Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education - Softcover

Berry, Joe

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1583671293 ISBN 13: 9781583671290

Publisher: Monthly Review Press, 2005

Synopsis

Reclaiming the Ivory Tower examines the situation of adjunct professors in U.S. higher education today, describes the process of organizing them to improve their conditions of work, and puts forward an agenda around which adjunct labor can mobilize and transform the universities.

In the last twenty years, higher education in the United States has been eroded by massive reliance on temporary academic labor—professors without tenure or prospect of tenure, without benefits, working without offices or research assistance, often commuting between several campuses, and paid a fraction of the salaries of the tenured colleagues. Contingent faculty now constitutes the majority of faculty at U.S. colleges and universities.

Analyzing the changing composition of the academic workforce, assessing the strength of new organizing initiatives among adjuncts, and weighing up their strategic options, this is the most comprehensive and engaged account to date of an issue that will become increasingly important for the future of higher education in the United States and in the global context.

About this title

About the Author:

Joe Berry teaches labor education and history at the University of Illinois and Roosevelt University in Chicago and chairs the Chicago Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor.

About this edition

• Publisher: Monthly Review Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1583671293
• ISBN 13: 9781583671290
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160