Higher Ed Won't Practice What It Preaches

IN the U.S., part-time and adjunct professors are daily abused as cheap worker pawns by colleges and universities--institutions which expect these part-timers to meet the same course and classroom standards that full tenured professors meet, and expect part-timers to be subject to regular (quarterly or semesterly) student and teacher evaluations. Adjuncts now make up about half of all teachers in higher education.

So why does Higher Ed continue to treat adjuncts so badly? More importantly, why can't Professor Higher Ed practice what he preaches for others when it comes to expecting higher standards for society and culture? Turn the mirror on thyself, Prof. Higher Ed. You shall never accuse Wal-Mart of cheap labor.

Today on the radio, we'll be talking with David Creel, an adjunct at Chattanooga State (which is a local public two-year college that strangely enough pledges to be business-friendly and community-oriented but practices the opposite as an employer to hundreds of teachers).

Could it be that Prof. Higher Ed is full of BS, lost in a dreamland of liberal ideology, out of touch with reality?

While Prof. Higher Ed demands professional standards of part-timers, many of whom are better qualified with stronger expertise than tenured professors, he never seems ready to include or to assist the part-timers at Chattanooga State.

As a result, Chattanooga State (and UTC) have become mere shells of political correctness and liberal puffery, empty of any real power, overcome by their own hypocrisy.

Isn't it time for these institutions to live up to their own ideals?

Or break up completely?

College Caste System: Adjunct Slavery

It is shameful. It is a double standard. It uses Wal-Mart style cheapness under the guise of academic eliteness. This increasingly troubling trend in American colleges and universities is simply named: Adjunct Nation. And so it goes. Adjuncts now form the lowest level of university and college caste systems (for even college custodians get benefits while adjuncts do not). A book worth reading on this subject is Ghosts in the Classroom: Stories of College Adjunct Faculty by Michael Dubson (see image at left).

In our national urge to outsource, it is hard for universities and colleges to compete, unless we send students to faroff places for learning under less educated mentors. Since that is unworkable, American higher ed has decided to hire adjunct instructors on the cheap. This negative trend has gone so far that adjuncts now represent 45% to 60% of any university or college faculty. Yet adjuncts work the lion's share of courses (anywhere from 40% to 55%).

And this is happening here, in Chattanooga. Worse, adjuncts locally get paid a meager 35 cents or so on the dollar that full-timers receive. At Chattanooga State College, for instance, adjunct pay is one of the lowest in the country, a pay rate without any increase for over ten years.

This is not only a disgrace; this is a sin. It is morally reprehensible when university or college administrators and fulltime faculty members reject "equal pay for equal work" for their brothers and sisters doing the mule's work, passing nary a crumb along to those of us who keep their institutions open everyday. Without the adjuncts these days, no university or college would remain open. Nada.

Call this my "academic labor" dispute, but I am going to talk about it on the air today with an adjunct colleague of mine at Chattanooga State. His name is David Creel. David is an adjunct music instructor and a frequent violinist with the Chattanooga Symphony. To compensate for the absymally low adjunct pay, however, David began throwing a newspaper route.

Join me to talk with David about work and making it in America as an adjunct instructor.

Owning a Small Business ~ Ola Phipps of Lady Bug Exterminating, Inc.

Tune in tomorrow to WNOO (1260 AM) at 12:30 p.m. and listen to a conversation with a local business woman, Ola Phipps.

She is the owner and operator of Lady Bug Exterminating, Inc. If you don't know Ola Phipps by now, you can't miss her around Chattanooga. She drives a red Volkswagon Beetle with black polka dots, all of which suggest a mechanical ladybug. Ms. Phipps may be a ladybug of sorts herself, but she flies through Chattanooga ridding businesses and homes of those pesty bugs that could hurt our investments.

Ms. Phipps has 27 years experience in extermination and about 22 years running her own small exterminating business. We will talk about what exterminating is like and what it was like to go out on her own. I will ask Ms. Phipps to share her advice to anyone interested in starting a business. In Ola Phipps' case, she is an African-American woman who has been successful at business in the Chattanooga area (see her numerous awards and recognition HERE).

