From the Archive: Rumpus Original Fiction: No Good
The sounds that she would expect here are entirely absent. There are no cries, no weeping. Just soothing, muffled tones.
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Posts Tagged: university
Imbalance of Power
In a powerful essay at The Toast, Katie Rose Guest Pryal shares her story of fearing being kicked out of her graduate program after rejecting her professor’s sexual advances: I was truly terrified—all of my hard work and all of my student loans, they would be for nothing. He had all of the power, and I […]
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Taking Comfort in Futurama
I’m a comfort watcher… I retreat into the worlds I know well, with characters that are friends, with outcomes I already understand.
...moreGOP Candidate Would Censor Free Speech at Universities
Tenured professors might soon be a thing of the past, and that could prove particularly frightening if one Republican presidential candidate gets a hold of the Department of Education. Tenure protections were created in order to foster original thinking on university campuses and protect academic researchers from censorship. But a Ben Carson presidency would see […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Sean Bernard
Sean Bernard talks about the placid, annoying heaven of his debut novel, Studies in the Hereafter, why he’s both optimistic and cynical about human nature, and the difference between writing short stories and a novel.
...moreThe Adjunct Crisis
Nearly a third of all adjunct college faculty live below the poverty line. But its not just low pay that make these jobs miserable: lack of job security, long hours, and the expectation of filling roles that were once tenured, full-time positions. The Atlantic takes a look at the growing crisis on the university campus.
...moreProfits Over Integrity
Universities have spent the last several decades expanding the number of adjunct professors they hire, reducing full-time faculty and paying pauper’s wages to these part-time employees. Samuel Hazo explains how cutting full-time faculty is a disservice to academics in the pursuit of profits: However, the recent trend toward hiring adjunct teachers and professors, competent though […]
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Reading Don Quijote with My Mother
“That’s the anthem I would have sung at my original graduation if the university had stayed open,” my mother said.
...morePart-Time Faculty Are Poor
Writers expecting to supplement their art by teaching college level courses might need to find a new day job. A quarter of all part-time college faculty receive some sort of public assistance, reports Slate. Those numbers include Medicaid and nutrition assistance (better known as food stamps). Though other occupations like fast-food workers still have higher […]
...moreProfessors Are the Canary in the Coal Mine
Though plenty of adjunct professors still teach students, the full-time, tenured, middle-class professor position is nearing extinction. Adjunct professors are paid at wages below the poverty line while the costs of the career—attending conferences, performing research, accessing academic databases—continue to rise. Sarah Kendzior at AlterNet explains why underpaid adjunct faculty is a sign of a greater problem: […]
...moreAdjunct Faculty Plan Walk Out
Adjunct college faculty are at last taking a stand against abominable work conditions and low pay by planning a national walk out on February 25, 2015. Unlike their tenured counterparts, adjuncts lack protection from retributive firing should they follow through. Since 1975, the percent of adjunct faculty has risen from 21% of the workforce to […]
...moreBookless Libraries
Florida Polytechnic University has just opened, in a building designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, a completely bookless library. Available to all the students is a catalog of 135,000 e-books that can be consulted in an impressive, completely empty room equipped with internet connections and librarians to help the students.
...moreTextbooks That Spy
Technology might have made studying and homework faster and easier, but thanks to CourseSmart, a new digital textbook system that tracks students’ reading progress, teachers will now have a way to see who is skimming and who is skipping chapters in their textbooks. There is a lot of controversy over the new system, and academics […]
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