How Mary-Faith Cerasoli Gets By

Mary-Faith Cerasoli is an adjunct professor for several colleges in the New York City. Her course load is about five courses per semester. Her annual income is around $22,000 before tax.

52 years old Mary-Faith has no medical insurance, owing 'thousands' in medical bills. She has around $60,000 in student loans. She is not married. She is homeless.

Mary-Faith's situation has been featured by varies websites to highlight the economic struggle of adjunct professors in the US. She appeared on PBS, the New York Times. Some colleagues and friends set up a website to raise funds for her. With a goal of raising $4,000, it received $285 in 17 days.

So Mary-Faith, why do you do this? Obviously, your skill is not appreciated by the college, because it is not appreciate by tuition-paying students. Teaching and learning should be a two-way selection process, wherein the students vote with their money, and you vote with your feet.

Extended reading: The Teaching Class.

Minor Embarrassment to The US Higher Education

Mike Adams is a professor at University of North Carolina at Wilmington. A liberal commentator Edward proclaimed that Professor Adams was 'the biggest embarrassment to Higher Education in America'. Professor Adams wrote this letter in reply:

Dear Edward:

I want to take the time to thank you for writing and telling me that I should be fired from my position as a tenured professor because I am “the biggest embarrassment to higher education in America.” I also want to thank you for responding when I asked you exactly how you arrived at that conclusion. Your response, “because you insist that marriage requires one man and one woman,” was both helpful and concise.

While I respect your right to conclude that I am the biggest embarrassment to higher education in America, I think you’re wrong. In fact, I don’t even think I’m the biggest embarrassment to higher education in the state of North Carolina. But since you’re a liberal and you support “choice” – provided we’re talking about dismembering children and not school vouchers for those who weren’t dismembered – I want to give you some options. In fact, I’m going to describe the antics of ten professors, official campus groups, and invited campus speakers in North Carolina and let you decide which constitutes the biggest embarrassment to higher education.

1. In the early spring semester of 2013, a women’s studies professor Marilyn Chamberlin and a psychology professor Hal Herzog at Western Carolina University co-sponsored a panel on bondage and S&M. The purpose of the panel was to teach college students how to inflict pain on themselves and others for sexual pleasure. When you called me the biggest embarrassment in higher education, you must not have known about their bondage panel. Maybe you were tied up that evening and couldn’t make it.

2. At The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, there is a feminist professor who believes that women can lead happy lives without men. That’s nothing new. But what’s different is that she thinks women can form lifelong domestic partnerships with dogs and that those relationships will actually be fulfilling enough to replace marital relationships with men. I can’t make this stuff up, Ed. I don’t drop acid. Well, at least not since the late 1980s. But I promise this story is real and not an LSD flashback.

3. At Duke University, feminists hired a “sex worker” (read: prostitute) to speak as part of an event called the Sex Workers Art Show. After his speech, the male prostitute pulled down his pants, got down on his knees, and inserted a burning sparkler into his rectum. While it burned, he sang a verse of “the Star Spangled Banner.” I believe that stripping incident was almost as embarrassing as the other one involving the Duke Lacrosse team.

4. A porn star Tristan Taormino was once paid $3,000 to give a speech at University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The topic was “safe sodomy.” After her speech, they sold autographed butt plugs to students in attendance. I’m not sure whether the ink could contribute to rectal cancer. I’m no health expert. But I do know it was pretty darned embarrassing when the media picked up on the story.

5. A few years ago at UNC-Chapel Hill, a feminist group built a large vibrator museum in the middle of the campus quad as a part of their “orgasm awareness week.” I think that was probably the climax of the semester, academically speaking. But they certainly weren’t too embarrassed to display a vibrator that was made out of wood back in the 1920s. Keep your batteries charged, Ed. We’re about halfway done.

