Michigan is at war against research/teaching assistants

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There are times when, in the course of my reading, that an item comes along that I just cannot let go unaddressed.  This is just one such item.

Rick Snyder, Michigan’s governor, today signed into law a bill that outlaws attempts of teaching assistants at public universities to unionize.   Read that again…slowly.  It is now against the law for a research assistant, who is getting paid by the university, to attempt collective bargaining.

Let’s go side by side…the dumb side and the right side.  Dumb side first: the argument goes that graduate students cannot be recognized as employees, therefore have no right to unionize.  According to Michiganlawyerblog:

The state Public Employment Relations Act, or PERA, defines a public employee as someone who holds a position by employment or appointment in state government, in the government of a political subdivision in the state, in a public school or in any other branch of public service

I was a graduate student in a public school.  I received money from the school to teach Intro Comp.  I was, in some sense, an employee.  I did not receive benefits (like that was going to happen), but I was remunerated for my services.

Michiganlawyerblog goes on to say:

House Bill 4246, sponsored by state Rep. Al Pscholka, R-Stevensville, adds an exception to PERA by clarifying that the position of graduate student research assistant at universities does not fit the definition of a public employee because they primarily are in school to learn from their professors and earn advanced degrees rather than to earn a wage, according to the governor’s office. However, graduate student teaching assistants are considered employees, and are unionized at the U of M.

Because they are not considered public employees, graduate research assistants are not entitled to union representation or collective bargaining rights. (emphasis added)

That has to be one of the stupidest quotes I have ever read…students choose to read over eating or living in a shelter.

The counter side will be presented in U.S. District court (which is good because the state courts are bought, part and parcel, by the current Michigan ideology).

Final evil actor in this farce is the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a propagator of the ideology of oppression, which presents the law as a victory over enforced unionization.  Patrick Wright states:

People pursuing graduate degrees are clearly students, not government employees. Our clients look forward to getting back to their studies and research, free from the looming threat of forced unionization.

Dink.

The Center is providing legal counsel for Melinda Day, a graduate researcher finishing a dissertation in Life Sciences.

Related articles

• Mich. bill to block grad student unions advances (sfgate.com)
• University of Michigan graduate students cry foul during unionization campaign (talkingunion.wordpress.com)

The MLA has absolutely no idea of the state of the English workplace

I look, each year, to the MLA conference with a sense of expectation saturated with dread…perhaps this will be the year, like a forelorn Cubs fan, that the MLA will pull their collective head our of their collective (insert orifice of choice) and address a matter that actually, well, matters.

This year, I was not disappointed.  That is, the MLA, once again, disappointed.

The e-mail note popped into my box, and I hurriedly clicked the link Council Statement on Student Debt.

Here is what I found:

Public attention has been directed recently to the educational debt students accumulate in the course of undergraduate, as well as graduate, study. A major contributing factor has been the increasing portion of educational costs students must bear in the form of loans. To reduce debt burdens in the future, we call on Congress, state legislatures, and institutions of higher education to calibrate educational costs and student aid in ways that will keep student debt within strict limits. We also call on them to hold in check tuition increases, which often far outpace inflation, and to ensure that degree programs allow for timely completion.

I am going to take a few minutes to parse this statement down a bit.  To begin, why begin in such an apologetic manner… “public opinion” thinks debts are too high, so we are going to issue a strongly worded statement.  OR, perhaps they could have stated what the MLA thinks–student dept is crippling our workforce, and it shall not be tolerated! (Does the keyboard at the MLA Executive Council even have an exclamation mark?)

So, after noting that the issue is of public notice (or explaining why they are finally issuing a statement–due to the embarrassing nature of public pressure, we will issue a strongly worded statement), we get a causal argument as to what the public has noted: students take out loans that are really high–sorry, they don’t say that.  They say a major factor is that students cover more of their educational costs through loans.  If this were a freshman essay, I would critique and point out that their argument has not been properly delineated.    How does the proposition that students use loans to cover more of their expenses show/demonstrate anything?  What are we talking about here?  Where is the thesis?

