"Education Costs" - Deb Milbrath, Cartoon Movement
Showing posts with label private. Show all posts
Showing posts with label private. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
Privately educated still take most top jobs
Although, this article is highlighting a report on British education system & the resultant employment prospects from the private institutions of that education system, this can easily be extended to everywhere around the world.
Private schools, colleges, & universities in US & Canada are similarly regarded as producing highly talented individuals, who then are employed in top jobs. Although, there are no private universities in Canada, yet, but the cost of education in public universities is skyrocketing, & obtaining that education is becoming a luxury for many. The pricier the degree, the more respect it earns from the industry.
It's the same case in developing countries, like Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil, India, Pakistan, etc. Private education system has merely become the profit-making tool for a few industrialists. Public education system has been eroded or the industry sector doesn't favour the graduates of those. Graduates of private education system are highly regarded in the industry, & even there, the more expensive the degree (i.e. IBA & LUMS), the more respect the grad earns, & hence, obtaining that top spot in the industry becomes that much easier.
Of course, this disparity will continue on, even if the private education system starts taking in students on the basis of merit. The reason being that the graduates of these top private schools have strong alumni networks in the top tiers of industry, who pull their fellow graduates up, while leaving behind the graduates of public education system. This "networking" will continue on. Coupled this networking issue in the developed world with the not-so-strong financial situation of the immigrants there, & you can see that immigrants & their children do not make it to the top tiers of the industry in the developed world.
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Individuals educated at private schools continue to land the majority of top jobs in leading fields, including law, politics, journalism and the arts ... .
Results published by the Sutton Trust ... show that while the previous decade has shown “small signs” of narrowing inequality levels, often more than 70% of top jobs are given to those who were privately educated.
Only 7% of British youngsters attend private school, but the study showed that 74% of judges and 71% of high ranking military officers attended fee-paying schools.
In journalism, 51% of top print writers were privately educated, as well as 61% of doctors.
Respectively, only 12% of military chiefs were educated in comprehensive schools, and 22% of doctors attended grammar schools. Only one-fifth of leading journalists had a state education.
In politics the gap has narrowed, the report found, with 32% of MPs having attended a private school. But when examining the Tory cabinet, some 50% of the ministers went to independent schools, compared to 13% in Labour’s shadow cabinet.
The report also examined the prevalence of Oxford and Cambridge universities among top ranking positions, and found that alumni from the famous academic institutions were more likely to take high positions.
In law, Oxbridge graduates make up 74% of the top positions, with 54% of journalists having also attended the two universities.
Some 47% of the Conservative cabinet also attended Oxford or Cambridge, more than 10% higher than the shadow cabinet, which features 32% Oxbridge graduates.
The arts is also not exempt from the privately educated/Oxbridge bubble, with award-winning actors and actresses 50% more likely to have had a private education than pop stars. A total of 42% of BAFTA winners were awarded to fee-paying school attendees.
Sir Peter Lampl, chair of the Sutton Trust, said the report showed a need for more social mobility.
“Our research shows that your chances of reaching the top in so many areas of British life are very much greater if you went to an independent school.
“As well as academic achievement, an independent education tends to develop essential skills such as confidence, articulacy and teamwork, which are vital to career success.
“The key to improving social mobility at the top is to open up independent schools to all pupils based on merit not money... as well as support for highly able students in state schools.”
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
Education is a basic human right - which is why private schools must be resisted
Nothing much for me to say in this blog post, since whatever the UN rapporteur on the right to education said in this op-ed, I said some similar points in my previous blog post how privatisation of education hurts the poor, but then, that's the main objective point of modern businesses involved in the education business worldwide; privatise all levels of education everywhere & tell parents that you better provide private & high quality education to your kids (even if they need to kill themselves to produce the money for school fees) or your kids will never prosper economically (which, in itself, is a complete lie).
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At the beginning of the new millennium, the international community made a commitment to achieve universal primary education for all boys & girls. Today, 15 years later, we find huge gaps between these commitments & reality.
