Tag Archives: Academics

New Workplace Issue: Academic Bullying & Mobbing #highered #ubc #caut

New Workplace Issue #24

Academic Bullying & Mobbing

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

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

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

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

How far is too far when it comes to religious accommodation?

Matthew Coutts, Daily Brew, January 9, 2014– Is it appropriate to allow university students decline to participate in a class assignment because it would force him to interact with female students, or should they be expected to set their “firm religious beliefs aside” in their search for higher education? And how should technology play into the decision?

That question is at the centre of a debate ongoing at Toronto’s York University, where a sociology professor and university brass have clashed over whether a student’s religious belief should allow him to skip class assignments that bring him into contact with women.

The debate stems from a decision made by Professor Paul Grayson in September, when a male student in an online sociology course asked to be excused from an in-person assignment that would bring him in contact with female students. The students claimed “firm religious beliefs” as his reason for not wanted to intermingle with female students.

Grayson denied the request on the ground that it marginalized and punished female classmates. York University officials, however, approved the student’s request for religious accommodation and ordered Grayson to allow the student to remain absent from the session.

The student acquiesced and ultimately completed the project. In the meantime, however, the professor and university have locked into a battle that could write the playbook for future arguments around religious accommodation.

“If for religious reasons you exempt a student from interacting with females, there are religious reasons people could advance for not interacting with blacks, Jews, gays, you name it,” Grayson told SunNews Network. “In the bible and in religious practice you can find a basis for that kind of appeal.”

University Provost Rhonda Lenton retorted in a statement that every accommodation request is considered on its own merits. She said the circumstances of this case led the university to conclude the accommodation could be made.

“A deciding factor in this case was that it was an online course where another student had previously been given permission to complete the course requirement off-campus,” Lenton announced. She later told CBC’s Metro Morning that, “Had it not been an online course, it is my view that … the advice that would have been given to the professor and to the student is that this is a course that is being delivered on campus and in person, and part of the assignments are to work with other students in the class.”

Lenton notes that another student was allowed to skip an in-person assignment, suggesting it was an accommodation the professor was willing to make under some circumstances. Grayson said in interviews that a student taking the course from Egypt had previously been shown leniency due to his or her distance from campus.

Indeed, details published in the National Post suggest that the student at the centre of the debate enrolled in the online sociology course out of a belief that it would allow him to finish his degree without intermingling with other students – specifically females.

If that is the case, then it could be seen as an attempt by the student to work within the framework of York – accommodate the university and its inclusive environment, you could say – to balance his religious beliefs with his desire to complete his degree.

It is not clear what religion the student holds, and Grayson has said he consulted several religious leaders before coming to his decision. It should be noted, however, that when the professor denied the accommodation request, the student agreed to participate without further complaint. He even thanked Grayson for the way he handled the situation.

Lenton said that while the student and teacher were able to come to an agreement, “the broader issue of religious accommodations in secular universities remains an important societal concern that warrants further discussion.” The Ontario Human Rights Commission is reviewing the case.

Part of that review should be the role technology has played in all of this. Is it truly reasonable to expect religious accommodation through online courses? Should such a course allow members of society to harbor personal beliefs that will surely come to a head later in life?

Regardless of whether the course is online or not, the student in question will graduate with a degree from York University. Is the school comfortable attaching their reputation to a student who may, upon entering the job market, beg out of meetings because female co-workers and bosses will be in attendance?

York University should have one set of standards across campus. Accommodation is important but reason should still be a factor, whether the student is logged on from home or sitting in a classroom.

