Steal this university : the rise of the corporate university and the academic labor movement / edited by Benjamin Johnson, Patrick Kavanagh, and Kevin Mattson.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Johnson, Benjamin Heber.

Kavanagh, Patrick, 1972-

Mattson, Kevin, 1966-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Universities and colleges--Employees--Labor unions--United States--Organizing.

Universities and colleges.

Universities and colleges--Employees--Labor unions.

College teachers' unions.

United States.

College teachers' unions--United States.

Education, Higher--Economic aspects--United States.

Education, Higher.

Education, Higher--Economic aspects.

Universities and colleges--United States--Employees--Social conditions.

Employees.

Social conditions.

Physical Description:

vi, 265 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Routledge, 2003.

Summary:

Welcome to academia in the 21st century, where 60% of tenured professors have been supplanted by underpaid graduate students or part-time adjuncts. The professoriate is no longer a "community of scholars" that governs itself, but a group of employees whose work is reviewed by administrators who cut deals to put cheaply packaged courses online for worldwide consumption. Where have the ivy-covered walls, tweedy professors, and genteel university presidents gone? Replaced, say the authors of this provocative work, by markets, profits, and computers. Steal This University documents the rise of the corporate university over the past twenty years as well as the academic labor movement that has developed in response. Universities are increasingly looking to corporations as their model for reform, investing in merit-pay packages, partnerships with high-tech companies, and anything that will reap profits from their creations. With controversial, personal stories of workplace exploitation, tenure battles, and union organizing, the book shows the challenges of working within this new system and explains the countermovement working to restore independence to university teachers. From New York University's outrageous union-busting techniques to the rise of for-profit schools like the University of Phoenix, Steal This University is both an indictment of current trends and a blueprint for combating them.

Contents:

Introduction: Not Your Parents' University or Labor Movement Any Longer 1

Section 1 The Rise of the Corporate University 11

Chapter 1 None of Your Business: The Rise of the University of Phoenix and For-Profit Education

and Why It Will Fail Us All / Ana Marie Cox 15

Chapter 2 Digital Diploma Mills / David Noble 33

Chapter 3 Inefficient Efficiency: A Critique of Merit Pay / Denise Marie Tanguay 49

Chapter 4 The Drain-O of Higher Education: Casual Labor and University Teaching / Benjamin Johnson 61

Section 2 Laboring Within 81

Chapter 5 How I Became a Worker / Kevin Mattson 87

Chapter 6 The Art of Work in the Age of the Adjunct / Alexis Moore 97

Chapter 7 Blacklisted and Blue: On Theory and Practice at Yale / Corey Robin 107

Chapter 8 Tenure Denied: Union Busting and Anti-Intellectualism in the Corporate University / Joel Westheimer 123

Section 3 Organizing 139

Chapter 9 The Campaign for Union Rights at NYU / Lisa Jessup 145

Chapter 10 Democracy Is an Endless Organizing Drive: Learning from the Failure and Future of Graduate Student Organizing at the University of Minnesota / Michael Brown, Ronda Copher, Katy Gray Brown 171

Chapter 11 Moving River Barges: Labor Activism and Academic Organizations / Cary Nelson 189

Chapter 12 Social Movement Unionism and Adjunct Faculty Organizing in Boston / Barbara Gottfried, Gary Zabel 207

Chapter 13 Renewing Academic Unions and Democracy at the Same Time: The Case of the California Faculty Association / Susan Meisenhelder, Kevin Mattson 221

Conclusion: The Future of Higher Education and Academic Labor 231.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 241-249) and index.

ISBN:

0415934834

0415934842

OCLC:

50090182