Across the world, 58 million children still don’t have access to schools, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa & South Asia. Millions more fail to graduate, or fail to learn what they need to participate in society meaningfully.
Capitalising on the inability of governments to cope with rising demands on public learning, private education providers are mushrooming. I see this not as progress, but as an indictment of governments that have failed to meet their obligation to provide universal, free & high-quality education for all.
Education is not a privilege of the rich & well-to-do; it is the inalienable right of every child. The state must discharge its responsibility as guarantor & regulator of education as a fundamental human entitlement & as a public cause. The provision of basic education, free of cost, is not only a core obligation of states but also a moral imperative.
Privatisation cripples the notion of education as a universal human right & – by aggravating marginalisation & exclusion – runs counter to the fundamental principles of human rights law. It creates social inequity.
The admission policy in private schools is based on the ability to pay, & on the socio-economic background of parents. As a result, private schools lack the diversified system of learning & cultural plurality that is so necessary today. They promote market economy values rather than the humanist mission of education.
Disturbingly, some in the international community are pushing for greater privatisation in education. The World Bank, a longstanding supporter of the approach, has recently been joined by other international bodies. At the end of 2014, the African Development Bank, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the African Union commission, & the UN Development Programme released a report promoting increased private sector involvement in education. The study concluded that “Africa must build a vibrant private sector that supports the development of a dynamic primary education system”. This call has been echoed by some government officials in Africa & elsewhere.
In the 1980s & 90s, when developing countries first made significant cuts to their public health & education spending under structural adjustment, international financial institutions, along with the largest donors, promoted user fees & increased private sector service delivery. The World Bank’s current policy of encouraging & supporting profit-seeking multinationals that provide education is a matter of serious concern, given the devastating impact this strategy has on the right to education.
As a recent Oxfam briefing paper has suggested, governments should not allow low-fee private schools, & should restore education as an essential public service. As private education becomes big business, learning must be protected from the forces of privatisation.
According to a study on private education by the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID), a potentially very large number of low-fee private schools, which target poorer families in developing countries, are unregistered. These schools save costs by hiring ill-trained teachers & running large classes in substandard school buildings. Such “edu-businesses”, as they have come to be known, are an unsatisfactory replacement for the good public education governments should be providing.
Huge commercial publicity often tempts parents to opt for private schools in the expectation that their children will receive a better education. They believe that private schools are more efficient, & that competition improves outcomes.
However, such beliefs are rarely supported by evidence. The DfID study, for instance, suggests private schools do no better than state ones.
The cost of privatising education lies not just with school fees but also with the damage done to the public good. Fees, however small, hit the poorest & most vulnerable hardest. Sometimes, this means the oldest son receives an education while daughters stay at home. Inequalities in society grow when the poorest are excluded.
In the worst cases, corruption undermines the system. Headteachers may require special payments to accept students, & teachers may charge for private tutelage. We must constantly remind states of their obligation under human rights law to establish conditions & standards for private education providers, & of the need to maintain a transparent & effective system to monitor these standards, with sanctions for abusive practices.
Parents, community, teachers and students must be encouraged to speak out against the commercialisation of education, acting as vigilant observers & reporters of abusive practices. Governments must empower human rights institutions, watchdogs & other mechanisms to investigate alleged violations of the right to education.
I’m not saying traditional public schools are the only solution. Community schools, locally organised & run with state support, can meaningfully complement government efforts to provide education & are an alternative to privatisation.
Governments must face the education challenge head on. Investment in education must be prioritised, using at least 4% of GDP, & reform priorities should be established with assistance from civil society & international donors, development banks & the UN.
Leaving these challenges to the private sector may seem easier. But when we ask what kind of world we want, we do not say one for those who have, & another for those who don’t. Let’s not create education systems that promote inequality – there is enough of that already. The international development agenda must aim to eliminate private schools, not champion them.
Kishore Singh is the UN special rapporteur on the right to education.
