Dear Charlie,

[absinthehearts]

It is getting to the end of term now, with everything that means -- the students you've never seen in class suddenly surfacing during office hours wondering how they can avoid failing, the teaching assistants looking daggers at you in the hallway because it somehow escaped them when they looked at the syllabus that there would be marking when their

Comments

[cyan_blue]

*hugs*

[auros]

Ugh.

The CalState Uni faculty just narrowly missed striking when the administration came back to the negotiating table, and may yet strike if things don't improve... Cheap labo(u)r, all over... The commoditization of labor keeps creeping up the value chain.

[absinthehearts]

It does. My union, the full-time professors' union, to which I am admitted only grudgingly, came within 40 minutes of striking before the university was willing to cut a deal. Now, as a kind of punishment for a negotiated wage increase that was long overdue, the university is punishing departments by taking away all resources that are not nailed down by tenure. Non-tenured and non-tenure track people teach more than half the courses in my department.

I can't see how we're going to be able to do an 11% increase in enrolment, and a 40% reduction in course offerings and maintain a 'quality, student-centered education'.

But, of course, that's not my problem, because I don't have a job next year.