6. A feminist administrator at UNC-Wilmington sponsored a pro-abortion event. During the event they sold tee shirts saying “I had an abortion” to students who … well, had abortions. That’s right, Ed. The students were encouraged to boast about the fact that they had killed their own children. That’s how the UNC system is preserving the future of our great Tar Heel state.

7. The following semester, that same UNCW administrator sponsored a workshop teaching students how to appreciate their orgasms. I learned art appreciation in college. Today, college kids are taught orgasm appreciation. I will let you decide whether that’s an embarrassment to higher ed., Ed.

8. A few years ago, a UNCW English professor posted nude pictures of under-aged girls as a part of an “art exhibit” in the university library. The Provost Brian Chapman then ordered the nude pictures to be moved away from the library and into the university union. This decision was made after several pedophiles had previous been caught downloading child pornography in the university library just a few yards away from the location of the display. The English professor was incensed so she asked the Faculty Senate to censure the provost for violating her “academic freedom.” The faculty senate sided with the feminist professor. The provost was later pressured to leave the university.

9. A different feminist professor Lynn Snowden at UNCW accused a male professor of putting tear gas in her office. She was later caught putting her mail in a microwave oven. She did this because she thought people were trying to poison her with anthrax and that the oven would neutralize the toxins. She was not placed on leave for psychiatric reasons. Instead, she was designated as the university’s official “counter terrorism” expert.

10. And then there is Mike Adams. He thinks marriage is between a man and a woman.

So those are the choices, Ed. You can simply write back and tell me which of these professors, groups, or guest speakers has caused “the biggest embarrassment to higher education” – either in North Carolina or in America altogether. Or you can just concede that our system of hire education is the real embarrassment because it has been hijacked by radical feminism. And please pardon any puns – especially those that take the form of ms-spelled words.

On a side note, professor Adams, a criminologist, has good reasons to be suspicious on the direction where the US Higher Education is going. When he was passed over for a promotion to full professor at The University of North Carolina at Wilmington, he learned that his boss Dr. Kimberly Cook, the chairwoman of the school's Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, described her ideal candidate for a teaching position at the department as 'a lesbian with spiked hair and a dog collar.'

Ivy Robbery

Bloombergrevealed today about US institutions hiring foreign agencies to recruit international students with a commission for each student enrolled. Paying agent commission based on number of admission was illegal in the US on US students. However, it's a fair game out of the boarder.

In the Bloomberg story blamed on predatory agents. Some Chinese students were lured to the US on false representation of the colleges they were attending. In one example, a student 'paid $47,000 a year to live in an almost empty country inn and attend classes five miles down the road' at 'a satellite campus comprising two buildings and 250 students'.

The problem is darer than what was portrait in the article. Many small US institutions has a designated person in charge of international admission. The person has unchecked ultimate authority in determining who can come and who can not. Often the same person or his friend will run a housing business. A precondition for any international student to get a chance would be agreeing to rent from this person for at least a year.

Not all Chinese are affluent. As a matter of fact, the per capital GDP of China ranked 127th in the world. However, because of China's base population and the ever deepening income gap, a big block of Chinese families are capable to send their children overseas for college. The value of one apartment in Beijing is more than enough to support a Harvard study and some, of course, if the family don't mind living on the street. Well, that's exactly what a Chinese family would do for their child's future. You can't blame sharks going after blood.

Tenure System no Scapegoat of the Decline of Higher Education in the US

There was a story in a US University. A senior professor, who was not satisfied with performance of a junior female professor, told her that she would not be granted tenure as long as he sat on the personnel board, unless she went to bed with him. The pissed-off junior professor went to the school administrators, where she was given the advice to turn in physical evidence. So she went back to the old man, and asked him to write down his threat. The senior professor without hesitation wrote it down. The school administrators then discussed possibly to terminate old man's tenure. However, school lawyers stopped them, 'We can't do that because there had been worse offenses in the history while the accused were allowed to keep tenure. If the school act this time, it will be the base for a lawsuit.'

