The Cost of Independence in Higher Education

This is basic rationale and costing for an academic practice in philosophy.  The practitioner is not an employee of an institution such as a university or college, but rather an entrepreneur of higher education.

It is prima facie evidence that universities and colleges, substantial government funding and union representation are not required for ample access to affordable quality undergraduate humanities education.

Higher Education in the Social Economy

This is naked thinking on systemic reform aimed at moving higher education from the capitalist to the social economy. It discusses use of the existing co-operative service model as a plausible global strategic response to the crisis in higher education, with some notes on integrating elements of the professional service model.

Real Academics and Virtual Education

To protect their service, students and vocation, academics must better assert themselves as a unique and valued class of labour – independent of institutional employ. One of the pressing reasons we must do this is the rapid expansion of electronic education in all its dimensions and forms, including MOOCs, course sales, and virtual institutions.

Unions cannot protect labour if in response to economic and technical realities institutional employers and governments must (or simply choose to) alter the means of production and thereby eliminate or erode faculty (and other) employee positions.

The Right to Earn a Living in a System with Free Higher Education: Part 2

The first part of this extended argument combines a basic maxim of rights with advantages of the professional service paradigm to show that continued use of the triad is a violation of the unenumerated right of academics to earn a living.

This leg focuses on the positive nature of enumerated rights articled in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the United Nations International Declaration of Human Rights.

Canada, France, Germany, India, the UK and US have ratified these rights documents. These and other signatories who use the triad stand in breach of two articles with explicit reference to higher education:

The Right to Earn a Living in a System with Free Higher Education: Part 1

There are two human rights related here in argument, one enumerated the other not. The first is the much debated unenumerated right to earn a living. The other is the less publicized but recognized right to free higher education.

The current system violates both without excuse. These violations prevent academics from earning a living in a higher education system free of tuition or public expense. 

The Cost to Employ Presidents Is Not Fundamental

With higher education in a cash crisis there is predictable interest in the total cost to employ California State University (and other) presidents. The corporate caricature of CEO extravagance and employee sacrifice is now a looming reality for the entire civil enterprise. While other labour is routinely exploited, the average base salary of a university president has climbed to over five times that of faculty.

Pause for a moment.  This intense, almost frantic concern with the cost of presidents is a stinky red herring.