"Michigan unions assisted in the improvement of the lives of its members and families, the nation and the world by establishing improved collective bargaining techniques, better and safer working conditions and equal opportunity ..."

Read more: Viewpoint: Unions have helped lift up Michiganians, by Pamela Brown Goodacre, Mlive.com.

Pamela Brown Goodacre is a Lecturer teaching in the Comprehensive Studies Program at UM-Ann Arbor, and is a trustee with the Charter Township of Kalamazoo.

Antonio (Tony) Alvarez, Lecturer I, School of Social Work, UM-Ann Arbor, is among the 2013 winners of the Provost's Teaching Innovation Prize (TIP).

“The five creative projects developed by faculty demonstrate effective ways to inspire students and engage them in learning,” Provost Phil Hanlon says. “The collection of innovative teaching projects that faculty are pursuing across the university is impressive.” 

Read more: Five honored for teaching innovations, Kevin Brown, The University Record.

Critics of higher education’s growing reliance on nontenure-track (NTT) faculty for undergraduate teaching routinely assert that NTT faculty are inferior teachers, and, therefore, that the quality of undergraduate education is deteriorating. This is true even of critics such as Marc Bousquet, the author of How the University Works (2008), who see themselves as friends of exploited NTT faculty and supporters of efforts to organize them into unions.

I think that these critics are wrong, and that their error has two important negative consequences: first, it devalues the work that NTT faculty do; and second, it impedes our understanding of one of the major successes of the “neoliberal” model – that it has been able to introduce a two-tiered faculty system in which many newer faculty are paid half or less of what the top tier is paid per class, without dramatic decline in the quality of undergraduate education that would de-legitimize the two-track system.

Read the rest: Are Nontenure-Track Faculty Worse Teachers? The Short Answer Is No. Shanker Blog.