[PEN-L:29996] The New University Underclass

[Sabri Oncu <soncu@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

The New University Underclass

As a three-day walkout threatens to shut down UC Berkeley, the
nation is awakening to a brand-new crisis in higher education:
the plight of the temporary professor.

BY CHRIS THOMPSON
East Bay Express, August 28, 2002

After eleven years of higher education, and with $32,000 in debt,
Julian Bourg had $350 a month for food and bills.

Welcome to the University of California at Berkeley -- now go
stand in line. It's the first week of class for more than 30,000
students, an administrative challenge under any circumstances.
But this year, the campus' 2,300 clerical workers walked off the
job for the first three days of class to protest what they
consider bad-faith bargaining on the part of UC negotiators. It's
the first staff walkout in thirty years. Amid the chaos, few may
have noticed that a second group of university employees also
walked off the job: the men and women who teach at least 37
percent of undergraduate courses throughout the UC system -- the
most vulnerable and marginalized class in modern academia. Men
and women like Julian Bourg.

As a Cal graduate student, life was reasonably good for Bourg. He
made a modest living teaching classes and studying French
politics in the aftermath of the 1968 uprising, living on ramen
and the writings of Guy Debord in a studio apartment in the
Berkeley Hills. He always knew the system depended upon roughly
4,386 graduate student instructors to keep the business of
educating 23,269 undergrads afloat. It was part of the deal:
Leading discussion groups and grading term papers was a component
of his continuing education, and the paltry wages and temporary
contract went along with his career track.

Full at:
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/issues/2002-08-28/feature.html/1/in
dex.html