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At the beginning of the new millennium, the international community made a commitment to achieve universal primary education for all boys & girls. Today, 15 years later, we find huge gaps between these commitments & reality.
Across the world, 58 million children still don’t have access to schools, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa & South Asia. Millions more fail to graduate, or fail to learn what they need to participate in society meaningfully.
Capitalising on the inability of governments to cope with rising demands on public learning, private education providers are mushrooming. I see this not as progress, but as an indictment of governments that have failed to meet their obligation to provide universal, free & high-quality education for all.
Education is not a privilege of the rich & well-to-do; it is the inalienable right of every child. The state must discharge its responsibility as guarantor & regulator of education as a fundamental human entitlement & as a public cause. The provision of basic education, free of cost, is not only a core obligation of states but also a moral imperative.
Privatisation cripples the notion of education as a universal human right & – by aggravating marginalisation & exclusion – runs counter to the fundamental principles of human rights law. It creates social inequity.
The admission policy in private schools is based on the ability to pay, & on the socio-economic background of parents. As a result, private schools lack the diversified system of learning & cultural plurality that is so necessary today. They promote market economy values rather than the humanist mission of education.
Disturbingly, some in the international community are pushing for greater privatisation in education. The World Bank, a longstanding supporter of the approach, has recently been joined by other international bodies. At the end of 2014, the African Development Bank, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the African Union commission, & the UN Development Programme released a report promoting increased private sector involvement in education. The study concluded that “Africa must build a vibrant private sector that supports the development of a dynamic primary education system”. This call has been echoed by some government officials in Africa & elsewhere.
In the 1980s & 90s, when developing countries first made significant cuts to their public health & education spending under structural adjustment, international financial institutions, along with the largest donors, promoted user fees & increased private sector service delivery. The World Bank’s current policy of encouraging & supporting profit-seeking multinationals that provide education is a matter of serious concern, given the devastating impact this strategy has on the right to education.
As a recent Oxfam briefing paper has suggested, governments should not allow low-fee private schools, & should restore education as an essential public service. As private education becomes big business, learning must be protected from the forces of privatisation.
According to a study on private education by the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID), a potentially very large number of low-fee private schools, which target poorer families in developing countries, are unregistered. These schools save costs by hiring ill-trained teachers & running large classes in substandard school buildings. Such “edu-businesses”, as they have come to be known, are an unsatisfactory replacement for the good public education governments should be providing.
Huge commercial publicity often tempts parents to opt for private schools in the expectation that their children will receive a better education. They believe that private schools are more efficient, & that competition improves outcomes.
However, such beliefs are rarely supported by evidence. The DfID study, for instance, suggests private schools do no better than state ones.
The cost of privatising education lies not just with school fees but also with the damage done to the public good. Fees, however small, hit the poorest & most vulnerable hardest. Sometimes, this means the oldest son receives an education while daughters stay at home. Inequalities in society grow when the poorest are excluded.
In the worst cases, corruption undermines the system. Headteachers may require special payments to accept students, & teachers may charge for private tutelage. We must constantly remind states of their obligation under human rights law to establish conditions & standards for private education providers, & of the need to maintain a transparent & effective system to monitor these standards, with sanctions for abusive practices.
Parents, community, teachers and students must be encouraged to speak out against the commercialisation of education, acting as vigilant observers & reporters of abusive practices. Governments must empower human rights institutions, watchdogs & other mechanisms to investigate alleged violations of the right to education.
I’m not saying traditional public schools are the only solution. Community schools, locally organised & run with state support, can meaningfully complement government efforts to provide education & are an alternative to privatisation.
Governments must face the education challenge head on. Investment in education must be prioritised, using at least 4% of GDP, & reform priorities should be established with assistance from civil society & international donors, development banks & the UN.
Leaving these challenges to the private sector may seem easier. But when we ask what kind of world we want, we do not say one for those who have, & another for those who don’t. Let’s not create education systems that promote inequality – there is enough of that already. The international development agenda must aim to eliminate private schools, not champion them.
