>Kelley Walker wrote:
>>
>> i finally asked a mentor about this. why on earth are we pullingin more
>> grads than we can every really pump out? we had a long talk about social
>> control/labor discipline. i'm gonna get all functionalist on ya, but
>> forces competition in the workplace. make everyone believe that the only
>> thing they can do or should want to do is be an academic and you have
>> scared adjuncts willing to very nearly pay a uni for the privilege of
>> having a job.
>>
>
>The resort to functionalism is a tad premature. While there are
>programs
>out there actively recruiting wannabees, my experience at UConn and
>the rumor/whine mill over the years has the opposite operating. Since
>the low point in the early 80s, faculty in sociology have been
>realistic,
>to put it mildly, about the career prospects of their students. The
>programs keep admitting wannabees in part because no one seriously
>wants to eliminate graduate programs or because graduate work is
>valued in terms other than economic reward - that medieval
>apppreciation for scholarship that is oblivious to the spectre
>of starvation. I don't think the labor discipline thing is at
>work. That would require some real world expertise and finesse
>that I find lacking among academics.
Labor discipline is not so much intentions of the departmental powers that be as an effect of the expansion of higher education without a corresponding growth in funding for it, I think. Labor discipline, in turn, has dialectically produced grad union organizing; the first grad union organizing was led by activists in the anti-Vietnam War movement:
***** One important event in that turbulent decade stands out. In 1967, graduate students at the University of Wisconsin, many of them participants in the antiwar protests, formed the Teaching Assistants Association (TAA) -- the first graduate student union in the United States. TAA's members faced an increasing teaching load, low pay, no healthcare benefits, and poor working conditions. In addition, TAA members wanted control over the courses they taught. On this issue in particular, graduate student employees joined forces with undergraduates, who were also engaged in efforts to alter the balance of power within the university. In 1970, TAA members went on strike and ultimately negotiated a contract that included job security, a grievance procedure, and healthcare.
(Kevin Mattson and Patrick Kavanagh, "Graduate Student Radicalism," at <http://www.theaha.org/perspectives/issues/1999/9911/9911gra1.cfm>) *****
As labor discipline has tightened since, political responses of grad students have grown as well. Where there is an economic crisis, there is a political opportunity for the Left.
Yoshie