Ivory Tower Inc.

[marmar]

from In These Times:



Ivory Tower Inc.
By Jon Whiten



For those of us who have flirted with a life in academia, Marc Bousquet’s How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation (NYU Press, January 2008) may help explain why so many of us dumped the love affair before it ever began.

In his trenchant critique, Bousquet, an associate professor of English at Santa Clara University and a major figure in the academic labor movement, sheds light on the deteriorating conditions of ivory-tower life and the American university system.

The statistics he collects are alarming. For example, between 1975 and 1995, while undergraduate admissions expanded greatly, the ranks of full-time faculty dwindled by 10 percent. During the same period, nearly 40 percent more graduate-student employees hit the scene. As a result, three out of four college teachers today lack the security of tenure. One generation ago, this ratio was reversed, Bousquet notes.

In competitive fields, as few as one in three Ph.D. holders can expect to eventually find tenure-track employment, writes Bousquet. And when they do, it’s often after longer and longer periods of low-wage, non-tenurable work.

In other words, more and more doctorate holders teach one class at a time wherever they can, for meager pay and no benefits. ......(more)

The complete piece is at; http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3802/ivory_tower_inc/