Kishore Singh is the UN special rapporteur on the right to education.
DfID accused of heightening inequality through support for private sector
A great article highlighting how Department of International Development of UK is investing millions of aid money, in poor / developing countries, in private health & education projects. Although, the article is focused on UK's department of international development, I am very certain that Canadian, American, Australian, & other European countries' departments of international development use their aid money to invest in similar private projects in developing countries.
This way, not only, these countries show to the world & their own public that they are heavily investing aid money in developing countries. But what they don't show that that aid money is not actually helping any poor person but a few people are becoming rich with that aid money. This is evident in the end result of all these millions of aid money is still unable to fight poverty & millions of people in developing countries are further falling into poverty.
The article also confirms what I've been saying about Malala for quite a few years now. Malala is the poster child of private education industry. It's a huge industry on a worldwide scale. Education keeps getting unaffordable for the masses. But the society is being programmed to think that education is necessary if you want your descendants to do better economically (which is, in itself, is hogwash, since your network will get you a good job, not your education or qualifications).
Malala wants more & more girls to be educated in Pakistan. That, in itself, is a very noble idea. But, companies like, Pearson, has taken that noble idea & made it that more & more Pakistanis should get their kids (boys & girls) into education, which, is private education & not free & affordable public education. Private education businesses increase their businesses.
Private education is an exploitation business. When a poor family has only enough money to send a few kids to school, the sons are preferred over daughters. Is it fair? No. Is it necessary? Yes.
Sons in countries like India, Pakistan, China are considered bread winners for the family & will, most likely, take care of their old parents & their own families. Daughters, on the other hand, are married off to another family & will, most likely, cannot take care of their old parents.
The best way to provide affordable & quality education to ALL kids in the developing world is to provide them with FREE education; not private & fee-based, regardless of how low that fee is. If you are going to provide fee-based education, you are either going to exclude a large part of the public from ever accessing that education level or you need to uplift the economic conditions of the masses through jobs & livable wages.
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The UK government is driving inequality in the world’s poorest countries by “dogmatically” funding private sector health & education projects instead of using aid money to boost public systems, a report has said.
Rather than addressing the needs of the world’s poorest people, the Department for International Development’s (DfID) close relationship with the private sector is filling the pockets of big corporations, according to Profiting from poverty, again, a study published on Friday by the campaigning group Global Justice Now (GJN).
Nick Dearden, director of GJN, said: “Aid should be used to support human needs by building up public services in countries that don’t have the same levels of economic privilege as the UK. So it’s shocking that DfID is dogmatically promoting private health & education when it’s been shown that this approach actually entrenches inequality & endangers access.”
The report also questioned DfID’s appointment of Sir Michael Barber, a senior executive at Pearson, the world’s largest maker of textbooks & academic materials, as its chief advisor for education in Pakistan, saying it presented a conflict of interest. DfID oversees an ambitious £350m health & education programme in Pakistan & has partnered with Pearson on a project in Tanzania & Zimbabwe.
“It seems highly inappropriate that executives from a company like Pearson can be acting in an official capacity at DfID, while their company provides commercial services that would directly benefit from the type of decisions being taken by DfID,” Dearden said.
A DfID spokesman said: “We have firm policies in place to prevent any conflict of interest in our work.”
Pearson, which operates in more than 70 countries, launched its affordable learning programme in 2012. The initiative is a for-profit venture fund that uses capital investment “to help millions of children in the world access a quality education in a cost effective, profitable & scalable manner”, according to the company.
On Friday, a group of US, British & South African NGOs & teachers’ groups issued an open letter to John Fallon, Pearson’s CEO. The letter read: “By supporting the expansion of low-fee private schooling & other competitive practices, Pearson is essentially ensuring that a large number of the world’s most vulnerable children have no hope of receiving a free, quality education.”
