VDH on "Liberal Indulgences"

[billc]

Victor Davis Hansen, another favorite of mine, explores the world of the Anti-1 percenters in the media, in education and politics, and the "indulgences" they receive based on their politically correct stances on the issues.

http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/liberal-indulgences/

Rarefied Exploitation
Universities are perhaps the best example of this medieval practice. By any fair measure, most are far more exploitive than Wal-Market or Target. In the CSU system nearly 40-50% of the units offered are taught by part-timers. In fact, the entire California Master Plan of education—UC/CSU/JCs—is propped up by itinerant lecturers, many of whom have PhDs or the necessary terminal degrees. In my 21 years in the CSU system I was often told by fellow senior faculty not to worry about part-timers (I was one myself in the beginning), inasmuch as they were a necessary “cushion”, who could be let go in times of budgetary crises, as a means to protect full professors, noble sorts who usually passed resolutions opposing apartheid and favoring gay marriage in the academic senate.
If one were to study in depth the logic of compensation in terms of hours taught in the classroom across the spectrum—graduate student/part-time lecturer/assistant professor, associate professor/full professor—one would discover huge discrepancies in pay, working conditions, and benefits that were not commensurate with class room performance or even scholarship. And of course, I am touching only on the professoriate, not the administrative elite, whose numbers have soared to near 1/1 ratios with faculty on many campuses.
But again all such discussion is taboo. The university is a loudly progressive institution and so has bought itself an indulgence that the coal mine owner, retailer, or contractor cannot. So we are left with the near daily appeals from the presidents of our almae matres, appealing in letters and email for cash, citing all sorts of illiberal tendencies in our society that endanger university funding, but never a tad of introspection about the exploitation that props up his university.