A friend in grad school once commented that she and I followed the Supreme Court the same way that normal people follow baseball. So yes, I’ve been mulling over the Janus v AFSCME case for months. Longer, in fact, if you count the version that didn’t get decided when Scalia died. I’ve been working in unionized public higher education since 2003. At all three community colleges, and in both states, representation fees were part of the order of the day. I’ve known faculty who swear that the union is the only thing standing between them and penury, and I’ve known faculty who wanted absolutely nothing to do with their union. Having also worked in a decidedly non-union setting -- DeVry -- I’ve seen the differences. But here I’ll focus instead on possible long-term fallout. Assuming the ruling stands for a while, what’s likely to happen? The obvious immediate impact will be that the folks who only pay representation fees because they’re compelled to, will sto...
There will be another recession. That matters for all of the human reasons that recessions matter -- people losing jobs, losing homes, living under a gnawing fear that ages them quickly. But it also matters for higher ed policy. Wednesday’s piece about the different permutations of “free community college” in various states, including my own, noted that several of the proposals were able to gain political traction by making the criteria so narrow that very few students actually qualified. That keeps the cost down. During relatively flush times, when tax revenues are up and community college enrollments are down, it’s easier than usual to push for some version of free community college. Versions that don’t cost much are easy to fold into large budgets when revenues are strong. But a recession will come. I don’t know exactly when, but it will. They always do. And if history is any guide, the next recession will reduce tax revenues to states, while simult...
This one is specifically for my counterparts at semester-based colleges everywhere. It’s based on hard-won experiential knowledge, and I share it in the spirit of prevention. Be gentle with faculty between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It’s a brutal time of year. They’re in “grading jail,” a dispiritingly accurate term for the deluge of grading and grade-related emergencies that comes at the end of the semester. Worse, in the fall, grading jail coincides with the runup to the holidays. Stress plus stress equals, well, more stress. This is the time of year when even the most patient folks can get a little harried. Students are stressed and pushing for ninth-inning rallies; faculty have more grading than at any other time of year; and the holidays are, well, the holidays. A little kindness can go a long way, especially now.
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