How the University Works
by Marc Bousquet · first published 2008
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As much as we think we know about the modern university, very little has been said about what it's like to work there. Instead of the high-wage, high-profit world of “knowledge work,” most campus employees - including the vast majority of faculty - really work in the low-wage, low-profit sphere of the service economy. Tenure-track positions are at an all-time low, with adjuncts and graduate students teaching the majority of courses. This super-exploited corps of disposable workers commonly earn fewer than $16,000 annually, without benefits, teaching as many as eight classes per year. Even unde
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…looked much into universities, but I'd check the similarities between deans and the managerial class (as well as other corporate bureaucracies, like marketing departments). Maybe books like Bousquet's _How the University Works_. (http://www.amazon.com/How-University-Works-Education-Low-Wag...) Tech could be used to remove layers of management and empower the actual workers (as you mentioned you'd expect in 1960), or deskill…
on “The Troubling Dean-to-Professor Ratio” ↗Author's Suggested readings: How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation, by Marc Bousquet (New York University Press, 2008); Generation Debt: Why Now Is a Terrible Time to Be Young, by Anya Kamenetz (Riverhead Books, 2006); Academic…
on “Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go” ↗