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?