Labor Leadership in 2008

For those of you interested in labor's position on politics, there is an interesting NYT piece on where the AFL-CIO and Change to Win federations are in terms of endorsing candidates. I found this link at the blog, Standing with Labor and there is a solid analysis of the situation there. Basically, it breaks down to: 1) Unions don't want to jump on the bandwagon too soon so that they end up endorsing a candidate that has no chance of winning, but 2) if unions want to have the power (and do, in fact, have the power that they already claim), then they need to be able to push for their candidate. Picking someone who will win anyway is like telling the DLC-corporate Democrats, "Go ahead, you make your pick, then we will go along with that and beg for the table scraps from your candidate."

I have no doubt that Edwards is far better on labor issues than Clinton (who will inevitably be the candidate ordained by the New York AFL-CIO and UFT—and, therefore, AFT) and I don't know enough about Obama's record to know about his labor credentials to compare to Edwards. But, what I do know that Edwards has worked his ass off for the nomination of labor and, if they withhold it for the eventual 'winner', unions will be seen for a generation of Democratic candidates as 'fair-weather friends' and will have no influence at all. I can get behind an endorsement of someone I prefer less than my ideal candidate; but I can't get behind wishy-washy-we-don't-want-to-rock-to-many-boats political endorsements that mean more politics-as-horserace crap.

If unions want to reshape the political landscape and pass things like EFCA, then we have to take the leadership, and the attendant risks of leadership, to do it. If they want to be relegated to whining about candidates that never listen, then I don't want to hear it anymore. And, as Jordan point outs, with Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire front-loaded, unions could really be a "king (or queen) maker"; it's up to union members and (to a much to-great extent) leaders to decide.

Tenure Good?

An article in today's Inside Higher Ed reports on a situation at Northeastern University in Boston in which faculty members without "proper" accreditation were released so that the university could higher more tenure and tenure-track faculty members. The article notes that many of these lecturers and adjuncts have had decades of experience teaching at Northeastern and that Northeastern has often focused on "experiential learning" programs such as coops and gaining hands-on experience.

This situation is troubling to me on several levels, but there are two that stand out predominantly for me. The first concerns the role of a university. If the role of the university is to teach students, then I think that the practice of teaching is often overlooked as an important facet of the educational experience. I don't care how much expertise a person has, if they are unable to get up in front of a group of students and explain it in such a way that it makes students think in ways that they have not thought before, gives them skills that they can use in their chosen profession or give them the background kinds of knowledge that they need to go investigate the world themselves, then an educational institution has failed its mission. I don't believe that there is any reason why someone with an advanced degree can do this particular task any better than someone without an advanced degree. And, certainly for many professional programs, it is vitally important that there are teachers who have experience in the profession that students are being trained for. I have talked to people who are getting degrees/have gotten degrees in social work, public policy and public health who have never taken a class or gained an intimate knowledge of the practical problems that will be faced in a profession. While nothing can prepare someone comparably to gaining experience on the job, it is important that students know what kinds of issues they are likely to face in any given chosen profession and practical strategies for dealing with the situations that do arise.

This is not to say that advanced degrees don't offer something. I will not spend the better part of six years of my life attempting to obtain something that I don't think is worthwhile. But, obtaining Ph.D.s are a good way to become an expert in a certain area, which is vitally important. Maybe if our president had listened to the historians, military strategists, cultural anthropologists with highly specialized knowledge about specific aspects of war, we might not be in the quagmire that we are in. On the other hand, most professional jobs and more and more non-professional careers require that someone have broad-based knowledge about different aspects and how to deal with the practical uncertainties, divisions, memo-writing, agenda-making that make up the day-to-day tasks of jobs.

The second part that concerns me is the effort to make tenure the gold-standard for all higher-ed employment. While the AAUP has been defending tenure and the AFT has been pushing FACE legislation, there are other considerations to having a full-time academy than tenure. Protecting the kind of people who have been working at Northeastern for decades and the professionals who take a side job teaching college students because they want to have an impact on their profession need to be protected as well. To receive a notice that after decades of service, you are no longer welcome, is a disgrace and huge slap in the face. And while the representative from the AAUP quoted in the article claims that this is not the best way to handle these situations, on paper, the "long-term" outcome (more tenured and tenure-track professors as a proportion to the total of academics hired) is exactly what the AAUP and FACE legislation would end up creating.

