Read on Twitter
1) I'm seeing lots of angry replies to this extremely ill-conceived proposal, and many such replies are some version of 'but what about the faculty??' Nobody cares about the faculty. The author waves away the objection. Below I answer the argument on its own terms ... https://twitter.com/Phil_Baty/status/1265896483565469697
2) The author's claim is that its *worth* reducing academic labor to a 'gig economy' because of the benefits to students and employers. Well, for one, the benefit to employers can be waved away. A university doesn't exist for itself or its admin, it exists for its students.
3) So the 'benefits the employer' bit is just circular reasoning fit for the circular filing cabinet. Benefit to the employer is only a rationale if it's also a benefit to the institutional mission, to the students. This proposal is bad for students.
4) If you read the article and not just the headline, you'll see the proposal here is limited to temp. faculty contracts for teaching 1-year master's programs. There's no discussion in this piece of staffing an entire college or university in the proposed way. ...
5) That's because such a way of staffing entire institutions is on its face unworkable. Even institutions that rely on 50% adjunct labor have to find clever ways to lie to prospective students about it. If *student demand* is your model, students simply won't choose ...
6) ...a program of 3-4 years (UK/US) in which their intro. to econ. professor is gone by the time they take microeconomics; in which no one can ever write a reference letter; in which courses are never improved because never developed iteratively; and so on.
7) Students will also avoid institutions that treat faculty as temp. workers because temp. workers don't get the resources (dedicated office, research funds, lab space, travel budget, etc.) to do cutting-edge research. ...
8) So there goes the argument for 'keeping up in a fast-paced, globalized world' or whatever. Innovation in knowledge work happens because of good resources for research and teaching, not in spite of them.
9) This is all to say that the proposed model, even for a 1-year master's program, would be terrible *for students*, even if you think faculty are human trash and should be treated as such. But there is a relevant 'labor supply' point to be made here ...
10) This model sings the virtues of casualization and gig-work, but note that by the author's own admission it relies *entirely* on the same old model of 'home institution' faculty stability:
11) In other words, it's only possible if it can draw star faculty from their stable, well-paid, well-resourced jobs as prestigious visitors for a term or a year. It's like saying 'volunteerism is the way forward, all we need is government-backed universal basic income...'
12) What I'm suggesting here is that there was actually an intellectually honest way to write this article, to make a similar proposal; that is, without taking a totally mundane idea and dressing it up as hardcore Fordist pornography. That argument would run roughly as follows:
13) 'Universities could develop collaborative one-year master's programs by bringing together leading experts in a field from around the world and buying the out of their home institution contracts for a year's teaching sabbatical.'
14) There are other problems with the proposal, including the hubris of thinking one can predict demand and innovation, even in the short-term. But I'll leave it at that. /end
