Thread regarding DeVry Inc. layoffs

Any thoughts about organizing a union?

What are your thoughts about organizing through a union? With a labor contract, workers could have at least a little more control over labor conditions and educational quality. In the long run it could be good for the company, if they have the ability to think ahead. SEIU (Faculty Forward), AFT, NEA, Teamsters?

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| 2681 views | | 9 replies (last July 16, 2019) | Reply
Post ID: @OP+102Uad9L

9 replies (most recent on top)

@102Uad9L-1lzt , wow, that sounds pretty hopeless when you put it that way. So what does the over 50 crowd do?

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Post ID: @2jbu+102Uad9L

A union will do nothing to save the company's management from itself and would be a waste of time. Why bother to attempt to fix something that is already broken beyond repair and well on its way to dissolution? The end result would be a union without a company and a great deal of wasted effort.

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Post ID: @1lzt+102Uad9L

Maybe the conditions are too good at Devry.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/prime-day-some-amazon-workers-are-striking

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Post ID: @1hwe+102Uad9L

@102Uad9L-1aln , I have created a video playlist to document this madness, interspersing information with entertainment.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcq7zwhpdzfk4Id4RDVVgURl44elXTGLT

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Post ID: @1uuz+102Uad9L

Oh and BTW, Re: “Doctor of Philosophy”—that ain’t no real doctor, she can’t patch y’all up with band-aids!

The degree needs to be renamed “Professor”, which most yokels can understand, or something similar that isn’t already co-opted by another profession. It might gain us some traction and respect if students didn’t think that we were “pretending to be real doctors”.

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Post ID: @1fky+102Uad9L

The elite schools will be there no matter what they charge—they honestly don’t care about teaching, but rather research. The rich kids will always have a place to go that’s better than anyone else’s; if it didn’t exist, they would just invent it or some comparable way to claim status. The community colleges will be there, and the opposite is true—teaching underprepared kids for lower-status jobs that only require an associate’s. Trade school vs. AAS is not much difference in price or timing, relatively speaking. It’s the small liberal arts colleges that are going to fold, merge, or suffer under excessive tuition and declining enrollments—the projected “cliff” due to low birth rates in 2026 will be a tipping point for many. Not all will fail, but some will. Schools like U. Mass who want to have 100k enrollments are preparing to wipe out your local small liberal arts schools. The question is this: do you need to go to college for most jobs? Studies have shown that it’s barely worth it for a four year degree, and that’s assuming no extra semesters from being hungover. HR needs new ways to sort resumes, and we need information-age jobs suitable for the masses that require less training. We need to stop this parallel love and resentment of higher education—and what is it “higher” to if the expected norm is a bachelors degree? —and fix K-12 so students don’t have to get to 18 without being intellectually sufficient. Maybe then we can stop bankrupting our kids’ future with a $250K four-year party ending in “Bachelor of Arts” in comparative literature that your kid slept through, or your precious (and secretly mocked) “Doctor of Philosophy” in art history. Higher Ed is broken; there will be winners and losers just like anything else. Society isn’t going to change until I has to, and college won’t change until more of them begin failing in spectacular fashion, and the remaining players looks around at the massively scaled up schools stealing all of their local tuition fodder for “online education” run by massively oppressive administration seeking to exploit both adjuncts and students as capital. If you’re looking for an answer, there isn’t one. US Higher Ed is thrashing in its d3ath throes as it bloats and swells from distension brought on by exploitative greed and tuition-mongering drives to “retain students” and “grow enrollments”. We’ve all bought into the system and now it is failing but none of us are capable of imagining a new way, particularly HR.

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Post ID: @1aln+102Uad9L

@102Uad9L-1tiv, so what keeps this going? And how much longer can this last, not just DeVry, but other schools?

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Post ID: @1lzn+102Uad9L

This is about as sane and logical as the lovely folks who want to go storm Area 51 to go see them thar alienses. Would probably get about the same results, too, if it anyone was foolish enough to try it....

DVU Full-timers are scr3wed trying to survive and hope the place holds together until they can retire or find a new job; adjuncts aren’t invested enough to care at $1800 per 60+ student class. There are much more lucrative jobs in the food service, pet sitting, and migrant day-laborer industries just waiting for overqualified instructors! Who’s gonna work them farms and build them highways after the ICE crackdown? USAdjuncts, that’s who! Go to grad school, wreck your life! You think you’re smart ‘cause you got some fancy-pants degrees? We’ll show you. Off to the salt mines, intellec-shulz! Shoulda just play’d it low and not tried so hard to make something off that brain-uh yours. Your job can be automated and done with software soon enough...that’s what higher ed wants because it’s predictable and controllable. Student profit and administrative salaries can be boosted without that pesky ‘faculty’ hanging around getting in the way of our smooth streamlined classes. Americans need to stop deluding themselves that there is a such thing as a career in higher ed waiting in the future, and stop getting grad degrees in academic subjects with the intention of trying to make a living teaching college. It’s a d3ad Dream. There are too many of us and colleges can just pick a whole new crop of adjuncts any time they like. Or was it the adjuncts picking crops? Grad programs need to make you sign a waiver: “I am only doing this to fulfill my own ego and understand that I will be less employable and valued by society upon completion of this program.”

Bitter much? Me? No.

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Post ID: @1tiv+102Uad9L

You obviously don’t understand today’s unions

I’m work for a company tied significantly to unions and they’re cutting agreement personnel like hot cakes, when it’s about $$$$ union cant save squat

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Post ID: @1tgl+102Uad9L

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