Chalk Lines

The increasing corporatisation of education has served to expose the university as a business - and one with a highly stratified division of labour. In "Chalk Lines" editor Randy Martin presents twelve essays that confront current challenges facing the academic workforce in U.S. colleges and universities and demonstrate how, like chalk lines, divisions between employees may be creatively redrawn. The contributors examine the trend toward restructuring and downsizing, the particular plight of the adjunct professor, the growing emphasis on vocational training in the classroom, and union organising among university faculty, staff, and graduate students. Placing such issues within the context of the history of labour movements as well as governmental initiatives to train a workforce capable of competing in the global economy, "Chalk Lines" explores how universities have attempted to remake themselves in the image of the corporate sector.Originally published as an issue of "Social Text", this expanded volume, which includes four new essays offers a broad view of academic labour in the United States. With its important, timely contribution to debates concerning the future of higher education, "Chalk Lines" will interest a wide array of academics, administrators, policymakers, and others invested in the state-and fate-of academia. Contributors include Stanley Aronowitz, Jan Currie, Zelda F. Gamson, Emily Hacker, Stefano Harney, Randy Martin, Bart Meyers, David Montgomery, Frederick Moten, Christopher Newfield, Gary Rhoades, Sheila Slaughter, Jeremy Smith, Vincent Tirelli, William Vaughn, Lesley Vidovich and Ira Yankwitt.