Category: Work
The Cascading Labor Market of Underemployment
| May 2, 2013 | Posted by Josh Boldt under Adjunct Professors, Education, Graduate School, Teaching, Work |
Tomorrow, when the monthly unemployment numbers come out, we’ll learn that the underemployment and unemployment rates remain relatively high. Big surprise there. According to the latest Freakonomics podcast on NPR’s Marketplace, there’s a new theory for why the high unemployment rate persists. Apparently, we’re getting hit with the side effects of a trend that began over a…
The Creative Work Conundrum
| April 24, 2013 | Posted by Josh Boldt under Arts & Humanities, Work, Writing |
The problem with creative work is it usually fails. Creatives spend hours and hours on projects that almost always crash and burn. Just about every project started by a creative professional will end in disappointment. It’s demoralizing. It’s depressing. It’s draining. Worse yet, when a creative doesn’t succeed, he doesn’t get paid. All those hours…
Conspicuous Consumption in Education
| April 18, 2013 | Posted by Josh Boldt under Education, Work |
As consumers, we’re often willing to pay more for something due to its perceived value than we are for its tangible value. The value this purchase confers upon us as the consumer, in this case, is greater than the value of the currency used to purchase it. In this type of exchange, often referred to…
The Teacher-Run School: Coming to a City Near You
| April 15, 2013 | Posted by Josh Boldt under Adjunct Professors, Education, Politics, Teaching, Work |
This idea of the “teacher-run school” has been popping up lately and I’m liking it. In our weekly newsletter, #EdFriday, we featured a Pittsburgh educational cooperative that’s bypassing the high cost of learning by reducing wasteful overhead and expensive administrators. And just this morning I read an article about another potential teacher-run school being considered…
If This, Then That: The “Quit Your Job” Edition
| April 11, 2013 | Posted by Josh Boldt under Activism, Adjunct Professors, Education, Politics, Work |
If you don’t make enough money to buy groceries and put gas in your car, then quit your job. If your student loan payment is more than a fourth of your monthly income, then quit your job. If you’ve been making the exact same salary for the past decade, then quit your job. If you…
Three Opinions About the Affordable Care Act
| April 4, 2013 | Posted by Hazel M. under Activism, Adjunct Professors, Politics, Work |
I can’t let the Affordable Care Act and its impending effect on adjunct professors go unmentioned here. Everyone is writing about it, so I’m not going to try and rehash the same old stuff. The Chronicle of Higher Education has covered it in detail and over at the Adjunct Project, an accounting professor named Ken Ryesky provided a…
You Can’t Be Anything You Want to Be
| April 1, 2013 | Posted by Josh Boldt under Education, Teaching, Work, Writing |
You can’t be anything you want to be. Most of us grew up hearing a repetitive mantra: “You can be anything you want to be.” All through my childhood I can remember being told this in school by teacher after teacher. Even as a kid, I was skeptical of it. By the time I reached…
Dear Adjuncts: If You Don’t Like it, Change it.
| March 21, 2013 | Posted by Hazel M. under Activism, Adjunct Professors, Education, Politics, Work |
Sometimes I wonder if adjunct professors aren’t just banging their heads against a brick wall. This past year, the adjunct labor battle has been covered at least cursorily by almost every major news outlet in the country, but will anything actually change? My fellow writer at Order of Education, Josh Boldt, has been heavily involved…
American Wealth Distribution Exposed on Viral Video
| March 5, 2013 | Posted by Josh Boldt under Politics, Work |
I want to share with you this really interesting viral video on wealth distribution in the American economy. We’ve probably all heard these statistics before, but something about this visual representation of them makes the contrast all the more striking. Which explains why this video is spreading quickly throughout the social media channels. When I…
Master’s is the new Bachelor’s
| February 28, 2013 | Posted by Josh Boldt under Adjunct Professors, Education, Work |
If everyone knows a secret, it’s not a secret. If everyone holds the same competitive advantage, it’s not a competitive advantage. If everyone has a bachelor’s degree to distinguish them in the job market, it’s not a distinguishment. And that’s a phenomenon economists now call “degree inflation.” Everyone is supposed to go to college these…
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