The open letter was released on Friday to coincide with the company’s annual general meeting. It was signed by the American Federation of Teachers, the UK’s National Union of Teachers, the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union, the Association of Teachers & Lecturers, Action Aid UK & the National Education Association.
The UK has invested more heavily in private sector projects than other rich countries, drawing criticism from the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (Icai). “DfID often seems to behave more like a hedge fund [than an aid agency], investing capital alongside banking partners like JP Morgan,” GJN said.
DfID is working with companies including Coca-Cola, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) & Adam Smith International & is promoting the role of private sector partners in its biggest health & education projects, according to GJN.
The GJN report said DfID’s efforts to promote low-cost private schools in poor countries are “misplaced & dangerous”.
The Girls’ Education Challenge, a £355m DfID programme designed to get more girls in school, is managed by PwC & includes a partnership with Coca-Cola in Nigeria.
In Kenya, DfID has partnered with Adam Smith International in a £25m project that seeks to get 5,000 Kenyans enrolled in low-cost private schools.
DfID has also channelled millions of pounds into the harnessing non-state actors for better health for the poor (Hanshep) scheme, which promotes private sector investment in the health sectors of poor countries.
Kishore Singh, the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to education, is among those who have expressed reservations about private education. “I see [the growth of private education] not as progress, but as an indictment of governments that have failed to meet their obligation to provide universal, free & high-quality education for all,” said Singh.
A DfID spokesman said: “The UK strives to get the best possible outcomes for poor people & takes a pragmatic stance on how services should be delivered. In some circumstances (parts of India, Kenya, Nigeria & Pakistan, for example), this includes developing partnerships with low-fee private schools.
“DfID works with the private sector in situations where the public sector is not sufficiently present (the slums of Nairobi for example) or where state provision is so weak that the private sector has stepped in to fill the gap. Recognising that fees are still a major barrier to access for the poor, DfID’s support includes voucher schemes that subsidise access to low-fee private schools for the poorest.”
This way, not only, these countries show to the world & their own public that they are heavily investing aid money in developing countries. But what they don't show that that aid money is not actually helping any poor person but a few people are becoming rich with that aid money. This is evident in the end result of all these millions of aid money is still unable to fight poverty & millions of people in developing countries are further falling into poverty.
The article also confirms what I've been saying about Malala for quite a few years now. Malala is the poster child of private education industry. It's a huge industry on a worldwide scale. Education keeps getting unaffordable for the masses. But the society is being programmed to think that education is necessary if you want your descendants to do better economically (which is, in itself, is hogwash, since your network will get you a good job, not your education or qualifications).
Malala wants more & more girls to be educated in Pakistan. That, in itself, is a very noble idea. But, companies like, Pearson, has taken that noble idea & made it that more & more Pakistanis should get their kids (boys & girls) into education, which, is private education & not free & affordable public education. Private education businesses increase their businesses.
Private education is an exploitation business. When a poor family has only enough money to send a few kids to school, the sons are preferred over daughters. Is it fair? No. Is it necessary? Yes.
Sons in countries like India, Pakistan, China are considered bread winners for the family & will, most likely, take care of their old parents & their own families. Daughters, on the other hand, are married off to another family & will, most likely, cannot take care of their old parents.
The best way to provide affordable & quality education to ALL kids in the developing world is to provide them with FREE education; not private & fee-based, regardless of how low that fee is. If you are going to provide fee-based education, you are either going to exclude a large part of the public from ever accessing that education level or you need to uplift the economic conditions of the masses through jobs & livable wages.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The UK government is driving inequality in the world’s poorest countries by “dogmatically” funding private sector health & education projects instead of using aid money to boost public systems, a report has said.
Rather than addressing the needs of the world’s poorest people, the Department for International Development’s (DfID) close relationship with the private sector is filling the pockets of big corporations, according to Profiting from poverty, again, a study published on Friday by the campaigning group Global Justice Now (GJN).
