How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation

by Marc Bousquet, Cary Nelson

Overview

Uncovers the labor exploitation occurring in universities across the country

As much as we think we know about the modern university, very little has been said about what it's like to work there. Instead of the high-wage, high-profit world of knowledge work, most campus employees—including the vast majority of faculty—really work in the low-wage, low-profit sphere of the service economy. Tenure-track positions are at an all-time low, with adjuncts and graduate students teaching the majority of courses. This super-exploited corps of disposable workers commonly earn fewer than $16,000 annually, without benefits, teaching as many as eight classes per year. Even undergraduates are being exploited as a low-cost, disposable workforce.

Marc Bousquet, a major figure in the academic labor movement, exposes the seamy underbelly of higher education—a world where faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates work long hours for fast-food wages. Assessing the costs of higher education's corporatization on faculty and students at every level, How the UniversityWorks is urgent reading for anyone interested in the fate of the university.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814799741
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	01/01/2008
Series:	Cultural Front , #3
Pages:	281
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 9.00(d)

About the Author

Marc Bousquet is Associate Professor of English at Santa Clara Universityand the founding editor of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor. His previous books include Tenured Bosses and Disposable Teachers and The Politics of Information: The Electronic Mediation of Social Change.

Cary Nelson is Jublilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is also the national president of the American Association of UniversityProfessors (AAUP). Among his twenty-five books are Manifesto of a Tenured Radical (also published by NYU) and the landmark coedited collection Cultural Studies.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Foreword: Resistance Is Not Futile
Cary Nelson
1 Introduction: Your Problem Is My Problem
2 The Informal Economy of the “Information University”
3 The Faculty Organize, But Management Enjoys Solidarity
4 Students Are Already Workers
5 Composition as Management Science
6 The Rhetoric of “Job Market” and the Reality of the Academic Labor System
Appendix A: Yeshiva University
“Justice Brennan, Dissenting”
Appendix B: Brown University
“Liebman and Walsh, Dissenting”
Notes
Works Cited
Index
About the Authors

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

This is an extraordinarily important book, buttressed with a tremendous amount of convincing detail."-Regional Labor Review,

"Bousquet serves up a stinging indictment of those universities that exploit their students from the moment they set foot on campus. . . . [He] reveals the dystopia that the contemporary university has become."

-The Minnesota Review,

“Bousquet takes an uncompromising look at the way colleges employ those who teach - and how many professors have done nothing as tenured positions have been replaced with adjunct slots.”

-Inside Higher Ed,

“Marc Bousquet's How the University Works should be required reading for anyone with an interest in the future of higher education, including administrators, faculty members, graduate students, and—even more significantly—undergraduates and their parents.”

-Thomas Hart Benton,The Chronicle of Higher Education

“How the University Works is a serious wake-up call for the entire profession, and, based on what I overheard at the [2007 MLA] book fair, Bousquet is about to emerge as the Al Gore of higher education.”

-Thomas Hart Benton,The Chronicle of Higher Education

Editorial Reviews

"Bousquet takes an uncompromising look at the way colleges employ those who teachand how many professors have done nothing as tenured positions have been replaced with adjunct slots."

Inside Higher Ed

Bousquet takes an uncompromising look at the way colleges employ those who teach—and how many professors have done nothing as tenured positions have been replaced with adjunct slots.”-Inside Higher Ed

From the Publisher

"Bousquet serves up a stinging indictment of those universities that exploit their students from the moment they set foot on campus. . . . [He] reveals the dystopia that the contemporary university has become."

The Minnesota Review

"How the UniversityWorks primarily focuses on the current issues faced by humanities and other departments in higher education. Still, this text is an invaluable source for anyone involved in postsecondary studies."

Labor Studies Journal

"How the UniversityWorks is a serious wake-up call for the entire profession, and, based on what I overheard at the [2007 MLA] book fair, Bousquet is about to emerge as the Al Gore of higher education."

The Chronicle of Higher Education - Thomas Hart Benton