Rob Balla

Here's a six-minute Chronicle video featuring Rob Balla's take on the adjunct situation. He's raising a family of four without health benefits, driving a ten-year-old car, and teaching up to eight classes a semester. Sound familiar?

Here and here are some fresh frontpage stories from the major pubs about the adversities his, and our, students can face. You put the whole thing together, and it's not too difficult to recognize the viability of the case that much of contemporary college isn't about education as opportunity and lifting young folks above their socio-economic origins. And here's another one that suggests more STEM majors aren't the answer either. The current president of Penn State seems to be doing okay, though, and I can't help but note that his $85,000 raise is just a bit more than what NPR reported it would cost to implement the NRA's plan for the federal government to bring an armed guard to every school, and just over twice the 40K that Balla says he earns in a good year (presumably one that included seven or eight classes each semester).

In slightly related news, it came to my attention that someone loaded the first five minutes of Fight for Your Long Day onto youtube. That's part of the first chapter already audible at Iambik, but it appears they retrieved it from this itunes store.

But what, you ask, have we been watching and listening to this holiday season?

Charlie Brown holiday specials of course.