Nick Dearden, director of GJN, said: “Aid should be used to support human needs by building up public services in countries that don’t have the same levels of economic privilege as the UK. So it’s shocking that DfID is dogmatically promoting private health & education when it’s been shown that this approach actually entrenches inequality & endangers access.”
The report also questioned DfID’s appointment of Sir Michael Barber, a senior executive at Pearson, the world’s largest maker of textbooks & academic materials, as its chief advisor for education in Pakistan, saying it presented a conflict of interest. DfID oversees an ambitious £350m health & education programme in Pakistan & has partnered with Pearson on a project in Tanzania & Zimbabwe.
“It seems highly inappropriate that executives from a company like Pearson can be acting in an official capacity at DfID, while their company provides commercial services that would directly benefit from the type of decisions being taken by DfID,” Dearden said.
A DfID spokesman said: “We have firm policies in place to prevent any conflict of interest in our work.”
Pearson, which operates in more than 70 countries, launched its affordable learning programme in 2012. The initiative is a for-profit venture fund that uses capital investment “to help millions of children in the world access a quality education in a cost effective, profitable & scalable manner”, according to the company.
On Friday, a group of US, British & South African NGOs & teachers’ groups issued an open letter to John Fallon, Pearson’s CEO. The letter read: “By supporting the expansion of low-fee private schooling & other competitive practices, Pearson is essentially ensuring that a large number of the world’s most vulnerable children have no hope of receiving a free, quality education.”
The open letter was released on Friday to coincide with the company’s annual general meeting. It was signed by the American Federation of Teachers, the UK’s National Union of Teachers, the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union, the Association of Teachers & Lecturers, Action Aid UK & the National Education Association.
The UK has invested more heavily in private sector projects than other rich countries, drawing criticism from the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (Icai). “DfID often seems to behave more like a hedge fund [than an aid agency], investing capital alongside banking partners like JP Morgan,” GJN said.
DfID is working with companies including Coca-Cola, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) & Adam Smith International & is promoting the role of private sector partners in its biggest health & education projects, according to GJN.
The GJN report said DfID’s efforts to promote low-cost private schools in poor countries are “misplaced & dangerous”.
The Girls’ Education Challenge, a £355m DfID programme designed to get more girls in school, is managed by PwC & includes a partnership with Coca-Cola in Nigeria.
In Kenya, DfID has partnered with Adam Smith International in a £25m project that seeks to get 5,000 Kenyans enrolled in low-cost private schools.
DfID has also channelled millions of pounds into the harnessing non-state actors for better health for the poor (Hanshep) scheme, which promotes private sector investment in the health sectors of poor countries.
Kishore Singh, the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to education, is among those who have expressed reservations about private education. “I see [the growth of private education] not as progress, but as an indictment of governments that have failed to meet their obligation to provide universal, free & high-quality education for all,” said Singh.
A DfID spokesman said: “The UK strives to get the best possible outcomes for poor people & takes a pragmatic stance on how services should be delivered. In some circumstances (parts of India, Kenya, Nigeria & Pakistan, for example), this includes developing partnerships with low-fee private schools.
“DfID works with the private sector in situations where the public sector is not sufficiently present (the slums of Nairobi for example) or where state provision is so weak that the private sector has stepped in to fill the gap. Recognising that fees are still a major barrier to access for the poor, DfID’s support includes voucher schemes that subsidise access to low-fee private schools for the poorest.”
Sunday, April 26, 2015
Academia has to stop eating its young
A great article on how education, enroute to becoming a business, is treating the core of its workers; educators, esp. non-tenured professors. Just like store workers in businesses, e.g. WalMart, McDonald's, Starbucks etc are paid minimum wage, non-tenured professors in Canadian & multitude of American post-secondary institutions are being paid peanuts & are hired on contracts, so they are also devoid of beefy benefits.
When these educators are treated as such, then why would they ever put so much effort to teach the next generation of students? How can education system become better when its providers are themselves financially insecure & are always worried about their contract renewals & wages? How will this affect the quality of the education in post-secondary institutions?
