generation limbo: 20-somethings today, debt, unemployment, the questionable value of a college education

I'm not picking on anyone, I'm just reminding you that you get paid to do something that doesn't have a completely measurable economic value, so maybe don't worry about being underpaid cause of the tenure system

let's talk about your mom's measurable economic value, then

her economic value is infinite she produced the smartest human being in history via 'labor'

http://www.esquire.com/features/young-people-in-the-recession-0412#ixzz1qWgDYvmb

i think thats a really good article

he really economizes those 3 pages! these things are usually filled w/ anecdotal examples but he just plows through 20 subjects

haha totally! its obv not super nuanced but it hits really hard, its unrelenting and i think the tone is really right

Critics may argue that teaching faculty members require long hours for preparation, grading and advising. Therefore they would have us believe that despite teaching only 12 to 15 hours a week, their workloads do approximate those of other upper-middle-class professionals. While time outside of class can vary substantially by discipline and by the academic cycle (for instance, more papers and tests to grade at the end of a semester), the notion that faculty in teaching institutions work a 40-hour week is a myth.

Citation?

Teaching three courses last semester probably amounted to a 60-h week.

Teaching one course this semester, on the other hand, leads me to a second occupation posting to message boards.

The esquire article is ok but I'm very politically suspicious of the anti-boomer narrative circulating right now (even though that article at least hedges on whether it's actually their fault).

why are you suspicious?

it all interlocks a little too conveniently with the conservative agenda (the 60s represent moral bankruptcy, too much freedom is bad, "entitlement spending" is the cause of all our problems, etc.)

huh?

it also conveniently absolves things like trade policy and financial deregulation of any contribution they've made to our economic decline

"boomer" is practically code for "big government liberal"

waht

Democrats may not be actively hostile to the interests of young voters, but they are too scared and weak to speak up for them. So when the Boomers and swing voters scream for fiscal discipline and the hard decisions have to be made, youth is collateral damage. Medicare and Social Security were mostly untouched in Obama's 2012 budget. But to show he was really serious about belt tightening, relatively cheap programs that help young people like the Adolescent Family Life Program and the Career Pathways Innovation Fund were killed.

Yeah, half of that piece seems to be attacking Republican tax cuts.

Our classes have swollen to such an extent that my university is experimenting with what it calls "graders": adjuncts who do the work of TA's but aren't considered such because they have experience dealing with student complaints and subbing for the prof. I'm done it for two years. On the one hand it's real easy money: adjunct pay without worrying about going to class every day (you show up when it's time to collect an essay or grade blog posts); on the other, I worry that this is the future of adjuncting: don't give an adjunct a full class but keep him as an appendage.

wait, so these aren't just students doing it?

lots of full-time students get a stipend for grading, but I've never heard of paying non-students to do this; weird

The argument is: experienced adjuncts don't need supervision from the "primary instructor" and can handle students. I don't get a grade or evaluated for my performance either.

I have two classes like this now but thankfully I've got a third that's 100% my own.

I've read about some schools outsourcing grading to India!

(Also, I am reminded again of the benefits of working in Saskatchewan.)

But you're giving the full stipend of an adjunct?

"given"

It's not a stipend -- it's a salary.

Grad student TAs get stipends.

"boomer" is practically code for "big government liberal"

this is really the only popular thing ive seen really explicitly making the case about generational conflict and thats... not at all the way i read the piece

OK, cool. "Adjunct" still = contract instructor hired on a per-course basis, right? What I would call a "sessional"?

xpost to Alfred

like idk if this is a 'thing' that your reacting to in general or what but that seems like a wildly off reaction to the point this article is making

lol marking is like the only part of my TA duties that i enjoy, i wish i could get money for only doing that

this is really the only popular thing ive seen really explicitly making the case about generational conflict and thats... not at all the way i read the piece

At least up here, older voters vote way further to the right than young voters (and unfortunately, also vote in far greater numbers).

xpost to Lamp: seriously? I fucking hate marking with all my heart. It's the only part of teaching that I hate.

OK, cool. "Adjunct" still = contract instructor hired on a per-course basis, right? What I would call a "sessional"?

exactly! It still sucks because we're dependent on (a) available funds (b) enrollment. I'm lucky that I have a real university full time job. I've got friends who drive 30 miles daily from campus to campus to teach.

I would say if I do have a critique of the boomer narrative it's that I think that a lot of the big processes began w/ the generation before them. boomers were still pretty young when reagan came to power.

http://chronicle.com/article/Should-Working-Class-People/131283/

Briallen Hopper is a lecturer in the English department at Yale University and blogs for the Huffington Post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/briallen-hopper. Johanna Hopper works full time at a bakery and blogs at joeylth.blogspot.com.

all roads lead to blogging

lol

didn't realize this has already been posted on grad school thread

Still fixating on that Post article, even the advisor at the Centre for Teaching and Learning here estimates that for a new course, you need 3-5h of prep time for every hour of lecture time, which is consistent with my experience. So I want to know why the author is so sure it's unlikely that someone would spend 1h prepping AND marking for every hour of lecture time. Are they just assuming that tenured faculty are teaching stuff they've taught many times before? In that case, I could maybe see where they're coming from.

yeah I think it was a critique of long-term tenured faculty

no it was a critique of tenured faculty at TEACHING universities, huge distinction

Those faculty members still need to publish though, right? Or are there bachelor's degree-granting institutions where there are tenured faculty positions that strictly involve teaching, like the European 'lecturer' position?

At the last place where I taught, one of the reasons the union went on strike was that the uni was trying to bring in positions like that.

no, faculty at teaching institutions (in the USA) needn't publish to get tenure or even to get promoted to full. zero pubs will get you full.

That's the case e.g. at most every regional state uni, like the Cal States or your "Western X"s

Well, reappointment and promotion at my UG institution (a SLAC) was contingent on faculty's performance in teaching, scholarship/art, and service to the institution.

I think it's just an article by a guy who has no idea how much work college faculty do even at non-R1-type institutions, and thus just cranky.

Cal State tt faculty teach 3-3-3 loads fwiw (on quarters)

So I guess there's a difference depending on what kind of teaching-oriented position you're in. selfxp

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/esquire-magazine-writer-wanted-to-help-convert-class-war-into-generational-war-no-skills-required-pays-top-dollar