Massive Open Online Courses and Beyond: the Revolution to Come

Michael A. Peters, TruthOut, August 17, 2013– The New York Times dubbed 2012 the year of the MOOCs – massive open online courses. Suddenly the discourse of MOOCs and the future of the university hit the headlines with influential reports using the language of “the revolution to come.” Most of these reports hailed the changes and predicted a transformation of the delivery of teaching and higher education competition from private venture for-profit and not-for-profit partnerships. Rarely did the media focus on questions of pedagogy or academic labor. This article suggests that MOOCs should be seen within the framework of postindustrial education and cognitive capitalism where social media has become the dominant culture.
Ernst & Young’s Universities of the Future carries the line, “A thousand year old industry on the cusp of profound change.” The report suggests that the current Australian university model “will prove unviable in all but a few cases.” It identifies five major “drivers of change”: democratization of knowledge and access, contestability of markets and funding, digital technologies, global mobility and integration with industry.

With the driver “digital technologies,” the report mentions MOOCs specifically as transformative of the way education is delivered and accessed and how “value” is created by higher-education providers. Clearly, this feature also is systematically related to the other features. I do not have the space here to evaluate this report except to say that it is self-serving in that it favors the privatization of education.

In An Avalanche is Coming: Higher Education and the Revolution Ahead, Michael Barber, Katelyn Donnelly and Saad Rizv, like the Ernst and Young, report, use the language of “revolution” to describe the changes about to transform higher education. Lawrence Summers, president emeritus of Harvard University who writes the foreword, suggests that An Avalanche is Coming correctly predicts the impending transformation:

Just as we’ve seen the forces of technology and globalisation transform sectors such as media and communications or banking and finance over the last two decades, these forces may now transform higher education. The solid classical buildings of great universities may look permanent but the storms of change now threaten them.

Michael Barber, one-time education adviser to Tony Blair and now consultant for the giant education publisher Pearson, signals that the functions of the traditional university are being “unbundled” – which means that some universities will need to specialize solely in teaching. Barber and his colleagues mention emergent forms of the university: the elite university, the mass university, the niche university, the local university, the lifelong learning mechanism. For Barber and his colleagues, MOOCs are symbolic of an avalanche: “Just as an avalanche shapes the mountain, so the changes ahead will fundamentally alter the landscape for universities.” With the student consumer as king, the growth of MOOCs and a more global system that makes up a leading part of the growth of the knowledge economy, “the new world the learner” will choose an education in a global marketplace with an “eye trained on value.”

The New York Times “Schools for Tomorrow” Conference to be held September 17, 2013, focuses on “Virtual U: The Coming of Age of Online Education.” The opening plenary asks “Is Online Education The Great Equalizer?” and provides the following primer:

There is no doubt that we are in the middle of an online education revolution, which offers huge potential to broaden access to education and therefore, in theory, level the playing field for students from lower-income, lower-privileged backgrounds. But evidence to date shows that the increasing number of poorly designed courses could actually have the reverse effect and put vulnerable students at an even bigger disadvantage.

This is to be followed with the debate: “Has The University As An Institution Had Its Day?” for which this description is added:

Higher education has always been an array of autonomous institutions, each with their own courses, their own faculty, and their own requirements for their own degrees. But online education is starting to break down those lines, in ways that are likely to lead to a lot more shared courses, consortia and credit transfers. In addition, there are a growing number of companies (not schools) providing higher education courses outside the traditional higher education institutions. As we move towards the possibility of a multi-institution, multi-credit qualification, is the traditional higher education institution in danger of losing applicants, income and identity?

The next agenda is devoted to “new era business models” including “an increasing assortment of new ventures offering for-profit schools, for-profit online courses, tests, curricula, interactive whiteboard, learning management systems, paid-for verified certificates of achievement, e-books, e-tutoring, e-study groups and more.” And finally, the conference is to address “Gamechangers: How Will Online Education Revolutionalize [sic] What We Know And Understand About Learning?” with this orientation:

Traditionally, pedagogical research has been done in tiny groups; but new-generation classes of 60,000 students make it possible to do large scale testing and provide potentially game-changing research on how students learn best. Using the big data from online courses, we have access to new information about what pedagogical approaches work best. MOOCs, and many more traditional online classes, can track every keystroke, every homework assignment and every test answer a student provides. This can produce a huge amount of data on how long students pay attention to a lecture, where they get stuck in a problem set, what they do to get unstuck, what format and pacing of lectures, demonstrations, labs and quizzes lead to the best outcomes, and so on. How can we use Big Data for the good of the education profession, and not for “Big Brother”?