On the side note, Ontario just released its 2015 budget, & to come up with balanced budgets in 2017, provincial government is going to cut its funding to education & healthcare. This means universities will either increase tuition (higher prices for its customers; students) or decrease educators' expenses by lowering or keeping their wages constant (decreasing supplier costs), or perhaps doing both to increase their profit margins.
If this trend continues, which it seems like it will, the quality of education being provided by public universities will go down while private universities will start opening up (many are available in US) to provide higher quality of education. As I have blogged previously on many occasions that similar to healthcare, education will then become two-tiered, like it's in developing countries, e.g. in South Asia. Rich will send their kids to private universities, while poor will send their kids to public ones, which by the way, are still not that cheap & tuition keeps rising.
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In the long run, contract teaching needs to be abolished.
It’s not just the abysmal pay – roughly on the order of $7,500 per course with teaching load varying from 2 to 8 courses a year, usually falling somewhere in the lower middle – or the chronic uncertainty of pay-per-course four-month non-renewable contracts. It’s that contract faculty, no matter how highly qualified or dedicated they may be, are permanently consigned to the shadows of academia.
The job of contract faculty is to slip into the classroom, deliver the prescribed aliquot of education, & then slip out again. They may spend weeks or months creating course materials & teaching strategies, but too often, this knowledge simply vanishes with them as they take up the next dismal temp job & a new cohort of students begins from zero.
Needless to say, it’s a singular path. Contract faculty aren’t generally paid to develop or update courses, aren’t usually invited to sit on curriculum committees ... . They are mostly excluded from student & campus events unless they participate on a voluntary basis & they have no obvious prospect of career advancement, ever.
In the short term, creating what is essentially an academic underclass is probably a neat way to cut costs. In the long run, universities cannot function as vibrant hubs of intellectual activity when they are staffed in large part by a merry-go-round of temporary instructors who sometimes barely know their tenured peers or even each other.
At least part of the problem is that universities are torn by competing policy objectives.
On one hand, we recognize the value of a well-educated society; postsecondary institutions are swollen with record quantities of students & someone has to teach them. On the other, Canada is in hot pursuit of invention & innovation, & professors who excel at research are often rewarded with “teaching release” to enable them to produce more of it.
More research requires more graduate-level students – but once these bright young things have finished slogging out 4 to 6 years of laboratory or field work to gain their PhDs, what fate awaits them? Under the current regime, many are simply plowed directly back into the system as contract faculty, paid peanuts to teach mass quantities of undergraduates. And the cycle perpetuates – the profession feasts on its young.
... When you are paid for a minimum number of hours, why not do the minimum amount of work? Why bother reporting academic dishonesty when it takes unpaid time & untold effort? Why bother with interactive classroom technologies when reading PowerPoint slides aloud is just so much easier? Why pour untold hours into supporting troubled students who might reach out with problems ranging from drug addiction to sexual assault?
Finally, recall that in the absence of any other markers, contract faculty live & die by the student evaluation. Why bother ensuring that exams are challenging, rigorous & fair when it’s hardly a trade secret that the quickest way to ensure “student satisfaction” is simply to inflate their grades? The fact is that most contract faculty do bother, & the reason is quite simple: They are genuinely passionate educators. Without this passion to sustain them, most would have quit long ago.
To many, the resolution to this is a quick, painful death: Contract teaching should mostly cease to exist. Instructors cannot be treated as dispensable when they are clearly anything but.
Instead, universities should create a permanent roster of salaried teaching positions, resorting to contract faculty only when desperate. Institutions such as McMaster University & the University of Waterloo have already moved in this direction, having recognized that professors need time, resources & a modicum of security to deliver the continuity, relevance & attention to detail that world-class postsecondary instruction demands.
A great education isn’t meted & doled out by the hour, & great educators cannot exist in quarantine from the rest of the academic community.
When these educators are treated as such, then why would they ever put so much effort to teach the next generation of students? How can education system become better when its providers are themselves financially insecure & are always worried about their contract renewals & wages? How will this affect the quality of the education in post-secondary institutions?
