http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/08/08/bridges
A Bridge Less Traveled
Adam Smith would be proud.
In their efforts to promote new postdoctoral business programs for
non-business majors, universities haven’t been bashful about suggesting
that faculty should act in their own self-interest. Making $50,000 a
year teaching in a psychology department? Why not spend two months at
Virginia Tech and double your salary?
Such are the promises of five newly minted “Post-Doctoral Bridge to
Business Programs,” which provide intensive instruction in areas like
marketing and finance to instructors who have already completed Ph.D.’s
in other fields. The aim of these programs is to equip faculty members
with a background in business research techniques to help transition
them into business schools, which are struggling to fill tenure-track
vacancies.
The pitch at Virginia Tech, which graduated its first class of “bridge
to business” students this month, was enough to persuade Matt Hettche to
change his career path. Hettche holds a doctorate in philosophy, but
he’s been daunted by the notoriously crowded job market in his field.
When he read about Virginia Tech’s program in one of the university’s
magazines, Hettche thought it sounded like a smart — albeit risky — next
step.
“The job market in philosophy is pretty tight, so it’s not unrealistic
to say that for every one position that’s advertised, as many as 450
applications come in,” said Hettche, who just graduated from Virginia
Tech’s program. “I’m reading there are vacancies in business schools;
they can’t fill the jobs they have.”
Hettche, 37, has spent the last several years as a visiting assistant
professor at Auburn University. With his new business credentials in
hand, however, Hettche is heading to — go figure — Virginia Tech, where
he will teach marketing. The position is still not tenure track, but
Hettche feels the likelihood of scoring such a coveted post is much
greater in the business field than philosophy.
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http://howtheuniversityworks.com/wordpress/archives/136
Faculty serving contingently are already laughing this idea into
deserved obscurity over at ADJ-L and Inside Higher Ed, but a University
of Phoenix adjunct is trying to get herself a piece of the for-profit
pie, and squeeze $400 apiece from as many suckers as she can with a
“certification” scam.
Write your check to Rochelle Santopoalo, president and founder of SOCAFE
(Society of _Certified_ Adjunct Faculty Educators) and she promises to
“increase your marketability as an adjunct faculty educator” with the
“prestigious academic certification” she just Made Up in Her Own Head.
“Prestigious” in this case refers to the proud reaction of Ma and Pa
Santopoalo, and the southeast corner of the breakroom at Phoenix.
Tenure-stream folks tired of earning bartenders’ wages are being offered
their own certification scam, but it’s quite a bit more plush: you can
apparently pay $28,000 to Virginia Tech or any of four other
“market-smart” institutions to have yourself retooled as a business
educator and cross over into the world of business schools–you know, the
folks who’ve been driving Beamers while you got a 1% salary increase.)
Of course if you don’t want to keep making opportunists rich, and you’re
not captured by the poetry, philosophy, or history of marketing, you can
stand and fight for the principle that education is a public good. For
starters, attend the 8th International Conference of the Coalition of
Contingent Academic Labor, hosted by COCAL-California, San Diego State
University. August 8-10, 2008.
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NY Times, August 8, 2008
College and Company Link Up to Lure Foreigners
By TAMAR LEWIN
BOSTON — Like a lot of other universities, Northeastern has Barnes &
Noble running its bookstore, and Pizza Hut, Wendy’s, Starbucks and Taco
Bell selling food in the student center.
But Northeastern has taken outsourcing one giant step further.
In an unusual partnership that began last fall, the university is using
Kaplan Inc., a for-profit education company, to find students for — and
help run — an academic program for international students to spend a
year on campus, improving their English and acclimating to American
higher education, before starting one of Northeastern’s degree programs.
Although Northeastern is the first American university with such a
partnership, the model, now common in Britain, is gaining interest in
the United States. Some critics worry that if such partnerships catch on
widely, the quest for lucrative international students could undermine
academic standards, if the profit motive leads programs to admit
unqualified students or use low-paid, poorly trained instructors.