The thesis lies in the third sentence, buried in the phrase “debt burdens.”  Oh, the debt, incurred by students to cover their educational costs (nothing has been stated/shown that these costs have risen in a disproportionate manner than earlier generations, inflation, other standards of measure–any of which would show that it is a new and unique burden) burdens the students in some undefined way.

So, with an inferred thesis about student debt, they offer a “solution”: tell the government to “calibrate” costs with educational institutions.  Really?  Their solution is to ask the government (both state and federal) to balance a budget?  And they ask institutions to freeze or reduce tuition?  Why not ask for a pony for Christmas while they are at it?

As a “statement,” I give the MLA Executive Council a failing grade.  They should know, and write, better.

Where are the comments/observations on the saturated job markets due, in no small part, to graduate programs producing a glut of graduates–to such an extent that the numbers far outpace the available positions something like 10:1?  Where are the calls for the old guard, which were supposed to retire en masse in the 1990′s, to retire and open up positions?  Where are the calls for better working conditions for all of the adjuncts that, through their low-wage, high-work, institutionally-important, low-level classes keep programs/institutions afloat?

Taking on Peer-reviewed Journals

InsideHigherEd.com posted an article calling for a peer-reviewed journal App-Killer.  Here is my reply.

Tenure. Because of tenure, professors need easily recognizable (by the committee) “achievements” in order to check the proper box on the tenure review form. Peer-reviewed journals, along with monographs, are the easiest and most widely used.

Tenure, for academics, equals money/security/prestige. So, until another method of securing food and ego comes about, Peer-reviewed Journals are here to stay.

(I will save the discussion of whose opinion matters to another post–not everyone’s opinion should matter equally vs. there needs to be room to upset the paradigm)

What is needed is NOT a peer-review killing app, but an app that allows access through the pay-walls. Google Scholar, a nice tool, only provides a list of sources…the bulk of which rest comfortably behind the pay-wall. This is not a big deal for those with university pass-throughs, but if a mass-user revolution is to occur (like the example in astronomy above), then I say to you, “tear down those walls.”

(My god, I quoted Reagan…)

Related articles

• Do we need an alternative to peer-reviewed journals? (arstechnica.com)
• Killing Peer Review (downes.ca)

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is-law-school-a-losing-game: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance

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If you are feeling like the Humanities are the only losing degree, think again.  Legalites will now join us adjuncts in a moment of silence, in which our crushing dept will slowly crush our educated minds into a numb, pasty pudding.

is-law-school-a-losing-game: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance.

News: Do Caps Help Adjuncts? – Inside Higher Ed

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Perhaps one of the most cogent comments on the state of the adjunct job market came from a response to IHE.com’s article News: Do Caps Help Adjuncts? – Inside Higher Ed.

And I quote:

To tell adjuncts you’re looking out for their futures by limiting their present incomes is the equivalent of hitting them on the head with hammers while purring, Yes, but it will feel so good when it stops.

Getting not-hired at the University of Phoenix

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A recent post by Joshua Kim, blogger at InsideHigherEd.com’s “Technology and Learning” section, noted that he had not been allowed to progress through the University of Phoenix’s online instructor course.  In short, he was told he was not UofP material.  I think he should wear that as a badge of honor–you have a soul, dear sir, and we don’t want that sort around here…

Here is what I said:

The UofP is not interested in academics.  They are a business and business succeeds on conformity, of following orders, of passing the item on down the line.  Or at least that is one version of the business model, which is the one promulgated by the UofP.

Don’t feel poorly about not being let it–it is not a club you would much care for.  They don’t like free-thinking, will over-monitor your class, and, over time, suck your free-thinking spirit from you (watchOffice Space for some pop-reference insight).

The students at the UofP, at least the older ones (and there are a lot of non-trads) know the system, probably better than you, and a class can often twist into a management of policy (did I log in enough, did I write enough, my group didn’t do any of the work…).

