CUNY's Wal-Mart Abuses of Higher Education
Hunter Word website on CUNY contract controversy:
http://theword.hunter.cuny.edu/
A contract for CUNY faculty has been delayed for three years as of this month. CUNY faculty salaries in recent years have been reduced (against inflation) by as much as 50%. We are threatened with reductions in our medical coverage and asked to do ever more things other than TEACHING OUR STUDENTS. More teaching is now being done each year by harried part-time faculty with a reduction of full-time faculty by roughly 50%. At the above website from the Hunter on-line student paper, the Word, you can access some of the statements, reports of meetings of faculty, deliberating on such things as whether to go on strike. We are deeply distressed that public funding for CUNY is constantly being decreased while tuitions are increasing, in effect throwing us faculty into conflict with students as the primary funding source for our university's working budgets.
Private universities ordinarily build up endowments to reduce tuitions and to provide assistance to students needing tuition reductions. Our CUNY board has not been doing that. Our building programs are funded rather by long term state Dormitory Authority bonds -- which we will all be paying off over our lifetimes.
The upshot at Brooklyn College, as some of my classes can see directly, are such weird combinations as construction of new building, e.g. the $70 million library upgrade and replacement of the Plaza complex not yet a half century old -- while one of my classes has repeatedly had to relocate to another building to accommodate one of our students whose wheelchair is blocked from our main Boylan elevator which is constantly out of repair.
Our library cannot afford staff to stay open later than 9 p.m. (a junior college schedule) to accommodate our evening students who must choose between going to the library or coming to class. All other college libraries that I have checked -- Hunter, CCNY, Queens, Columbia stay open later -- generally until 11 p.m. -- Monday through Thursday. Needless to say our new 24-hour "library cafe" in Whitehead with many computers -- but no access to the library books and articles in the closed down library across the way -- is presumably funded out of the extra fees imposed on students for 'technology' things. A nice place to hang out, I assume -- but not to do in-library research!
Students are being cheated out of the most basic things that they should be able to expect as college students -- small seminars in their advanced major classes, much experience doing research and acquiring professional writing skills to prepare both for advanced studies and work in the wider world. In one of my large classes (all three of mine are over-filled) only one student reported having had to write more than ten pages in any class apart from a mid term and final exam! We can no longer schedule classes at times that students need them so that many are delayed in completing programs in good time. They are forced to drop out semesters, years, or forever to earn money to cover tuition and living expenses. Most of my students hold jobs simultaneously with their studies to make ends meet here in expensive NYC.
From my perspective as a long term CUNY faculty member who was the chair of a large _full-time_ faculty department in the 1970s (when CUNY was still tuition free) which used a few adjuncts each semester either to enable us to _add_ needed sections of our introductory courses at the last minute or in one case to fund an elective in Far Eastern religions taught by one of the 3 leading U.S. experts in this field who happened to be a Brooklyn clergyman -- all of this is Wonderland without Alice.
The Hunter Word website above reports on various details as faculty consider what to do about this Queen of Hearts "off with their heads" nonsense. Needless to say there is no more valuable investment to be made by a community or nation than educating its students to become productive citizens. Other nations are now increasingly outstripping us in this department as taxes are reduced for our super wealthy who in many cases would happily pay them to improve the quality of life of all of us! See the Open Society Institute funded by billionaire, George Soros: http://www.soros.org/ located here in NYC.
Sadly we are not alone, as corporatization of higher education has swept across North America with this Wal-Mart approach to reducing costs of education while burdening students with those ungodly loans which financially cripple their family lives and cruelly restrict their options for future careers! Shame!
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
--
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net/blognews.asp
http://theword.hunter.cuny.edu/
A contract for CUNY faculty has been delayed for three years as of this month. CUNY faculty salaries in recent years have been reduced (against inflation) by as much as 50%. We are threatened with reductions in our medical coverage and asked to do ever more things other than TEACHING OUR STUDENTS. More teaching is now being done each year by harried part-time faculty with a reduction of full-time faculty by roughly 50%. At the above website from the Hunter on-line student paper, the Word, you can access some of the statements, reports of meetings of faculty, deliberating on such things as whether to go on strike. We are deeply distressed that public funding for CUNY is constantly being decreased while tuitions are increasing, in effect throwing us faculty into conflict with students as the primary funding source for our university's working budgets.
Private universities ordinarily build up endowments to reduce tuitions and to provide assistance to students needing tuition reductions. Our CUNY board has not been doing that. Our building programs are funded rather by long term state Dormitory Authority bonds -- which we will all be paying off over our lifetimes.
The upshot at Brooklyn College, as some of my classes can see directly, are such weird combinations as construction of new building, e.g. the $70 million library upgrade and replacement of the Plaza complex not yet a half century old -- while one of my classes has repeatedly had to relocate to another building to accommodate one of our students whose wheelchair is blocked from our main Boylan elevator which is constantly out of repair.
Our library cannot afford staff to stay open later than 9 p.m. (a junior college schedule) to accommodate our evening students who must choose between going to the library or coming to class. All other college libraries that I have checked -- Hunter, CCNY, Queens, Columbia stay open later -- generally until 11 p.m. -- Monday through Thursday. Needless to say our new 24-hour "library cafe" in Whitehead with many computers -- but no access to the library books and articles in the closed down library across the way -- is presumably funded out of the extra fees imposed on students for 'technology' things. A nice place to hang out, I assume -- but not to do in-library research!
Students are being cheated out of the most basic things that they should be able to expect as college students -- small seminars in their advanced major classes, much experience doing research and acquiring professional writing skills to prepare both for advanced studies and work in the wider world. In one of my large classes (all three of mine are over-filled) only one student reported having had to write more than ten pages in any class apart from a mid term and final exam! We can no longer schedule classes at times that students need them so that many are delayed in completing programs in good time. They are forced to drop out semesters, years, or forever to earn money to cover tuition and living expenses. Most of my students hold jobs simultaneously with their studies to make ends meet here in expensive NYC.
From my perspective as a long term CUNY faculty member who was the chair of a large _full-time_ faculty department in the 1970s (when CUNY was still tuition free) which used a few adjuncts each semester either to enable us to _add_ needed sections of our introductory courses at the last minute or in one case to fund an elective in Far Eastern religions taught by one of the 3 leading U.S. experts in this field who happened to be a Brooklyn clergyman -- all of this is Wonderland without Alice.
The Hunter Word website above reports on various details as faculty consider what to do about this Queen of Hearts "off with their heads" nonsense. Needless to say there is no more valuable investment to be made by a community or nation than educating its students to become productive citizens. Other nations are now increasingly outstripping us in this department as taxes are reduced for our super wealthy who in many cases would happily pay them to improve the quality of life of all of us! See the Open Society Institute funded by billionaire, George Soros: http://www.soros.org/ located here in NYC.
Sadly we are not alone, as corporatization of higher education has swept across North America with this Wal-Mart approach to reducing costs of education while burdening students with those ungodly loans which financially cripple their family lives and cruelly restrict their options for future careers! Shame!
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
--
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net/blognews.asp
posted by Ed Kent at 11:22 AM
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