In “MOOCs and Open Education: Implications for Higher Education” – a self-described “white paper” – Li Yuan and Stephen Powell embrace a balanced analysis that sees MOOCs as an extension of existing online learning approach, but one that has generated “significant interest from higher-education institutions and venture capitalists that see a business opportunity to be exploited” that offer scalability and new business models of open education, enabling the disaggregation “of teaching from assessment and accreditation for differential pricing and pursuit of marketing activities.” They embrace the theory of disruptive innovation (Bower & Christensen, 1995) to explain why some innovations can disrupt existing markets at the expense of incumbent players and suggest that current UK policy through a radical agenda allows “new, for-profit providers to enter the higher education market.”

Read More: TruthOut

Elizabeth Warren’s Student Loan Fairness Act goes to vote

Huffington Post, July 9, 2013– Elizabeth Warren’s proposal, presented in May, would offer the same interest rate on federal Stafford loans as the one that banks receive from the Federal Reserve. Under her plan, the rate on government-issued student loans would fall from 6.8 percent to 0.75 percent, saving students thousands over the life of their loans.”

“The proposal in Congress to extend current rates does not do enough to help students with mounting debt,” the professors’ letter reads. “Congress should address this urgent problem by passing Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s bill to let students borrow money at the same low rate as banks.”

More than 1,000 college professors from 568 higher education institutions around the country have signed a letter calling on Congress to pass legislation authored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) that would dramatically lower interest rates on federal student loans.

Student Debt Crisis Team, July 9, 2013– The U.S. Senate is finally expected to vote tomorrow on whether to keep interest rates low on students loans.  

Because they failed to reach a deal by the July 1st deadline, rates have doubled from 3.4 to 6.8 percent. Unless reversed, this means the average student will owe an extra $1,000 per year of their loan, affecting nearly 7 million borrowers.   

In light of soaring education costs and a tough economy for recent graduates, now more than ever is the time to keep college affordable.
  

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Rob, Natalia, Kyle, Aaron & The 
Student Debt Crisis Team
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Four More Years

Four More Years

Libby A. Nelson

(Inside Higher ed, November 7, 2012) President Obama, who won re-election Tuesday night, has already hinted how he might deal with higher education in a second term. The question now is how much of that agenda he will be able to accomplish in the next four years, given the budget crises he will face and the expectation that Republicans in Congress will continue to oppose his priorities.

The president’s victory means that colleges can expect the White House to continue to stand up for federal financial aid, as well as for federal research money, in the likely fierce budget battles in the coming months. But the depth of the financial issues the country faces means that federal dollars are likely to be limited, and the president’s support is more likely to halt deep spending cuts than it is to find new money for higher education programs.

It also suggests the continuation of a regulatory agenda that many colleges, especially for-profits, found to be onerous or at least overreaching.

In the near term, a second Obama administration means that the status quo will continue. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has already said he plans to stay for the president’s second term. Although the “gainful employment” regulation, which seeks to rein in for-profit colleges by denying federal aid to those whose students cannot earn enough to pay back their loans, was thrown out in court in July, the department has signaled it intends to take another stab at implementing the regulations, which the court supported in principle. The department will also go forward with new federal rules making income-based student loan repayment more generous, published Thursday but not yet in effect.

In the short term, “I think it’s very likely that the Education Department will continue to use its regulatory authority to advance federal education policy,” said Terry Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the American Council on Education, after several networks called the race for the president late Tuesday night. Several new regulations are expected in the coming months, including new rules governing teacher preparation programs and a new round of negotiated rule-making dealing with fraud.