A tenured professor is practically untouchable. In a recent incident, many scholars and colleagues of Law professor John Yoo of UC Berkeley believed he crossed the ethics bottom line when he gave legal advice to the Bush Administration that torture was legal. Many believed Yoo did it to please his employer while knowingly misinterpreted law as White House Legal Council. Consequently, many innocent persons suffered, and the image of US government was tarnished. However, the school came to the conclusion that the alleged offense did not amount to the level of tenure termination.

Rights and privileges associated to tenure may brings a clue on the motivation behind one Alabama professor Amy Bishop gunned down 5 of her colleagues in a heated discussion when informed her tenure application was denied.

Problem of the US's higher education could be traced deeper than the tenure layer, which was illustrated in an Ohio University case.

An assistant professor was accused of harassment, physical intimidation and professional retaliation against his fellow professors. A faculty ethics committee found the professor guilty of 6 accounts of charges, which were well documented with evidence and third party testimony. His tenure application passed narrowly in the department, but was denied on both School and College levels. Still Ohio University granted him tenure.

Career Party Official Named Party Chief of Zhejiang University

On March 1, 2011, Mr. Jin Deshui was named the Party Chief of Zhejiang University. Zhejiang University the best university in Zhejiang Province and is viewed as a Top Ten in the nation.

The appointment is the first in decades to have an otherwise uneducated career party official placed on the No. 1 post of a major university. Usually the Party Chief of major universities are also scientists, though some no longer active in research.

It is not known whether this is a signal of a broader transition in higher education policy in China. Started from 1966, the Party abruptly suspended all higher education, and sent professors to farms to be re-educated with heavy labor. Mr. Jin Deshui never went to college, and his highest education record was a certificate from the Zhejiang Province CCP Party Committee Training School.

Online Courses

Many reputable but otherwise resource constrained schools had been refraining themselves from offering online courses, until they were seen rushing to the idea amid the economic downturn. There are the ORT (Online Or Not) Test that each school should exercise before a decision is made on whether a particular course should be allowed going online:

• whether offering it online significantly facilitate students attending;
  
• whether online contents enriched or elevated the core of the course.
  

A course could go online if it passes one of the Ort Test. However, if it passes neither, the school should not just go ahead because of monetary concerns as that may very well backfire in a not so long run.

Other thoughts: when a professor teaches, more or less he brings in the knowledge and methodology he absorbed from his PhD adviser. Assuming only a limited number of schools (300 or so in the US) produce PhD, we can count on teaching efficiency of any PhD recipient. However, when the entire higher education is rushing to online offerings, few current professors have been trained or even had any level of experiences of online offerings. Many are retooling from whoever have been conducting online education. Unfortunately, the majority of the said 'whoever' are for-profit institutions and community colleges, or bottom level schools otherwise. Following models of such bottom level schools will certainly not help maintaining quality or reputation. Instead, an efficient and cost effective way of training is giving each faculty who are interested in offering online courses a chance to take one at a first-class school, such as Stanford or MIT. If that's not possible, inviting professors from those schools to give a talk may also help.

OMG, Dog Ate My Homework

It is yet another moment in American Higher Education when one has to face the reality. This time, however, it is the professors who are pulling their hairs and struggling to find a rope.

A small time Wake Forest University assistant professor published a paper with historic value, in which she found private colleges who had adopted merit-based financial aid found their academic outcome elevated moderately while, as 'concerned by the author', minority enrollment slid.

A reader at the Inside Higher Ed (IHE) quickly pointed out the flaws in the phony research. First of all, an institution wide SAT increase of 22 or 35 is actually 'huge' for any college, especially those top tier colleges who have little room for improvement already. Secondly, a 2 percent decline of enrollment over 10 years is not only statistically insignificant but also hardly not affected by other possible factors.

While the US higher education is lagging behind even more comparing to its international pars on daily basis, some phony researchers are finding an overall significant improvement in academic a major 'concern'. Yeeha!