Contingency Project
A series of posts that make visible my research process on undergraduate education and faculty contingency.
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This next installment begins with my personal intellectual curiosity about big data, offers resources for using the Contingent Faculty Index, and concludes with a practical how-to about extracting data from pdf tables into csv format (for use in Excel, SPSS, Google Fusion Tables, etc.) How to Get a Humanist-Sociologist Excited about Big Data Wendy Hsu,…
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In this second installment of this open research process series I will more closely examine the 2006 data from the AAUP’s Contingent Faculty Index for what it has told us, how the data have been used, and what else the data can show. [Go to the beginning of the series on contingency] What the AAUP…
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My dissertation research focused on the obstacles that young aspiring musicians faced as the labor market shifted away from formal institutions toward contingent and freelance action supported by emergent technology. As a former adjunct, labor sociologist, and faculty support professional, I have become obsessed with the parallel forces I’m observing in higher education and how…
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I’m currently working with a data set from the Adjunct Project that began from a simple, brilliant, idea – use social media to ask adjunct faculty input their pay and benefits into a collective Google Spreadsheet. Over a couple of weeks the spreadsheet was populated with nearly 2000 responses, providing up to date information from…
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Check out this Google Doc where adjuncts across the US are compiling data on what they make, whether they have contracts, and whether they have benefits and retirement. Super creative use of digital media to gather important data cheaply and quickly. Kudos and thanks to Copy-Paste for building our knowledge of the labor conditions adjuncts…
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The Coalition on the Academic Workforce is an organization that seeks to understand and address problems related to contingent labor in higher education. They are currently conducting a survey that will provide better, more nuanced data on working conditions and benefits. As the AAUP newsletter describes: Most of the data on the working conditions of…
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Higheredjobs.com recently posted an interview with Cathee Johnson Phillips of the National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) about the current state of post-doctoral researchers. Postdoctoral positions have been increasing since the 1970s (though Phillips predicts a dip in 2011 due to the recession) and post-docs have struggled to gain recognition as a class of workers. Post-doc positions…
jacob alden sargent 