May 17 2012

2012 OCUFA Faculty Survey

Category: Research — Bob Hanke @ 7:17 pm

Ontario’s professors and academic librarians warn that university quality is on the decline

(excerpted from OCUFA, May 14, 2012)

Professors and academic librarians are concerned about the quality of education at Ontario’s universities, according to a new survey released today. Of those surveyed, 42 per cent believed that quality had declined at their institution.

“Ontario’s universities have welcomed thousands of new students over the past five years, but public funding has just not kept pace with the enrolment increase,” said Constance Adamson, President of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA). “Universities are straining to accommodate the new students with inadequate resources, and the cracks are beginning to show.”

Other worrying survey findings include:

  • 63 per cent of faculty believe class sizes have increased over the past five years
  • 83 per cent of faculty report budget cuts in their department
  • 76 per cent of faculty report an increased use of part-time faculty at their institution
  • 73 per cent of faculty report an increase in workload, which for many (41 per cent) means less time to interact with students outside of class

The survey also revealed that Ontario’s professors and academic librarians are deeply committed to the quality of university education and the essential link between teaching and research at the province’s universities. Surveyed faculty value teaching and research equally, although they believe their commitment to teaching is not always shared by their institution.

“Ontario’s professors and academic librarians believe that the connection between teaching and research –what we call ‘scholarship’—is at the heart of the university,” said Adamson. “When we separate teaching from research, we don’t give our students the education they expect.”

The OCUFA faculty survey was commissioned to assess Ontario university professors’ and academic librarians’ opinion on a variety of issues affecting university education. The online survey received over 2,300 responses between March 21 and April 16, 2012.

To read the faculty survey, click here.

 

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Mar 31 2012

The Birth of Critical University Studies

Category: Online Publication — Bob Hanke @ 6:38 pm

Deconstructing Academe: The birth of critical university studies

by Jeffrey J. Williams
(excerpted from The Chronicle Review, February 19, 2012)

Over the past two decades in the United States, there has been a new wave of criticism of higher education. Much of it has condemned the rise of “academic capitalism” and the corporatization of the university; a substantial wing has focused on the deteriorating conditions of academic labor; and some of it has pointed out the problems of students and their escalating debt. A good deal of this new work comes from literary and cultural critics, although it also includes those from education, history, sociology, and labor studies. This wave constitutes what Heather Steffen, a graduate student in literary and cultural studies with whom I have worked at Carnegie Mellon University, and I think is an emerging field of “critical university studies.” Often criticism of the university seems a scattershot enterprise. A scholar from almost any discipline might have something to say about higher education, but it’s usually an occasional piece that’s a sideline from normal work. There is, of course, a sizable body of scholarship coming from the field of education, but it largely deals with elementary and secondary schooling. Or it follows established scholarly channels; for instance, it might gather and present data about the student body, or it could deal with administration, or fill in a segment of the history, sociology, or financing of education.

In contrast, this new wave in higher education looks beyond the confines of particular specializations and takes a resolutely critical perspective. Part of its task is scholarly, reporting on and analyzing changes besetting higher education, but it goes a step further and takes a stand against some of those changes, notably those contributing to the “unmaking of the public university,” in the words of the literary critic Christopher Newfield.

To give it a name recognizes that it has attained significant mass and signals a gathering place for those considering similar work. “Critical” indicates the new work’s oppositional stance, similar to approaches like critical legal studies, critical race studies, critical development studies, critical food studies, and so on, that focuses on the ways in which current practices serve power or wealth and contribute to injustice or inequality rather than social hope. “Studies” picks up its cross-disciplinary character, focused on a particular issue and drawing on research from any relevant area to approach the problem. “University” outlines its field of reference, which includes the discourse of “the idea of the university” as well as the actual practices and diverse institutions of contemporary higher education.

To read the rest of this article, click here.

 

 

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Nov 22 2010

The University Debate

Category: Journals — Bob Hanke @ 11:18 am
Culture Machine invites its readers to join the debate called for by Nick Couldry and Angela McRobbie in their short article ‘The Death of the University, English Style’ – now available in the Culture Machine InterZone:
We are seeking contributions in the form of short think pieces, or micro-essays, of
500-1000 words on any aspect of:
– the future of higher education in England and the UK;
– the position of the arts, humanities and social sciences within the university;
– the role and nature of the university in a democratic society.
Please email all contributions to Gary Hall at <gary@garyhall.info>, remembering to include your full name and academic affiliation (if any). If, for institutional or other reasons, you would prefer to have your piece published anonymously, we would be happy to accommodate this.
All contributions will be reviewed by the Editorial Board on a rolling basis, with those accepted for publication being made immediately available on the Culture Machine site.
Eight new contributions have just been added to the Culture Machine InterZone section:
* ‘Cut the Shock Doctrine: Radicalize Common Sense’ by Paul Bowman, Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff University
* ‘Amidst the Culture of Efficiency’ by Sunil Manghani, Critical and Cultural Theory , York St John University
* ‘On the “Death” of the University’ by Jason Rovito, Communication and Culture, York and Ryerson Universities
* ‘Education, Education, Education’ by Ewa Sidorenko, Education, University of Greenwich
* ‘Diversity and Choice’ by Leon Wainwright, History of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University
* ‘Public Values, Higher Education and the Scourge of Neoliberalism: Politics at the Limits of the Social’ by Henry A. Giroux, English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University
* ‘Our Miners’ Moment: The Battle to Save Higher Education for Working-Class Students Amidst the Culture of Efficiency’ by Alex Lockwood, Journalism, University of Sunderland
* ‘Of Science and Souls’ by Keyan Tomaselli, Communication, Media and Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal
To read the pieces, visit the Culture Machine InterZone:

