Planes, Trains, and well, Planes and Trains and Economics

This blog has posts on economics of college education, featuring several posts on a faculty strike at University of Illinois, Chicago.

Faculty posts used to portend at least a solid middle class life: perhaps picket fence for the small bungalow and wife.  Sure, you might make big bank at Harvard and the Ivies but the rest have become another path to middle class prosperity ruined by these know nothing idiots; since they think science behind global climate change a fraud and embrace creationism rather rhan evolution, whither science teaching in universities and high schools and for profit colleges?  Then these ignoramuses wonder why the US lags behind the world in science education like arsonists with a gas can and blue tip matches to hand asking "who started the fire."

Since the Republican'ts and their austerity slashing of budgets in every state governement they control means tenure has become a cruel dream for indentured grad students and teaching assistants abd overworked adjuncts who have to flog their cars from jr colleger to jr college to teach a calss hither and yon.

Tenure, quoth the Republican'ts, nevermore.

You'd think the Republican'ts, wrapped in the US flag as they so choose, would show a sense of public education as a public service and good for the commonweal.  Instead, they bank boatloads of bucks in contributions from for profit colleges that entice young people with the American Dream to sign up for expensive and useless college classes, "...Since the largest for-profit schools spend about 20 percent of their total revenue on advertising and recruitment..." All those damn teevee ads, even at 4am, cost mucho dinero.

So we have college faculty on strike at University of Illinois at Chicago.

[Hundreds of faculty members and supporters formed picket lines, marching through campus for much of the day while holding signs like "Faculty working conditions = student learning conditions."

Organizers said they planned the two-day strike and picket to draw attention to contract negotiations between the university and a union that represents about 1,150 full-time tenured and nontenured faculty members.]
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-uic-strike-met-0219-20140219,0,4130958.story

So come with me and look at the dark underbelly of modern higher education:
[College professor?

Not the kind of professor that makes hundreds of thousands of dollars for teaching one class a year but a broke-ass adjunct who makes hundreds of dollars for teaching thousands of classes a year. The other day I read an article about an adjunct who died in a homeless shelter and I wasn’t surprised; panhandlers make triple, and trust me, I’ve done the research, I should be looking for a corner to set up shop.

I have a little more than my friends but still feel their pain. My equation for survival is teaching at three colleges, substituting, freelance Web designing, freelance graphic designing, rap video director, wedding photographer and tutor —  the proceeds from all of these are swallowed by my mortgage, cigarettes, rail vodka and Ramen noodles. I used to eat only free-range organic shit, I used to live in Whole Foods, I used to drink top shelf — I used to be able to afford pop culture.]
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/05/too_poor_for_pop_culture/



http://coldspringshops.blogspot.com/2014/01/redefining-rolling-tenement.html