How the University Works Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation [Hardcover]

As much as we think we know about the modern university, very little has been said about what it's like to work there. Instead of the high-wage, high-profit world of knowledge work, most campus employees—including the vast majority of faculty—really work in the low-wage, low-profit sphere of the service economy. Tenure-track positions are at an all-time low, with adjuncts and graduate students teaching the majority of courses. This super-exploited corps of disposable workers commonly earn fewer than $16,000 annually, without benefits, teaching as many as eight classes per year. Even undergraduates are being exploited as a low-cost, disposable workforce.
Marc Bousquet, a major figure in the academic labor movement, exposes the seamy underbelly of higher education—a world where faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates work long hours for fast-food wages. Assessing the costs of higher educations corporatization on faculty and students at every level,How the University Worksis urgent reading for anyone interested in the fate of the university.

How the University Works primarily focuses on the current issues faced by humanities and other departments in higher education. Still, this text is an invaluable source for anyone involved in postsecondary studies. Bousquet serves up a stinging indictment of those universities that exploit their students from the moment they set foot on campus. . . . [He] reveals the dystopia that the contemporary university has become. Marc Bousquets How the University Works should be required reading for anyone with an interest in the future of higher education, including administrators, faculty members, graduate students, andeven more significantlyundergraduates and their parents. Bousquet takes an uncompromising look at the way colleges employ those who teachand how many professors have done nothing as tenured positions have been replaced with adjunct slots. Not only the most persuasive political l4