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May 27 2010

Students Sow Seeds of Dissent

Category: News — Bob Hanke @ 12:26 pm

Canada’s New Dissenting Academy
by Matthew Brett
(excerpted from The Bullet, May 25, 2010)

As the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences prepares for its annual Congress this May in Montreal, now is the time to create a new dissenting academy. A radical, anti-capitalist reorientation of academia – created for the explicit purpose of addressing urgent issues that stand before us – is necessary.

Theodore Roszak wrote in a collection of essays titled The Dissenting Academy (1967) that the university is rarely “anything better than the handmaiden of official society: the social club of ruling elites, the training school of whatever functionaries the status quo required.”

In the same collection of essays, Marshall Windmiller wrote a remarkable piece on political scientists in the U.S. and their direct involvement in the CIA and the war in Vietnam. Noam Chomsky’s infamous The Responsibility of Intellectuals closed the essay collection.

All authors agreed that the line between universities, the corporate world and government has blurred to irrelevancy. Social scientists were likewise active in planning some of the worst atrocities in recent history, and dissent within the academic community was shunned. The parallels with today are compelling.

Corporatization and the University

Concordia University will be hosting the 2010 Humanities and Social Science Congress this May, so parallels with the 1960s can be drawn with Concordia. However, most universities in Canada share similar characteristics, and this critique should be applied in equal measure to all post-secondary institutions.

Concordia President Judith Woodsworth recently returned from a mission to India with Quebec Premier Jean Charest and a number of business leaders. There can be no doubt that some of the 130 trade delegation members that joined the trade mission are part of Canada’s massive mining and finance sectors that trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange and are busy exploiting India’s natural resources while gross human rights violations take place. This is representative of the intertwining of universities and Canadian imperialism.

To read the rest of this article, click here.

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May 13 2010

Mute Says, “Don’t Panic, Organise!”

Category: News,Online Publication — Bob Hanke @ 10:22 am

Mute Special on Struggle in Education Today: ‘Don’t Panic, Organise!’

(excerpted from Mute, May 4, 2010).

The cuts, lay-offs and tuition-fee hikes that are besetting higher and further education internationally are naturally a direct response to the drama of the financial crisis and its ricocheting bomb of personal, commercial and national debt. But they also have deeper roots. They should be understood as part of the more gradual process of what George Caffentzis, in his analysis of the international situation, calls the ‘breakdown of the edu-deal’; the inability for capital, and therefore the state, to pay for the costs of producing a well educated workforce or to guarantee that investment in education will result in a more vigorous economy and increased living standards for those with qualifications.

This breakdown, and the dogmatism of free market economics which seeks to alleviate it, has seen the imposition of a business rationale onto what previously had been regarded as the provision of a public service, sometimes even a public good. From the investment of endowment funds on the market, to the conversion of students into (badly ripped off) consumers, to the no-frills fixed-term contracts being doled out to staff, to the speculative purchase of the future IP generated by scientific and technical departments, to the intended exchangeability of all qualifications under the Bologna Process, education has been infested by the value form.

With the ground changing this fast under staff and students’ feet, the ability for collective action to fight the savage rounds of cuts has itself suffered as a result of a generalised precarity and fragmentation. Despite the hostile conditions, we are nevertheless seeing an intermittent but persistent wave of strikes, actions and occupations, both wildcat and union co-ordinated, breaking out around the world. Other initiatives such as cross-institutional teach-ins, blogs, power-mapping exercises, conferences and demonstrations are also creating a steady hum of background pressure and preparation. All of this begs the question, will it be enough to save any residual quality and equality within education and its institutions? With the state of struggle in education our principal question, Mute has created a mini-dossier of reports, questionnaires and analyses on the education crisis as it unfolds in the UK and beyond.

Table of Contents

University Struggles at the End of the Edu-Deal by George Caffentzis
‘Dignity at Work and Study’, or: Oxymoron 101 Mute talks to a Unison Rep and employee at a London University institution
Painting the Glass House Black Evan Calder Williams on struggles at the University of California
Struggle as a Second Language Two of the organisers of last year’s Tower Hamlets College strike assess the successes and failures of the campaign
Grim Down South: Managing (in) London South Bank University by Raoul Paled
We Don’t Need No Education? The Case of the London Met Mute speaks to an anonymous member of staff about responses to the recent blood-letting

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