Consider it a dodged bullet.

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What I am reading now: Crooked Timber

I have been talking some time off of late, so in order to get back into the flow of free expression (I express, for free), I will let you know what I am reading:

• Crooked Timber blog:  a nerdy blog that talks with ease about Goethe, Bill Waterrson (wrote Calvin and Hobbes), and the arcane schools of philosophy…all within the same post.    The latest post read: as a writer, on know how to stop or move on or just simply give up…

I have wondered, of late, whether I should just give up the anonymous blogging and dedicate myself to something a little more fiscally rewarding…  You are reading my answer.

“Out of the Crooked Timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made”

…that is one hell of a blog tag line.

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What the F@#$

The following was posted to Inside Higher Ed’s piece on What Direction for Rhet-Comp?

It is not about agency (unless we are talking about adjuncts) nor it is about justifying a comp and rhet classroom with arcane literary theory.  It is, or should be, about teaching writing and how to read (the composition and rhetoric aspect that seems to be lost in the whole “presentation” here).

It is funny that the MLA (with its very codified notions of Order, Duty and Tradition) would discuss the role of Comp & Rhet…but then again, by relegating the discussion to how best introduce Freshmen to writing, literature, etc. already tips their bias.  C&R exist, for many departments, to maintain relevancy of the English department in the broader campus.  C&R allows an English department bigger budgets, slots for graduate TA’s and an excuse to keep overflow adjuncts tethered (kind of a carrot/stick thing for graduate students and future prof want-to-be’s).

But I digress.  C&R are the untouchables of the humanities, while at the same time being the selling point to the business college (the English department will teach ALL of the majors how to write/think/succeed…) and all of the other “hard” sciences.  It comes off as though the admin sells its artists out as weekend house-painters just to make the rent, all the while keeping them from the view of polite folk.

Again I digress.  I’m pissed.  Proposition: assemble all of the chairs and deans of English into one room and don’t allow them to leave until they work out what the top five skills the department should instill in every student.  When writing and clear communication comes out among the top two, then put the budget where the priorities are–hire the C&R instructors onto the tenure track or, god forbid, make the lit folks teach writing (after they themselves bone up on the writing scholarship).

When this happens, wake me up.  Until then, I will, in the status quo, fume.

Excuse me while I impale myself

First, go to the InsideHigherEd article about the future state of English teaching and read through.  I will wait.

Where does one start?

With an “historic low” in the numbers (see point one below), what would the rational, measured, prudent choice of action be? Why stay the course, of course.

Point by point:

• In the findings bulleted list, the first notes that the listed numbers of open, tenure-track positions tracks along with the number of actual positions (about 55-65%) in the departments. This point, then, acknowledges that the adjunct (which I think is actually quiet higher) open positions are not tracked by the MLA. Why not? This speaks volumes to the status, rank, worth, etc. of the common adjunct in the humanities.
• New doctorate numbers have not decreased. More people for less positions. Great.
• Comp and Rhetoric–not why most people go into English studies–lead the open positions–because other fields lament that their students can’t write and they themselves can’t be bothered to teach them…a position English departments, hard up to ratchet up cache, have encouraged for years in a desperate attempt at relevancy.
• Only at 70% of adjunctness is a department deemed at a tipping point…Only when 1 in 4 profs have benefits, job security and prestige is there a problem. I think the real problem is with that number.
• Post-doc positions in a field where one office doesn’t speak to its neighbor because, well, most are running scared (see above bullet points) and, let’s be honest, English doesn’t, on the whole, attract the most extroverted group.
• Will one job-seeking strategy work? For one, maybe, but with newly minted, eager future-adjuncts graduating to add to the existing pool, no strategy will suffice.
• Will departments cut back incoming students (future jobless souls)? No, that would lessen the importance of the field among the colleges (said by a graduate student, though).

English departments are not heeding the counsel of their own subject. Dulce est decorum est.