While the goals and aims of both the AAUP and the AFT are solid, the devil is, as always, in the details. Without specific mention of situations such as these in policies and programs advocated by strong organizations, I am afraid that will be more examples such as this; or, even worse, universities will intentionally fire these lecturers to make a show and say "our hands are tied by the policies of the AAUP/AFT/[insert organization here] put in place — go blame them for losing your job." I don't think that will be good for anyone, but as long as the conversation remains solely and explicitly about tenure, I fear that this going to be the result of these policies.

The Dismal State of Higher Ed

This week in the Huffington Post, Barbara Ehrenreich writes about the lack of value of a college degree. Yes, I know, this is the same Barabara Ehrenreich of Nickel and Dimed and who helped found (with SEIU) United Professionals, a quasi-union in order to help out white collar workers who have been downsized or can't find jobs. Unfortunately, while she talks about college grads in her "manifesto", she apparently believes that Higher Education is "a scam."

Chiding MIT for releasing the Dean of Admissions, Ehrenreich writes:

Can you be fired for doing a great job, year after year, and in fact becoming nationally known for your insight and performance? Yes, as in the case of Marilee Jones, who was the dean of admissions at MIT until her dismissal last week, when it was discovered that she had lied about her academic credentials 28 years ago.

And, the great insight learned from this action is that, "But in the last three decades the percentage of jobs requiring at least some college has doubled, which means that employers are going along with the college racket." She also goes on to say that she believes that most employers want college-educated students for one of two reasons: 1) Because they know how to conform or 2) they are in debt up to their ears and, therefore, become subservient employees unwilling to risk being unemployed.

What is even more depressing is the comments after the article. These are people who read the Huffington Post who are vehemently against colleges and believe them to be a racket as well. One notable post reads:

Nice post. 'Bout time.

My experience with Ivy League is that if you actually used your mind, i.e. challenged the tenured professor and the carefully crafted conclusions (history) then you would receive a grade reduction; regardless of how well argued your case.

Indoctrination.
How NeoCon.

I don't care if we launch Free Exchange on Campus, or FACE, or any number of other initiatives. The true NeoCons have done such a good job destroying the American academy with an "employment focused" and "market based" attitude with the complicity of the current American academics who refuse to enter into "political" discussions because it might "taint" their research. If this is what readers of the Huffington Post believe, then we are doomed.

I would also guess that most of them don't know that more and more of our teaching is being done by contingent labor. Employees who can be hired and fired at will, who keep their office hours in their cars, and can't take the time to remember their students' names because they have a thousand of them. Until we are successful at getting the Ehrenreichs and Huffinton Post readers of the world to understand where the American academy has changed, then we are going to be woefully unsuccessful in front of our own legislators.

Prioritizing Education from the Ground Up

In my quest to become an informed blogger in this new endeavor, I have been trying to read lots of blogs. Mostly a few articles from each and then move on... Except for the few blogs that inspired me to begin blogging myself (see Dave's, Wobblie's and DR's) I have found a few interesting posts, but nothing that really shook me. But then, I found the Education Policy Blog which looks fascinating.

These are people who believe that we should be "examining education from a social foundations perspective." It is really amazing. Among other posts on this blog are a five-part series titled Community Organizing and Urban Education and a summary of the AFT's report on the deteriorating conditions of schools in the United States (the summary can be found on the Education Policy Blog and also on teacher ken's DailyKos Diary. This looks like an amazing collection of people who are really commited to the endeavor of teaching from kindergarten through graduate degrees.

It brings up an interesting question for me as I have worked on various projects in the AFT-Michigan: how can we work together in this country to build an education system that is just and fair? It seems to me like it is always difficult to answer the working together part for me. For some reason higher education is often pitted against K-12 education ("More money for them is less money for you").

I think that the answer can come in focusing on the students. K-12 students become our students in higher education (not all, but many). I believe that any differences can be hammered out if we all agree to work from a common context and I believe that this frame gives us a common context that we can all commit to. It is obviously something that needs a lot more thought, and thinking through how to get groups to work together is more than a simple framing of the subject, but I believe that this can be a way to begin that conversation. If there is anyone out there interested in commenting on what they see as a way to possibly get this to work, please comment!