Teaching Without Tenure

"Most chairs and deans... need support and guidance for orienting, supporting, and evaluating non-tenure-track faculty. Campuses could start by sharing this book." -- Connection

The definitive career guide for grad students, adjuncts, post-docs and anyone else eager to get tenure or turn their Ph.D. into their ideal job Each year tens of thousands of students will, after years of hard work and enormous amounts of money, earn their Ph.D. And each year only a small percentage of them will land a job that justifies and rewards their investment. For every comfortably tenured professor or well-paid former academic, there are countless underpaid and overworked adjuncts, and many more who simply give up in frustration. Those who do make it share an important asset that separates them from the pack: they have a plan. They understand exactly what they need to do to set themselves up for success. They know what really moves the needle in academic job searches, how to avoid the all-too-common mistakes that sink so many of their peers, and how to decide when to point their Ph.D. toward other, non-academic options. Karen Kelsky has made it her mission to help readers join the select few who get the most out of their Ph.D. As a former tenured professor and department head who oversaw numerous academic job searches, she knows from experience exactly what gets an academic applicant a job. And as the creator of the popular and widely respected advice site The Professor is In, she has helped countless Ph.D.’s turn themselves into stronger applicants and land their dream careers. Now, for the first time ever, Karen has poured all her best advice into a single handy guide that addresses the most important issues facing any Ph.D., including: -When, where, and what to publish -Writing a foolproof grant application -Cultivating references and crafting the perfect CV -Acing the job talk and campus interview -Avoiding the adjunct trap -Making the leap to nonacademic work, when the time is right The Professor Is In addresses all of these issues, and many more.

The growing use of full-time non-tenure-track faculty represents a controversial change in the pattern of staffing colleges and universities. Teaching without Tenure provides the first comprehensive examination of this important phenomenon. Examining the issue from the perspectives of both institutions and faculty members, Roger G. Baldwin and Jay L. Chronister offer a systematic look at who non-tenure-track faculty are, the roles they play in higher education, and the policies that control the terms and conditions of their employment. Teaching without Tenure utilizes findings from a national study of full-time non-tenure-track faculty, including survey data, policy analysis findings, and information gathered from site visits with faculty and administrators at a cross-section of four-year colleges and universities across the United States. This timely study emerges in an environment in which many constituents of higher education have begun to question the feasibility of retaining the academic tenure system in its present form. Baldwin and Chronister discuss the internal and external factors influencing an institution's decision to hire non-tenure-track faculty and make recommendations for policies and practices that can support the work and career development of faculty in these positions. Designed to assist faculty, academic leaders, and institutions, Teaching without Tenure examines developments challenging the status quo in the American academic profession and offers guidance as higher education moves into an uncertain future.

The professor and historian delivers a major critique of how political and financial attacks on the academy are undermining our system of higher education. Making a provocative foray into the public debates over higher education, acclaimed historian Ellen Schrecker argues that the American university is under attack from two fronts. On the one hand, outside pressure groups have staged massive challenges to academic freedom, beginning in the 1960s with attacks on faculty who opposed the Vietnam War, and resurfacing more recently with well-funded campaigns against Middle Eastern Studies scholars. Connecting these dots, Schrecker reveals a distinct pattern of efforts to undermine the legitimacy of any scholarly study that threatens the status quo. At the same time, Schrecker deftly chronicles the erosion of university budgets and the encroachment of private-sector influence into academic life. From the dwindling numbers of full-time faculty to the collapse of library budgets, The Lost Soul of Higher Education depicts a system increasingly beholden to corporate America and starved of the resources it needs to educate the new generation of citizens. A sharp riposte to the conservative critics of the academy by the leading historian of the McCarthy-era witch hunts, The Lost Soul of Higher Education, reveals a system in peril—and defends the vital role of higher education in our democracy.

An important challenge to what currently masquerades as conventional wisdom regarding the teaching of writing. There seems to be widespread agreement that—when it comes to the writing skills of college students—we are in the midst of a crisis. In Why They Can't Write, John Warner, who taught writing at the college level for two decades, argues that the problem isn't caused by a lack of rigor, or smartphones, or some generational character defect. Instead, he asserts, we're teaching writing wrong. Warner blames this on decades of educational reform rooted in standardization, assessments, and accountability. We have done no more, Warner argues, than conditioned students to perform "writing-related simulations," which pass temporary muster but do little to help students develop their writing abilities. This style of teaching has made students passive and disengaged. Worse yet, it hasn't prepared them for writing in the college classroom. Rather than making choices and thinking critically, as writers must, undergraduates simply follow the rules—such as the five-paragraph essay—designed to help them pass these high-stakes assessments. In Why They Can't Write, Warner has crafted both a diagnosis for what ails us and a blueprint for fixing a broken system. Combining current knowledge of what works in teaching and learning with the most enduring philosophies of classical education, this book challenges readers to develop the skills, attitudes, knowledge, and habits of mind of strong writers.

Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind is a collection of concrete tips, suggestions, and narratives on ways that non-parents can support parents, children, and caregivers in their communities, social movements, and collective processes. Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind focuses on issues affecting children and caregivers within the larger framework of social justice, mutual aid, and collective liberation. How do we create new, nonhierarchical structures of support and mutual aid, and include all ages in the struggle for social justice? There are many books on parenting, but few on being a good community member and a good ally to parents, caregivers, and children as we collectively build a strong all-ages culture of resistance. Any group of parents will tell you how hard their struggles are and how they are left out, but no book focuses on how allies can address issues of caretakers’ and children’s oppression. Many well-intentioned childless activists don’t interact with young people on a regular basis and don’t know how. Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind provides them with the resources and support to get started. Contributors include: The Bay Area Childcare Collective, Ramsey Beyer, Rozalinda Borcilă, Mariah Boone, Marianne Bullock, Lindsey Campbell, Briana Cavanaugh, CRAP! Collective, a de la maza pérez tamayo, Ingrid DeLeon, Clayton Dewey, David Gilbert, A.S. Givens, Jason Gonzales, Tiny (aka Lisa Gray-Garcia), Jessica Hoffman, Heather Jackson, Rahula Janowski, Sine Hwang Jensen, Agnes Johnson, Simon Knaphus, Victoria Law, London Pro-Feminist Men’s Group, Amariah Love, Oluko Lumumba, mama raccoon, Mamas of Color Rising/Young Women United, China Martens, Noemi Martinez, Kathleen McIntyre, Stacey Milbern, Jessica Mills, Tomas Moniz, Coleen Murphy, Maegan ‘la Mamita Mala’ Ortiz, Traci Picard, Amanda Rich, Fabiola Sandoval, Cynthia Ann Schemmer, Mikaela Shafer, Mustafa Shakur, Kate Shapiro, Jennifer Silverman, Harriet Moon Smith, Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie, Darran White Tilghman, Jessica Trimbath, Max Ventura, and Mari Villaluna.

The Uber-ization of the classroom and what it means for faculty. One of the most significant trends in American higher education over the last decade has been the shift in faculty employment from tenured to contingent. Now upwards of 75% of faculty jobs are non-tenure track; two decades ago that figure was 25%. One of the results of this shift—along with the related degradation of pay, benefits, and working conditions—has been a new push to unionize adjunct professors, spawning a national labor movement. Professors in the Gig Economy is the first book to address the causes, processes, and outcomes of these efforts. Kim Tolley brings together scholars of education, labor history, economics, religious studies, and law, all of whom have been involved with unionization at public and private colleges and universities. Their essays and case studies address the following questions: Why have colleges and universities come to rely so heavily on contingent faculty? How have federal and state laws influenced efforts to unionize? What happens after unionization—how has collective bargaining affected institutional policies, shared governance, and relations between part-time and full-time faculty? And finally, how have unionization efforts shaped the teaching and learning that happens on campus? Bringing substantial research and historical context to bear on the cost and benefit questions of contingent labor on campus, Professors in the Gig Economy will resonate with general readers, scholars, students, higher education professionals, and faculty interested in unionization. Contributors: A. J. Angulo, Timothy Reese Cain, Elizabeth K. Davenport, Marianne Delaporte, Tom DePaola, Kristen Edwards, Luke Elliott-Negri, Kim Geron, Lorenzo Giachetti, Shawn Gilmore, Adrianna Kezar, Joseph A. McCartin, Gretchen M. Reevy, Gregory M. Saltzman, Kim Tolley, Nicholas M. Wertsch

This book is a lively, passionate defence of contemporary work in the humanities, and, beyond that, of the university system that makes such work possible. The book's stark accounts of academic labour, and its proposals for reform of the tenure system, are novel, controversial, timely, and very necessary.