Are the teacher's unions the problem in higher education? They might be, but there's the old line about democracy that comes to mind: they're awful, except for the alternatives. There is a growing chorus of complaints about the unions and the "education bubble" from all quarters now. The right has been against the whole idea of actual knowledge for some time, but now the so-called left is after the teacher's unions and the poor quality and high cost of education abroad in the land. The NY Times magazine cover has a thorough article with a nice provocative title explaining how Arne Duncan, the Gates Foundation, and others are going to "improve" public education.
Here's what I can tell you based on the reviews of Salem State from students. The big problem they have is not the faculty but the administration. It turns out that it is the back office -- the registrar, the bursars office, the
dorms residence halls -- that make life at Salem trying. Looking over the reviews volunteered at various sites online as well as the formal survey conducted by the history department (all of it anonymous), students take 6 or more years to graduate (if they ever do) not because the faculty is full of lazy unionistas phoning it in but because the administration seems unable to provide them with the basics of a decent life, including clean toilets and transfer records that persist in the databases.
It is striking how bad the infrastructure of the college is, from its bus service to its website. There might be a union to blame in there somewhere, but it's not the faculty's. The place to look is as one should at any large organization that has problems: the top.
The bottom line is that students are the lupenproletariat, unable to see that their money is going to drive an agenda that has to do with many things other than the students' education and well being.
