Thursday, January 6, 2011

Archive Article: Part-Time Faculty



Question: What is the effect of the growing employment of part-time faculty in the community college?

Answer: Faculty… “accept students as ‘customers,’ ‘workers,’ or ‘consumers’; they accept faculty as ‘consultants, sales people, account representatives, trouble-shooters’; they accept the continued reliance on and exploitation of part-time faculty; they accept education as job-training.”

“Such capitulation, such acceptance by faculty, means the end, in both the ideal and practice, of ‘democracy’s college.’ ”

Comment: The growing number of part-time faculty continues, not only in community colleges, but also in four-year colleges. It’s good for the bottom line but not much else. Faculty have lost control of their own destinies. Faculty have lost control of the ideals and goals of an education. We have capitulated to education as job training. And the trend seems unstoppable. When will we step up and say, “Education is more than a business”? RayS.

Title: Review of Community College Faculty: At Work in the New Economy. JS Levine, S Kalter and RL Wagner. Palgrave. 2006. Reviewed by Keith Kroll. Teaching English in the Two-Year College (May 2009), pp. 407-409.

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