Read on Twitter
1) I& #39;m seeing lots of angry replies to this extremely ill-conceived proposal, and many such replies are some version of & #39;but what about the faculty??& #39; 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">https://twitter.com/Phil_Baty...
2) The author& #39;s claim is that its *worth* reducing academic labor to a & #39;gig economy& #39; because of the benefits to students and employers. Well, for one, the benefit to employers can be waved away. A university doesn& #39;t exist for itself or its admin, it exists for its students.
3) So the & #39;benefits the employer& #39; bit is just circular reasoning fit for the circular filing cabinet. Benefit to the employer is only a rationale if it& #39;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& #39;ll see the proposal here is limited to temp. faculty contracts for teaching 1-year master& #39;s programs. There& #39;s no discussion in this piece of staffing an entire college or university in the proposed way. ...
5) That& #39;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& #39;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& #39;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 & #39;keeping up in a fast-paced, globalized world& #39; 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& #39;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 & #39;labor supply& #39; point to be made here ...
10) This model sings the virtues of casualization and gig-work, but note that by the author& #39;s own admission it relies *entirely* on the same old model of & #39;home institution& #39; faculty stability:
11) In other words, it& #39;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& #39;s like saying & #39;volunteerism is the way forward, all we need is government-backed universal basic income...& #39;
12) What I& #39;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) & #39;Universities could develop collaborative one-year master& #39;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& #39;s teaching sabbatical.& #39;
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& #39;ll leave it at that. /end
