The alarming stories from adjunct faculty, who now comprise a majority of higher-education teachers nationally, share troubling commonalities. The frustrations are financial, personal, and professional. In decades past, most adjunct faculty worked full-time outside of academe and taught an occasional course based on a particular expertise or…

Inside every airline magazine is an ad in which Chester L. Karrass insists, "You don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate." This suggests that the "art" of negotiation is more important than the substance of any issue under consideration. When it's time to negotiate at the author's college, the faculty union's "professional…

Western Governors University was conceptualized in 1995 at a meeting of the Western Governors Association, and founded soon after in an effort to increase degree production in higher education at a lower cost. It has expanded significantly over the past few years, driven both by increased demand for online education and by drastic state budget…

The ideal of community engagement suggests that both a student's career and his college's mission are (or ought to be) inextricable from the community in which they are embedded. That students, faculty, and academic institutions should serve community purposes, actively engage in community affairs, and network themselves in real and virtual…

Libraries are an interesting instance of the radical transformations that higher education is experiencing. The neoliberal turn that has led to the commodification of what scholars do--teach and create knowledge--has had a profound effect on the academic library. But the political economy of the transformed library is invisible to many if not most…

California's public higher education system has for a long time been lauded as one of the finest in the world. But for the last several decades, budget cuts and privatization have resulted in the steady erosion of this system, as well as K-12 education in the state and other public sector services. It was told that privatization and choice--in the…

Celebrating its 350th anniversary as a scholarly association devoted to scientific pursuits, the Royal Society (UK), in March 2010, published "The Scientific Century: Securing Our Future Prosperity." In its report, the Royal Society argues against both the notion of withdrawing public investment from its world-class universities and the haphazard,…

Interview with Charlene Teters, Native American artist and activist, focuses on her role as leader of the national campaign to eliminate Native American symbols as college sports mascots, and especially on her experience as a University of Illinois graduate student, where the Native American symbol and mascot continues to be used despite a faculty…

Colleges and universities considering adoption of new technologies should first consider why the initiative is occurring; whether it is based on careful discussion of educational goals and means; what social visions are built into and enacted by a given technology; how context of use will shape the way the technology is used; and how different…

Confusion over the role to be played by technology in college instruction is common, with administration sometimes in opposition to faculty over transformation of courses into courseware and the action of teaching into commercially viable property. The major proponents of such a transformation include vendors of network hardware, software, and…

Decisions to incorporate computers into public schools and universities, for administrative or classroom use, follow from the unquestioned assumption that computers are the latest expression of social progress. The paradox is that neither the computer industry nor educational policymakers understand the connections between the cultural forms of…

Attaining the goals that higher-education reformers target (making the academy more accessible, affordable, and effective) via technology is likely to require a significant overhaul of postsecondary institutions, including the use of time, resource allocation, roles of faculty/staff, and institutional mission. Closer examination of how technology…

Recent research on how college students learn and what constitutes an effective educational experience is reviewed, and implications for bringing about desired changes in the undergraduate experience are discussed. Topics examined include students' ability to reason with abstractions, development of moral values, extent to which the curriculum and…

Examines issues in introduction of an ebonics-based curriculum in public schools in response to the crisis in academic achievement of African American students. Outlines the cultural role of African American Vernacular English, concerns about learning levels of students not proficient in Standard English, and implications for supporting diversity…

The real challenge to higher education in America is coming to terms with the fragmented and contested terrain of learning resulting from profound social and cultural change. Teaching anything has become difficult in a culture that has devalued learning. Once the public acknowledges this, reforming the system will be seen in a new light. (MSE)