Rebel Girl asks: how and why has this been allowed to happen?

     INSPIRED by a recent comment on the blog ("Has hiring at IVC kept apace with growth?") and the general malaise about future hires at IVC (One hears 15, 12 and even the number 4 bandied about in the hallways), Rebel Girl devoted her Sunday morning to watching a recently released short documentary, Why We Need More Full-time English Faculty.

     Produced by the School of Humanities and Languages, filmed by avant-garde cinematographer Sonja Bangston (Check out those shadows! Shades of Indonesian shadow puppetry!) and starring the Department of English's own Professor Lewis Long (rodeo cowboy, Porsche enthusiast, Dickens scholar, union thug and master of the negotiating table), this short film offers a damning case study of how 15 years of systematic under-hiring in the face of the otherwise steady growth of the small college in the orange groves has affected one department. Some critics liken it to the Academy Award-winning documentaries Harlan County U.S.A. and Godzilla Eats the Accreditation Team. The ghost of IVC's Voice raves: "It's powerful, provocative, exciting and frightening—because it's real." 

     In a series of simple yet effective PowerPoint stills, Long presents a case rooted in history and statistics—in other words, reality and not, say, unannounced and inexplicable helicopter visitations, photo-opular security stipends, and nepotism most foul.

     THE BRUTE FACTS. Drawing from analysis of his own files as a former department chair, he notes the following: Since 1998 the number of our Composition sections offered has grown by 60% . The number of full-time faculty employed in 1998 was 11–in 2015, it is expected to be 12. —That's right: 12.

     Long could stop there—the contrast is enough. But he does not. He offers evidence of staffing percentages:

Above 42% of comp classes were taught by full-time faculty in 1998 but, in 2014, only  27% percent are.

     He explains why this is a problem: "If the college-wide goal is 55% percent FT-PT staffing ratio—[Well,] we have never been close, we are at half that."
     He adds a current statistic: this fall, 72 out of 102 comp sections will be staffed by part-time faculty—that's 71%. The cost, he claims, is demonstrated in the high turnover of part-time faculty, a lack of instructional consistency and so on.

     Obviously, the need for full-time faculty will grow as the college does and as the demand for sections of core curricula increase. Basic skills mandates increase demand for remedial courses, as well as co-reqs. State mandated co-reqs and pre-reqs will also increase demand for Writing 1 (college writing).

     An audience member asked Long how many hires would be needed to address the serious, systematic under-hiring in the department. Lewis, who can do sophisticated math in his head quickly answered: Six.

     How many are we anticipating hiring this year? At best: One.

     Scintillating stuff. Movie thrills. Special effects. Cinema vérité. And Long: a handsome fellow, rugged good-looks, a man who knows how to use Powerpoint. Audiences love it, critics rave, Netflix is interested in an original series, sort of a cross between two recent offerings: Arrested Faculty Development and House of Add Cards.

     But, alas, still only one full-time hire. Maybe.

Lewis Long: rodeo cowboy, Porsche enthusiast, Dickens scholar, union thug and master of the negotiating table

     L'HISTOIRE. It is worth noting that, at every opportunity during the last 21 years (the length, breadth, and width of Rebel Girl's own institutional memory), the Department of English has always seized the opportunity to hire full-time faculty–unlike certain other Departments and programs who have (for reasons best not discussed here) declined. So, in other words, we have grown as much as we were allowed to. And yet—well, the statistics tell the story. We have hired, not to grow, but to replace—barely. It must be said that the English Department has done well under difficult circumstances. Rebel Girl guesses that, this year, we've hired just about every available qualified part-time teacher in a three county radius!

     ONE OBVIOUS QUESTION is, of course, how and why has this been allowed to happen? Where's the leadership? Who is (or isn't) paying attention? How do the decisions we make and in this case, do not make, affect our students?  

     Yes, somewhere in the bowels of the Inside IVC film vault there exists a copy of Lewis delivering the information (clumsily paraphrased by Rebel Girl here), complete with pastel Powerpoint slides and fancy font styles sure to impress. Rebel Girl understands that a limited number of DVD copies will be made available of Members of the Academy, the SOCCCD Board of Trustees and the IVC Administration for their consideration. 

