Meritocracy is a bourgeoisie illusion. In this world, it is not about
what you know but who you blow.
Academia stifles thinking, especially engineering academia - students
enter as open and curious high school grads and leave as closed
conservatives.
BTW, I hate to to dispute an article of faith among the progressives
BUT Walmart ain't that bad *compared to other minimum wage employers*,
at least according to my 20 year old daughter. She said her friends who
worked at Walmart had better pay and incentives than she did while she
was working as a cashier in a food store.
Here's a question - do adjuncts get paid minimum wage? BTW, has anyone
recently done the calculations comparing the Federal poverty level and
the Federal minimum wage. The last time I checked, if we took a
hypothetical household of 4, where one adult was working full time, 40
hours a week and no vacations, and the other was working part-time,
because of child rearing responsibilities (a totally plausible
scenario), at minimum wage, the income of the household would be below
the Federal poverty figure.
Is it time, as a friend of mine claims to start storing, "beans, bullets
and bullion."?
CHAD
Carrol Cox wrote:
The "adjunct problem" is just one manifestation of the structure/dynamic
of the university system as a whole.
Merit systems suck! Positions should be filled by putting all the
applications in a basket, throwing themn out a second-story window, and
have a six-year old try to catch them as they fall. The first one he
catches has a tenured appointment as of that moment, with guraranteed
raises and promotions on a seinority system.
Books published only after receiving approval from 2/3s of the
department.
Articles must be first read to the department before being submitted to
journals. One article every four years AT MOST. There's too damn much
stuff being published for anyone to get any good out of it.
Pressure for doing research to come from social pressure from
colleagues. Make life a little miserable for the laggards but promote
them anyhow.
That would be just a start.
We're not going to do it, but I think it offers a sueful lens through
which to examine what we are doing.
Carrol
Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
agree with all the follow-up comments on this.
i would just add to michael's point that it's even worse when you're
talking about one course, or even two courses. people will move for
one-year full-time positions, but not for a course.
i'm of two minds about the departmental community part. on the one
hand, you don't want to feel like you're not a "real" member of the
department; on the other, you're not, and it seems a bit much to
expect that kind of participation out of adjuncts who aren't given a
meaningful stake in the proceedings.
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