COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on the world of higher education: forced campus reopenings have pushed many directly into harm’s way; colleges and universities have suffered massive budget shortfalls; some institutions have closed permanently; the academic job market has been blown up; etc. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, “the U.S. Labor Department has estimated that American academic institutions have shed a net total of at least 650,000 workers.”
This week, we talk to Aaron Major, associate professor of Sociology at the State University of New York (SUNY), Albany, and president of the Albany chapter of United University Professions, the nation’s largest higher education union. We talk about Aaron’s path to higher ed and the academic labor movement, and we discuss how COVID-19 has revealed the brokenness of our higher education system, as well as the need to reinvest in higher ed as a public good and to raise the floor for all campus workers.
Additional links/info below…
- Aaron’s faculty page
- United University Professions (national) website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
- United University Professions – Albany Chapter website and Twitter page
- Aaron Major, Times Union, “Commentary: State Must Restore Meaningful Funding to SUNY System“
- Aaron Major, Stanford University Press, “Architects of Austerity: International Finance and the Politics of Growth“
- Dan Bauman, The Chronicle of Higher Education, “A Brutal Tally: Higher Ed Lost 650,000 Jobs Last Year“
- Ed Burmila, The Chronicle Review, “First They Came for Adjuncts, Now They’ll Come for Tenure (And Who Will Be Left to Stop Them?)“
- Rebecca Kolins Givan, The Chronicle Review, “Will the University That Survives Have Been Worth Saving?“
- Maximillian Alvarez, The Chronicle Review, “On a Knife’s Edge: Four Professors Debate the Erosion of Faculty Power and the Fight for the Future of Higher Education“
Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)
- Jules Taylor, “Working People Theme Song”
- Laurie Johnson – “Happy Go Lively ” – Voicemail Song
- Man Bites Dog, “College Rock”
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