The title is from the most recent issue of Jim Hightower's Lowdown about the plight of adjunct professors in the world of American higher education.
Hightower explains that
... unbeknownst to us hoi polloi, including many students and families laying out seriously big bucks for ever-rising student tuition and fees, America's higher-ed system has become thoroughly corporatized. Most schools are run by extravagantly paid CEOs (cloaked with the more benign title of "president") who've never taught, have no personal ties to the instituon, feel no need to listen to the faculty, and are most eager to please corporate donors and wealthy benefactors...
It is the sub-story that really choked me up. I looked and found that three
diaries had been published on this and I wanted to put it out here for those who may have missed it.
I urge you to read Lessons from corporatized college: Even PHDs are being squeezed out of the middle class for the gory details.
The story of Margaret Mary Vojtko broke my heart. Having taught French for 25 years at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and earning high marks from her students, Margaret Mary had no health coverage. She died at the age of 83 of a massive heart attack while battling the ovarian cancer that had sucked up whatever savings she may have had. She became a pauper, unable to pay her electric bill in her last winter.
Like me, Margaret Mary must have been in her late 50s when she began working at Duquesne. I know I am going to have to work until I am 67 - the thought of having to work into my 80s is unsettling. The thought of being grossly underpaid and without health insurance is horrifying.
In the case of Margaret Mary Vojtko whose father had been a steelworker and member of the USW, her "second life" is in energizing organizing campaigns to empower and lift up the adjunct faculty. She became known to a lawyer to the USW, Daniel Kovalik, who wrote up her story which spread over the web.
Jim Hightower never disappoints, always finding a ray of light and leaving you with hope.
... In a wonderful case of ironic justice, one of the strongest campaigns has been mounted by the adjuncts at Duquesne and their USW allies. The faculty has already voted to join the union, but the masters of this Catholic school are resorting to legalistic ploys to deny democratic participation by the majority of their teachers. Bizarrely, they've even demanded a religious exemption from labor laws, claiming that unionization would interfere with the teaching of Catholic values!
USW's president, Leo Gerard, has appealed that claim--directly to the Pope. Meanwhile, to adjuncts everywhere, Margaret Mary has become a potent symbol of their plight and an emblem of their fight.
Demanding a religious exemption from labor laws !?! Unionization would interfere with the teaching of Catholic values !?!
What a bunch of toads.