“In a way, these programs bringing international students in for an
introductory year are like what we would do with kids from the inner
city, but nobody’s doing that for profit,” said Philip G. Altbach, an
international education expert at Boston College. “I do wonder what
happens to academic values in all of these market-driven efforts.”
In recent years, international students, generally full-paying, have
become big business at American universities and around the world.
Kaplan, a subsidiary of The Washington Post Company, is known in the
United States mostly for its test-preparation business. But the company
has huge international-education operations, including teaching English
as a second language, with a worldwide network of agents to tap into
this market.
The president of Northeastern, Joseph E. Auon, has committed to making
the university an international institution. University officials say
their program with Kaplan, known as Global Pathways, lets them make sure
international students are adequately prepared before they start degree
programs, which can be difficult to ascertain from a foreign transcript.
Patrick Plunkett, executive director of international initiatives, said
he felt strongly that to ensure academic integrity, Northeastern
employees should teach the classes, rather than handing the teaching off
to Kaplan, as the company proposed, and as it does at similar programs
it runs at British universities.
“The value added here is being engaged with the university, even before
you’re in a degree program,” he said. The university handles teaching,
curriculum and admissions. But Kaplan does everything else.
“We’re great at the teaching and learning part, but Kaplan has more
expertise in the wraparound services,” said Christopher E. Hopey, a vice
president at Northeastern.
Kaplan markets the program overseas and recruits the students, guided by
explicit admissions criteria, Northeastern officials said, based on the
education system in the home countries. Kaplan staff members meet
students at the airport, help them find places to live — usually with a
family at first — connect them with volunteer conversation partners, and
organize parties and outings to Boston Celtics games.
Neither Northeastern nor Kaplan would discuss their financial
arrangements; students in the program pay about $18,000 for the extra
year of schooling.
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http://www.cust.educ.ubc.ca/workplace/workplace2/yates.html
Lambs to the Slaughter
by Michael Yates
1. I do not think that many faculty members would challenge the notion
that the University of Pittsburgh is run by persons who are primarily
managers and not academics. Certainly those on the Board of Trustees are
managers and often have much experience managing large corporations.
Those employed by the Board, the Chancellor and his large staff,
function as managers, although a few of them (and increasingly fewer
each decade) have some reputation as scholars. At Pitt-Johnstown, where
I work, our administrators have never been scholars and no more so than
at present when the very titles so common to academe have been changed
to reflect the managerial and business-like role those who hold these
titles are expected to play. We do not go to the Dean's office but to
that of the Vice President for Academic Affairs, or VPAA.
2. As any management expert will tell you, the essence of management is
control, control over every aspect of the enterprise. In most
workplaces, the one element which can impede the ability of management
to control its domain is the human element. That is why managerial
control is essentially a matter of controlling the organization's
employees, or to use a word that college teachers don't like to hear,
its workers. Over the past 150 years or so, managers have devised a
number of techniques for managing (controlling) their employees. These
techniques have been theorized and systematized, first by Frederick
Taylor, and many times since by his disciples. It is possible to learn
these techniques and the theory behind them in business schools,
seminars, and learned journals. We must have no doubt that our
administrators have studied the theory and practice of managerial
control and that they are busy applying what they have learned.
3. The most comprehensive system of managerial control has been
pioneered by Japanese automobile manufacturers and is known to its
critics as "lean production." It is based upon the twin ideas that every
aspect of work must be controlled to the greatest degree possible and
that the employees must be led to believe not only that this is good for
them but that they have some real say in directing their enterprise.
With our faculty senate and its ideology of shared governance, many of
us have already absorbed the second idea (Pitt-Johnstown President, Al
Etheridge, has used "focus groups" which serve the same purpose and have
the advantage of being controlled by him more directly than the senate,
which on rare occasion challenges administrative authority). The first
idea, however, is more radical, and poorly understood by most of us and
not at all by many of us.
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