENDERS OF THE LAND
TEACH-INS
JANUARY 28, 2014

Idle No More— As we begin a new year, we invite Idle No More groups to organize local teach-ins on January 28th based around the First Nation Education Act and the broader Termination Plan that it represents.  We recognize that every Nation and community has their own unique stories, struggles, and practices and we hope that every teach-in is rooted in the on-the-ground realities that are the heart of the movement. When we include our local allies and supporters to attend, help, and promote local teach-ins we believe this adds strength to the bundle of arrows we continue to build through education.

As a support to teach-in organizers we are developing educational tools to use at local teach-ins that will focus on the  First Nation Education Act and the broader Termination Plan of the Canadian government.  Please feel free to use these tools, or to develop your own!  We are also hoping that each teach-in will create a quick list of local struggles or issues and that we can share these lists to help guide the Idle No More movement.

We need to support one another as we continue to fight for our lands, water, sovereignty, and our future generations.  We hope that these teach-ins help to deepen and strengthen our roots and prepare us for the work that lies ahead.

Read More: Idle No More

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#IdleNoMore “Got Land? Thank An Indian” truth-telling protest Jan 28 #ubc #ubced #bced #bcpoli #criticaled

by Stephen Petrina on January 26, 2014

Idle No More + Defenders of the Land
Day of Action
January 28, 2014

Idle No More, For Immediate Release– Idle No More and Indigenous teen who wore “Got Land? Thank an Indian” shirt call on people everywhere to wear it as act of truth-telling protest

Tenelle Starr will appear as honorary guest at Neil Young concert in Regina on Friday

(Turtle Island/Canada ) – A 13 year old Indigenous teenager, Tenelle Starr, prevented initially from wearing a sweatshirt at her school in Balcarres near Regina that read “Got Land? Thank an Indian” is now calling, along with the Idle No More movement, for people everywhere to don the shirt as an act of truth-telling and protest.

Now and up to a January 28 Day of Action, Tenelle and Idle No More and Defenders of the Land are encouraging people across the country to make the shirt and wear them to their schools, workplaces, or neighbourhoods to spark conversations about Canada’s true record on Indigenous rights. They have created a website (http://www.idlenomore.ca/got_land) where people can get stencils to make a shirt, to buy it, and upload photos of themselves wearing it.

“Everyone can wear the shirt.  I think of it as a teaching tool that can help bring awareness to our treaty and land rights. The truth about Canada’s bad treatment of First Nations may make some people uncomfortable, but understanding it is the only way Canada will change and start respecting First Nations,” says Tenelle, an Idle No More supporter who has participated in many Idle No More rallies with her mother.

Tenelle will also be appearing as an honorary guest at the Neil Young Honour The Treaties concert in Regina on Friday night. Chief Allan Adam and the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation have gifted her and her mom with tickets to pay respect to her courage.

Since the media started reporting on Tenelle’s acts, she has has been attacked on her facebook page by an online hate group that has threatened her safety, forcing her to disable her facebook account.

The January 28 National Day of Action is also a day of Teach-ins to raise awareness about the federal Harper government’s attack on native education through the First Nations Education Act and his continuing agenda to “terminate” or abolish Indigenous peoples rights, sovereignty and status as Nations and dispossess them of their lands and resources.

Read More: Idle No More

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Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor archive project completed

by E Wayne Ross on January 15, 2014

Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor founding editors—Kent Puckett and Marc Bousquet—published the first issue of the journal in the fall of 1998. Closely connected to activism emerging from the Graduate Student Caucus of the Modern Language Association, the journal’s mission was defined by Bousquet in his Foreword to the first issue, “The Institution as False Horizon”:

Workplace is a … journal that asks you to join with Graduate Student Caucus as the agent of a new dignity in academic work. This means that most of its contributors will try to convince you that becoming a Workplace activist is in your immediate and personal best interest, even by the narrowest construction of careerism.

Let me be clear about this. If you’re a graduate student, I’m saying that becoming an activist today will help you get a job in your interview tomorrow.

If you’re an undergraduate, or parent, or employer, I’m saying that a dignified academic WORKPLACE delivers better education.

By “dignified” I mean very simple things.

I mean a higher-education WORKPLACE in which first-year students—those most at risk for dropping out and those requiring the best-trained and most-expert attention—can expect as a matter of course that they have registered for classes taught by persons with experience, training, and the terminal degree in their field (usually a Ph.D.), an office for conferences, a salary that makes such meetings possible, a workload that enables continuing scholarship, a telephone and answering machine, reasonable access to photocopying, and financial support for professional activities.

Remove any one of these values, and education suffers. Who would ask their accountant to work without an office? Or a telephone? Or training and professional development?

Most of the teachers encountered by students in first-year classes have none of these things. No office. No pay for meetings outside of class. No degree. Little or no training. No experience to speak of.

Little wonder that nobody’s happy with the results.

The good news is that there’s plenty of work in higher education teaching for those who want to do it. The bad news is that all of that work no longer comes in the package of tenure, dignity, scholarship, and a living wage that we call “a job.”

The struggle for dignity in the academic workplace continues and 17 years later Workplace remains a journal focused on critical analysis of and activism within universities, colleges, and schools.

Throughout it’s existence Workplace been an open-access journal. Initially housed on servers at the University of Louisville, the journal moved to the University of British Columbia and transitioned from an html-based journal to the Open Journal Systems (OJS) a journal management and publishing system  developed by the Public Knowledge Project. PKP is a multi-university initiative developing free open source software and conducting research to improve the quality and reach of scholarly publishing.

Workplace is now published by the Institute for Critical Education Studies at UBC and hosted, along with a number of other OJS journals, by the University of British Columbia Library.

The Workplace journal archive project, led by Stephen Petrina (co-director of the Institute for Critical Education Studies and Workplace co-editor), has been underway for several years and is now complete. Back issues #1-#12 are now reformatted and accessible through the journal Archives, bringing the journal up to date under a new unified numbering system and collecting the complete journal contents in one place for the first time since 2005.

This was a monumental task, facilitated by the impeccable editorial work of Graduate Assistants Maya Borhani and Michelle Gautreaux.

We encourage you to explore the very rich archives of the journal and to join us in promoting a new dignity in academic work. We welcome your submissions on issues of workplace activism and dialogue on all issues of academic labor.

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