Time Schedule:
Charles W Bergquist
POL S 447
Seattle Campus
Selected comparative political problems, political institutions, processes, and issues in comparative perspective. Strongly recommended: POL S 204.
Class description
Description. This course examines current efforts to make higher education more "efficient" and "cost effective." These efforts include the application of computer-driven technologies to the research and teaching functions of the university The new technologies have grave implications for the ways people who labor in universities, especially faculty and students, do their work and relate to one another. They also appear to have serious financial implications. In recent decades, the cost of a university education has skyrocketed, yet faculty salaries have stagnated. Meanwhile, the percentage of non-tenured instructors (including graduate students) in higher education has mushroomed, and the percentage of tenured faculty enjoying job security and health and retirement benefits has steadily declined. Given these trends, it is not surprising that in recent years staff members, graduate students, and faculty at colleges and universities around the nation have mounted unprecedented struggles to organize themselves into unions. College administrators, both public and private, have resisted union organizing through a variety of legal and extra-legal means. They argue that the university is different from other work places, that teachers are different from other workers, and that the problems teachers face are fundamentally different from those confronting other workers, especially the blue-collar workers usually associated with the labor movement. This course examines all of these issues, and challenges, in particular, the idea that the crisis facing the university and those who work in it today is fundamentally different from those faced historically by workers in other sectors of the economy. The course features a week of instruction by David Noble, perhaps the foremost student of labor and technological change in the 20th Century United States. Noble has recently turned his attention to the study of technological change and the crisis of the university and is currently at work on a book entitled, "Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Education." An early version of his argument, made available last year on the internet, caused a virtual sensation. Noble's lectures will be complemented by talks by visiting unionists from industries that have faced similar technological challenges, and by discussion of classic works in the social sciences and history that deal with the issue of technological change and workers' response.
Student learning goals
General method of instruction
Recommended preparation
Class assignments and grading
Assignments. Students are expected to read and critique assigned books and readings and research and write a short paper on an issue raised in the course.