But the administration will also confront a fiscal crisis with serious implications for federal financial aid. The “fiscal cliff” — a combination of mandatory spending cuts and expiring tax breaks — arrives Jan. 2, and Congress must reach a long-term deficit deal to avert across-the-board cuts to defense and domestic discretionary spending. Whether the same lawmakers who were unable to do so a year ago might be more effective now is an open question. (See related article on the results of the Congressional election.)…

In other areas, Obama’s victory means current trends are likely to continue. The National Labor Relations Board is considering allowing greater unionization, both for graduate students and at private universities, and may grant it in the president’s second term, when he is able to appoint more members whose views align with his own. The Education Department will also consider its aggressive enforcement of Title IX and civil rights laws.

While the administration is likely to hold the line it has established on for-profit colleges, it’s unlikely that the next four years will see significant new regulations aimed at those colleges. Future regulation, if there is any, is likely to focus on colleges that get money from the GI Bill and other veterans’ benefits.

Read more: Inside Higher Ed

The birth of critical university studies

The Chronicle Review: Deconstructing Academe

By Jeffrey J. Williams

Over the past two decades in the United States, there has been a new wave of criticism of higher education. Much of it has condemned the rise of “academic capitalism” and the corporatization of the university; a substantial wing has focused on the deteriorating conditions of academic labor; and some of it has pointed out the problems of students and their escalating debt. A good deal of this new work comes from literary and cultural critics, although it also includes those from education, history, sociology, and labor studies. This wave constitutes what Heather Steffen, a graduate student in literary and cultural studies with whom I have worked at Carnegie Mellon University, and I think is an emerging field of “critical university studies.”

U of L watches closely as Grawemeyer Award winner’s book is challenged

Courier-Journal: U of L watches closely as Grawemeyer Award winner’s book is challenged

U of L announced last week that it was presenting the award to author Greg Mortenson, just days before the CBS news show aired a segment saying two of his books — “Three Cups of Tea” and “Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan” — contained inaccuracies and fabrications.

“The Grawemeyer Awards program has taken author Greg Mortenson at his word, as have millions of readers around the world. Given the impact of his work, we hope these early reports are unfounded but we will be closely watching this situation as it unfolds,” Allan Dittmer, executive director of U of L’s Grawemeyer Awards, said Monday in a statement.

Chancellor Zimpher Announces Steps to Strengthen Academics and Athletics at Binghamton University and Across the SUNY System

Chancellor Zimpher Announces Steps to Strengthen Academics and Athletics at Binghamton University and Across the SUNY System

New York City – Following the report of former Chief Judge Judith Kaye, State University of New York Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher today announced SUNY will take steps to strengthen the relationship between academics and athletics at Binghamton University and across the SUNY System.

“SUNY’s ongoing commitment to intercollegiate athletics is important and meaningful to the total student experience and the life of our campuses,” said Chancellor Zimpher. “Accordingly, we have taken proactive and deliberate steps to ensure that the academic integrity of the Binghamton campus and the system overall is maintained, while providing our student athletes the opportunity to compete at the highest levels.”

Those steps include ensuring that academics, the core of SUNY’s mission, are seen as the highest priority. To that end, the chancellor has asked SUNY Provost David K. Lavallee to lead the effort for System Administration.

Merging departments at U of Winnipeg postponed

Winnipeg Free Press: THE University of Winnipeg has postponed a controversial plan to amalgamate its philosophy, classics and religious studies departments.

Dean of arts David Fitzpatrick said he takes responsibility for misunderstandings and misconceptions that quickly developed on campus when he announced a plan in mid-November to merge the three into a new humanities department. Fitzpatrick said all three departments would remain as separate units, each chaired by a member of its department, at least for the current school year.

CA community colleges may offer bachelor’s degrees

Contra Costa Times: Community colleges may offer bachelor’s degrees

With tens of thousands being turned away from state universities, California lawmakers likely will consider granting community colleges the right to offer a limited number of bachelor’s degrees.
The shift, which has occurred in 17 other states in the past decade or so, would represent a major philosophical change in California, where the three state higher-education systems have clearly defined roles.