Lewis Long asks for more. 

The good people of Harlan County ask for much, much more.

*

Selling a liberal-arts education

How to Get a Job With a Philosophy Degree (New York Times)
Excerpts:
     For years, most liberal-arts schools seemed to put career-services offices “somewhere just below parking” as a matter of administrative priority, in the words of Wake Forest’s president, Nathan Hatch. But increasingly, even elite, decidedly non-career-oriented schools are starting to promote their career services during the freshman year, in response to fears about the economy, an ongoing discussion about college accountability and, in no small part, the concerns of parents, many of whom want to ensure a return on their exorbitant investment.
. . .
     No other school has marketed its career center quite as successfully as Wake Forest (which, at No. 27, falls between the University of Virginia and Tufts on the U.S. News & World Report rankings but has struggled with name recognition nationally). In 2009, the university hired [Andy Chan, vice president in charge of the Office of Personal and Career Development], who was running Stanford Business School’s career center and had led a Silicon Valley start-up. Chan has made a name for himself as an oft-quoted expert on getting young people employed. He has given a TEDx talk on the subject of reinventing career services and hosted, at Wake Forest, a symposium that was attended by representatives from some 75 schools. His theme: If universities want to preserve the liberal arts, they have a responsibility to help those humanities majors know how to translate their studies into the work world.
. . .
     Colleges and universities have noted parents’ seemingly boundless concern for their children’s well-being and have shifted strategies in response. They have boosted parental involvement, or engagement, as it is known in the fund-raising industry. Schools have doubled the number of on-campus parent associations in roughly 10 years, according to the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, and parents, in turn, have given generously, even as college costs have hit new highs. Parent donations to higher education, from 2001 to 2010, increased by nearly 50 percent, according to a study published by the Council for Aid to Education.
. . .
     [Parent] Naumann was most enthusiastic about the school’s entrepreneurial program. Chan has raised money for a popular minor in entrepreneurship and social enterprise, which is open to liberal-arts majors. As Chan took notes on his iPad, Naumann talked about the qualities he thought were most essential for the school to cultivate in its students: fearlessness, communication, analytic skills and teamwork. Working well with others, he pointed out, was precisely the kind of skill that could not be learned online and one that brick-and-mortar liberal-arts schools could pride themselves on providing as they sought to stay relevant.
. . .
     Andrew Delbanco, a professor at Columbia, writes in his book, “College: What It Was, Is and Should Be,” that colleges should help students develop “a skeptical discontent with the present, informed by a sense of the past.” Can liberal-arts schools encourage students to question the status quo while simultaneously reminding them from their first days on campus to keep their employability in mind?
. . .
     Academics are expected to express reservations about the encroachment of career planning on intellectual development, but their doubts are not that different from those voiced by Brad Henderson, a 34-year-old partner at Boston Consulting Group, who is in charge of the firm’s Midwestern recruiting. Henderson, an alumnus of the University of Chicago, does not object to career programming in principle but worries that at some colleges, “this race to get jobs becomes more important than the actual ‘let’s educate our students,’ ” Henderson said. “It’s not uncommon to encounter a 20-year-old who has not benefited from the maturation you get from higher education, from true engagement in a classroom — it becomes more about taking classes as an extended way to build your résumé. You think you’re talking to a 20-year-old who should have bright ideas and enthusiasm, and they can’t get out of the mode of: ‘What are the words I’m supposed to use in this conversation?’ And you see that the risk has been taken out of résumés — that’s the part that’s most disheartening.”
     Some schools have expensive climbing walls; others have wellness centers worthy of five-star hotels. Wake Forest has Andy Chan. At orientation, he addressed the parents wearing a navy jacket and white shirt, roaming freely with a headset and using his hands for emphasis with the skill of a seasoned public speaker. “I believe, and many believe, that a liberal-arts education is the key to navigating the changes that come ahead,” said Chan, a former political-science major, reassuring parents who may recall fondly their years studying 18th-century art history or the Romantic poets but who still want results for the high cost of tuition….