Alan Trevithick
The extinction of the traditional full-time tenure track/tenure secure faculty has entered an endgame phase, a half-century of ever-increasing exploitation of adjunct/contingent faculty now complicated by the rise of the largely anti-faculty CyberSage MOOC option favored by a strong coalition of higher education presidents, foundations, and politicians. "Adcons," because they are 1) the majority higher education faculty, 2) more experienced, in their activist and potentially activist ranks, across a wider range of private/public institutions than their full-time "traditional" colleagues, and 3) increasingly aware that they will be expected to provide the low-cost proctoring and evaluation labor in the MOOC-future, are best placed and motivated to fight against what Diane Ravitch has called (at first in K-12 connection) the accountability/assessment/privatization "juggernaut." Recent events--the cross cutting "metropolitan" strategy of SEIU (Service Employees International Union), enabled by adcon immunity to "Yeshiva decision" limitations; the establishment and growth of the non-union all adcon advocacy organization New Faculty Majority, and pro-adcon advocacy by CFHE (Campaign for the Future of Higher Education)--may inspire new and more aggressive "adcon" strategies, locally, regionally, and nationally.