On the side note, Ontario just released its 2015 budget, & to come up with balanced budgets in 2017, provincial government is going to cut its funding to education & healthcare. This means universities will either increase tuition (higher prices for its customers; students) or decrease educators' expenses by lowering or keeping their wages constant (decreasing supplier costs), or perhaps doing both to increase their profit margins.
If this trend continues, which it seems like it will, the quality of education being provided by public universities will go down while private universities will start opening up (many are available in US) to provide higher quality of education. As I have blogged previously on many occasions that similar to healthcare, education will then become two-tiered, like it's in developing countries, e.g. in South Asia. Rich will send their kids to private universities, while poor will send their kids to public ones, which by the way, are still not that cheap & tuition keeps rising.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the long run, contract teaching needs to be abolished.
It’s not just the abysmal pay – roughly on the order of $7,500 per course with teaching load varying from 2 to 8 courses a year, usually falling somewhere in the lower middle – or the chronic uncertainty of pay-per-course four-month non-renewable contracts. It’s that contract faculty, no matter how highly qualified or dedicated they may be, are permanently consigned to the shadows of academia.
The job of contract faculty is to slip into the classroom, deliver the prescribed aliquot of education, & then slip out again. They may spend weeks or months creating course materials & teaching strategies, but too often, this knowledge simply vanishes with them as they take up the next dismal temp job & a new cohort of students begins from zero.
Needless to say, it’s a singular path. Contract faculty aren’t generally paid to develop or update courses, aren’t usually invited to sit on curriculum committees ... . They are mostly excluded from student & campus events unless they participate on a voluntary basis & they have no obvious prospect of career advancement, ever.
In the short term, creating what is essentially an academic underclass is probably a neat way to cut costs. In the long run, universities cannot function as vibrant hubs of intellectual activity when they are staffed in large part by a merry-go-round of temporary instructors who sometimes barely know their tenured peers or even each other.
At least part of the problem is that universities are torn by competing policy objectives.
On one hand, we recognize the value of a well-educated society; postsecondary institutions are swollen with record quantities of students & someone has to teach them. On the other, Canada is in hot pursuit of invention & innovation, & professors who excel at research are often rewarded with “teaching release” to enable them to produce more of it.
More research requires more graduate-level students – but once these bright young things have finished slogging out 4 to 6 years of laboratory or field work to gain their PhDs, what fate awaits them? Under the current regime, many are simply plowed directly back into the system as contract faculty, paid peanuts to teach mass quantities of undergraduates. And the cycle perpetuates – the profession feasts on its young.
... When you are paid for a minimum number of hours, why not do the minimum amount of work? Why bother reporting academic dishonesty when it takes unpaid time & untold effort? Why bother with interactive classroom technologies when reading PowerPoint slides aloud is just so much easier? Why pour untold hours into supporting troubled students who might reach out with problems ranging from drug addiction to sexual assault?
Finally, recall that in the absence of any other markers, contract faculty live & die by the student evaluation. Why bother ensuring that exams are challenging, rigorous & fair when it’s hardly a trade secret that the quickest way to ensure “student satisfaction” is simply to inflate their grades? The fact is that most contract faculty do bother, & the reason is quite simple: They are genuinely passionate educators. Without this passion to sustain them, most would have quit long ago.
To many, the resolution to this is a quick, painful death: Contract teaching should mostly cease to exist. Instructors cannot be treated as dispensable when they are clearly anything but.
Instead, universities should create a permanent roster of salaried teaching positions, resorting to contract faculty only when desperate. Institutions such as McMaster University & the University of Waterloo have already moved in this direction, having recognized that professors need time, resources & a modicum of security to deliver the continuity, relevance & attention to detail that world-class postsecondary instruction demands.
A great education isn’t meted & doled out by the hour, & great educators cannot exist in quarantine from the rest of the academic community.
Saturday, April 18, 2015
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