Equality for Contingent Faculty: Overcoming the Two-Tier System has just been published.
Keith Hoeller
Alex Kudera says, in reviewing the book, “There’s something weird and creepy about a democracy that insists upon universal ‘access’ to higher education and then denies a majority of its college instructors a professional wage, or even a living wage, all the while driving each successive group of graduates into a greater amount of average debt. This essay collection sheds light on how the two-tier system of tenure-track and non-TT faculty contributes to these gross inequities.”
The author of Reclaiming the Ivory Tower, Joe Berry, says, “This book is a major contribution to the effort to expose and combat one of higher education’s dirtiest little secrets: the fact that most post-secondary classes are now taught by contingent faculty without living wages, job security or academic freedom, or even health or retirement benefits. But this collection is not merely a bemoaning of a terrible reality and its awful consequences for teachers and students. It also is full of ideas for how to build a movement, inside and outside the academy, to change this. No informed reader will agree with everything presented, but everyone will learn new and important ideas. There is no substitute for contingent academic workers speaking for themselves, and in Equality for Contingent Faculty, they do so, and eloquently.”
Available from your local independent bookstore, or from Powell’s Books:
A review here and some of Keith’s commentary here.