Top Ten Ways Academia and Stand-Up Comedy are Secretly the Same Job
10. You basically have to take any paid gig you can get (beggars can’t be choosers!) 9. Unusually high rates of anxiety and depression among your peers 8. Constant pressure to write new material 7....
View ArticleUniversities should be employing surplus PhDs–as administrative staff.
Of the many criticisms I hear levelled at the current state of higher education, I would say that the following four are among the most frequent: The current reliance on contingent faculty rather than...
View ArticleSorry Bernie – Tuition free college can’t ever come back!
In the not too distant past, your average college student could get a degree in four years and walk away with no debt from almost every public university. Whatever the costs where, they could be...
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A First Year as a Professor, in GIFs
A little over a year ago, I accepted a tenure track position at a small college in New England. I was… thrilled. I was really blown away by the school visit and it felt really… comfortable. I did my...
View ArticleFOIA Abuse Could Become a Serious Problem for Academics
Academics take heed: if you are employed by a public university, the contents of your email account are subject to the Freedom of Information Act. This means activists, critics, or any member of the...
View Article“Syllabus Day” Happens for a Reason
It’s Back-to-School season again, also known to educators as time for classroom-management think pieces, syllabus guides, curricular critiques, and ritual lamentations for summer to make their yearly...
View ArticleEvaluating the Sokal Hoax Twenty Years Later
Twenty years ago, in May 1996 (okay, twenty years and four months—sue me), Alan Sokal, a physicist at with appointments at the University College London and New York University, published a...
View ArticlePrecarious Academic Employment and Material Goods Do Not Mix
This week is Fair Employment Week in Canada. It’s an annual event put on by the Canadian Association of University Teachers and their provincial counterparts to raise awareness of the precarious work...
View ArticleTowards a Campus Activism Reading List
Last month, I was reading an article written by (or at least attributed to) the Canadian columnist Margaret Wente entitled “The radicals have taken over: Academic extremism comes to Canada.” It’s a...
View ArticleSelling and Promoting Alternative Medicine Around Campus
There is a lot that is wrong in the world today, and this is far from the worst problem. But it has been bugging me for several months now: my old university sells homeopathic medicine in its...
View ArticleLook to Labor Law to Solve Student Association Conflicts
A few years ago, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported that the University of Windsor was withholding the health and dental insurance money that it collects on behalf of the University of...
View ArticleWho is this music for, anyway?
Not long ago I was talking to a colleague of mine who was teaching an undergraduate course on early music, which is the term academics generally use to refer to Western European art music from before...
View ArticleInexhaustive List of Jobs not Received with a Humanities PhD
Inexhaustive List of Jobs not Received with a Humanities PhD from a “World Class” University Assistant Professor at a University (37) One-Year Visiting Professor at a University (6) Adjunct Lecturer at...
View ArticleGender Studies “Hoax” Shockingly Reveals Scammy Vanity Journals Will Publish...
When Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay published their recent hoax article “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct” in the journal Cogent Social Sciences, they clearly thought they had just...
View ArticleOn the Market VII: Job Candidates Are People Too
Another year, another job season. Sigh. I’ve been on the market for several years now, and regular readers may remember that in that time I have applied to many, many, many jobs. The positions I’ve...
View ArticleRequired Reading, 5 March 2018
Just one today, because it is Important. Ron Srigley, “Whose University is it Anyway?” LA Review of Books, Feb 22, 2018. — On another note, you may be noticing some visual changes across the Skepchick...
View Article*Out of Office Response* Re: quick question?
Dear [STUDENT], Thank you for writing me with your question about [COURSE]. I am currently out of the office because I am contingent faculty and do not have an office. This automated response email is...
View ArticleAnd so It Has Come to This
Southern Illinois University has finally taken the step that we all knew was coming, whether we openly admitted it to ourselves or not. The progression was too obvious, the market forces in question...
View ArticleSIU Zero-time Adjunct Follow-up
[Update to the update: SIU has posted a statement on the programme here. As it essentially confirms my suspicions that it is designed to steal soft academic labour from new PhDs by trading on their...
View ArticleSoD is back in business!
Hello everyone! Many apologies for my long absence, but things got a little busy for me when I went back to school (yes, again) to actually officially study Higher Education! The upside for you, dear...
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