Pervasive contingency as Italian slasher flick
February 23, 2020 6:45 AM   Subscribe

Charles Petersen writes for the New York Review of Books about the adjunctification crisis in higher education, how it fits into larger labor movements, and how "college for all" policies could change things.
posted by ChuraChura (4 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
United Kingdom, which from Margaret Thatcher to Tony Blair to David Cameron ... lowered the academic quality of its universities

This is pretty arguable. There are quite a few metrics that show that research quality in UK universities has gone up over the last decade.
posted by biffa at 11:14 AM on February 23, 2020 [2 favorites]


The problem with all metrics is: what are you measuring? Citations are just a proxy for quality, and publications isn't even a proxy.

In my graduate field (socioeconomic history), the RAE (or REA?) really did in careful, detailed archival work, like that done by Margaret Spufford. It's not that was is published is bad, but so much important work cannot be done because it takes too long and doesn't produce a lot of words.
posted by jb at 11:30 AM on February 23, 2020 [3 favorites]



The problem with all metrics is: what are you measuring


No, a (and maybe, the) problem is "when a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good measure"
posted by lalochezia at 1:54 PM on February 23, 2020 [7 favorites]


Long, thoughtful, historically-informed, data-rich review essay - ChuraChura, thank you for sharing this.

The adjunctification of faculty is academia's shame.
posted by doctornemo at 1:03 PM on February 24, 2020 [2 favorites]


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