The Rise of the No-Show

The Chronicle: The Rise of the No-Show

At a conference I recently attended, a sizeable wave of paper presenters failed to attend. The papers were submitted back in February, but travel funds had since vanished and, in some cases, wages had been cut and the presenters could not afford to pay for the airfare/hotel out of their pockets. In the past, a no-show was the kiss of death toward future presentations, but I had the definite sense that most of the attendees felt genuine empathy toward the folks who were unable to attend.

If professors record their lectures and put them online, will students still come to class?

Inside Higher Ed: Fans and Fears of ‘Lecture Capture’

DENVER — If professors record their lectures and put them online, will students still come to class?

That question came up in two different sessions at the 2009 Educause Conference here on Friday. And in both cases, the panelists cited research indicating that students’ likelihood of skipping class has no correlation with whether a professor decides to capture her lecture and post it the Web.

Attendance is much more contingent on whether the professor is an engaging lecturer, said Jennifer Stringer, director of educational technology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, at one of the sessions. “Well-attended lectures were well-watched; poorly attended lectures were not watched,” Stringer said, pointing to research she had conducted at Stanford. “If you’re bad, you’re bad. If you’re bad online, you’re bad in lectures, students don’t come.”

Whither art: vanity is killing social sciences and the humanities

Times Higher Education: Whither art: vanity is killing social sciences and the humanities

Conference hears that scholarly narcissism is leading disciplines to ruin. Matthew Reisz writes

“Academic narcissism” and a focus on self-promotion over scholarly substance are being blamed for bringing the humanities and the social sciences to the brink.

At a conference on the future of the disciplines held in Brussels last week, scholars warned that they were on a self-destructive course.

One of those to sound the alarm was Sasa Bozic, associate professor of sociology at the University of Zadar, Croatia, who accused his peers of displaying narcissistic traits.

UK: Students get marks just for turning up

Times Higher Education: Students get marks just for turning up

Universities accused of “bribing” undergraduates. Rebecca Attwood reports

Universities have been accused of “bribing” students with marks simply for attending seminars, a move critics say encourages them to adopt casual and cynical attitudes to academic work.

Senator Moves to Block Medical Ghostwriting

The New York Times: Senator Moves to Block Medical Ghostwriting

A growing body of evidence suggests that doctors at some of the nation’s top medical schools have been attaching their names and lending their reputations to scientific papers that were drafted by ghostwriters working for drug companies — articles that were carefully calibrated to help the manufacturers sell more products.

Germany: 100 professors suspected of Ph.D. bribes

AP: Germany: 100 professors suspected of Ph.D. bribes

BERLIN — German prosecutors are investigating about 100 professors across the country on suspicion they took bribes to help students get their doctoral degrees, authorities said Saturday.

The investigation is focused on the Institute for Scientific Consulting, based in Bergisch Gladbach, just east of Cologne, which allegedly acted as the intermediary between students and the professors, said Cologne prosecutor’s spokesman Guenther Feld.

Who Profits From For-Profit Journals?

Inside Higher Ed: Who Profits From For-Profit Journals?

WASHINGTON — It’s time to shake loose from commercial journal publishers. That was the message here Thursday at the meeting of the American Association of University Professors, which urged academics to seek nonprofit venues for their work.

The proliferation of nonprofit publishing options should be driving down submissions to corporate journals, according to Salvatore Engel-DiMauro, professor of geography at the State University of New York at New Paltz, who, along with Rea Devakos, information technology services coordinator at the University of Toronto library, discussed the “Corporate Appropriation of Academic Knowledge” at the annual meeting of university professors yesterday. But that’s not happening.

Captive knowledge: The funding for academic research has been taken over by business

Guardian: Captive Knowledge

May 12, 2009 By George Monbiot

The funding for academic research has been taken over by business

Why is the Medical Research Council run by an arms manufacturer? Why is the Natural Environment Research Council run by the head of a construction company? Why is the chairman of a real estate firm in charge of higher education funding for England?

Because our universities are being turned by the government into corporate research departments. No longer may they pursue knowledge for its own sake: now the highest ambition to which they must aspire is finding better ways to make money.