Posted under Berkshire Conference & book reviews & class & jobs & students & women's history
The weather here in Potterville is gorgeous–Historiann’s roses, irises, lupines, poppies, and bachelor’s buttons are blooming–it’s almost too perfect, so let’s have a little bad news today to wash down with our daily cup o’brimstone, shall we?
- Bad news: Frank Donoghue says that as much as we bitch and moan about our jobs (if we have them) and the job market in academia, we’re living in the not-so-golden age as The Last Professors. He makes the daring prediction that we’re on the slippery slope to hell, and that the corporitization of the university can’t be reversed. Says Donoghue: “The tenure-track professoriate will never be restored. . . . [T]he hiring of adjuncts continues to outpace the hiring of tenure-track professors by a rate of three to one. It’s silly to think we can reverse the trend toward casualization when, despite a great deal of attention and effort, we can’t even slow it down. . . . Much as it pains me to say it, I never considered putting a question mark at the end of my title, The Last Professors.”
- Good news: Via Inside Higher Ed, the Big Dog says he won’t speak at UCLA’s commencement, out of respect for AFSCME’s unresolved contract with the university.
- Bad news: Student newspaper shuttered after publishing photo of a buring U.S. flag. Oh, grow up, school administrators! What’s the point of student newspapers, if not to publish occasionally stupid and juvenile stories and photos? Giving students a publication and then getting all hopped up because they publish something dumb is like handing kids a firecracker and then getting angry when they light it up. Guess what? By shutting down the paper, you’re making this story a bigger issue than it would have been had you ignored it! Did it not occur to you that the people who write for major U.S. dailies are the kinds of people who used to work on their high school newspaper, and that they might find an otherwise silly local story like this newsworthy? Jackasses.
- Good news: the later week/weekend forecast for Minnapolis is improving, with only 20-30 percent ”chances” of showers and thunderstorms Thursday through the rest of the weekend. Still, those of you who will be at the Berkshire Conference are well advised to be prepared for anything–so bring your raincoat and sunscreen, too. (For a few years after moving to Colorado, I drove around with an umbrella in my car, which made me an eccentric; after living here for a while now, I completely forget that it rains anywhere else in the world, which makes me an idiot!)
Go read “
No matter how much academics in the blogosphere bitch and moan amongst themselves, those crazy, cockeyed, optimistic kids keep signing up for graduate school in ever greater numbers! According to this report at Inside Higher Ed, ”