Pentagon on HIGH ALERT Concerning Predatory Lending!

This week the Center for Responsible Lending highlighted the Department of Defense's recommendations calling on Congress to lower the interest rates made to military personnel. The DOD wants a 36% cap on annual interest rates for loans to military borrowers. This cap would include extra fees and charges or products like credit insurance premiums. Adding to all the deaths and casualties currently suffered in Iraq, the DOD is also wrestling with predatory lending that negatively impacts 17% of miliatry service persons. This is good news~in that we need more pressure on legislators to curb predatory lending.

And local community activist Chuck Mehan agrees. He will be on the air Thursday, September 28, to talk with me about this major development and how predatory lending harms Tennesseans, especially seniors. Indeed, Mehan is the S.A.L.T. (Seniors And Law Enforcement Together) go-to guy in the City of East Ridge.

I'll ask Mehan about payday lending and title deed practices locally. Just last week, USA Today reported that "payday lending has become a $40 billion annual business (in loan volume) with more than 22,000 U.S. outlets, according to the Community Financial Services Association of America, the industry's trade group. By comparison, Starbucks has 8,624 U.S. locations and McDonald's about 14,000."

Unfortunately, getting a loan quickly often sounds too good to be true for people down on their luck. You get processed in 15 to 20 minutes with no credit checks. And bang, you're holding as much as $1,000 in your pretty little hand.

For years, predatory lenders ~ which include payday loan sharks, pawn shops, title deed lots, rent-to-own stores, and "refund anticipation loan" fronts ~ have done almost whatever they want in Tennessee and Georgia, gouging the low-income and elderly with outrageously high interest rates (from 300% to 1,000% annually). But that changed in Georgia 2004 and 2005, despite a strong challenge by out-of-state banking institutions supporting loan sharks.

According to the Center for Responsible Lending, the state of Georgia took legislative action and passed The Georgia Act which "caps small consumer loans at Georgia's small loan usury rate of 60 percent per year, adds stiff criminal and civil penalties for violators, and bars non-bank lenders from partnering with banks to avoid Georgia's usury laws."

We'll Tennessee have the courage to change our lending laws too?

Today~Gayle Swann Provides "A Helping Hand"

With gas prices above $2 per gallon and public transportation nonexistent in many smaller cities in the Greater Chattanooga area, some people are left without a way to get around or without someone to assist them. Especially seniors. Gayle Swann wants to help. Although she will not solve the bigger problem of public transportation, she is providing a service that will help make a dent in its absence.

Today at 12:30, on WNOO (1260 AM), I will interview Gayle Swann, just recently retired educator and now owner of a small business called A Helping Hand--a personalized transportation and assistance service for individuals (especially seniors) in the greater Chattanooga area. I'll talk with Gayle about her past work as a teacher and her present choice to transport and assist people, about raising a family and retiring to open her own business, and about her interest in helping seniors in our area.

Here's a plug for Gayle: If you know anyone needing transportation or help with grocery shopping or other tasks out and about, here are Gayle's business numbers are 423-622-2413 or 423-762-0715. I want to thank Gayle for agreeing to come on WNOO today with me.

ON THE AIR~John Bailes Hosts New Talk Show

I will host a new radio talk show reaching out to those who normally do not get heard. The show is called Work & Family and it will air on WNOO 1260 AM tomorrow.

Work & Family will air every Thursday at 12:30 - 1:00 p.m. The talk show will focus on working people and how they experience every day life--whether they be small business people, teachers, nurses, hotel or wait staff, janitors, etc. The show will explore how working people struggle or succeed at work and family, people who work one or two or three jobs, who own their home or rent, who have gone through a bankruptcy or made a bundle, who earn above or below a living wage, and who may or may not have health insurance.

I have invited one of my brothers as my first guest. My youngest brother, Scott Bailes, happens to be in Chattanooga on a short visit from Irapuato, Mexico. He is a missionary serving God in this Mexican city of a half-million people. I will ask my brother to share his thoughts on work and family in Mexico and how a better understanding of Mexico could lead Americans to a more humane immigration policy.