My cousin is an adjunct professor at my alma mater, a major state university, and he confirms your observations. The best of these academic temp workers and contract laborers are assigned the development of curricula and syllabi, their subsequent implementation on line, and then they are replaced by graduate assistants who actually "teach" them. My cousin, Robert the Red (AKA Bolshie Bob), has just finished putting together a monumental and detailed multi-media course on a history of the American Labor Movement (from a Marxist perspective) which will be administered online to advanced undergraduates. He knows his position will be terminated as soon as the course materials are completed. Its probably just as well. He was not selected for this task because of his training in History or Economics, but because he picked up the skills for putting together computer teaching aids in a job he had years ago.

Fortunately, it appears none of his department administrators seems to know just what is IN the course. Apparently they have never reviewed its content or philosophy. I suppose they are too busy "managing". It will probably be taught for years until the technology (NOT the scholarship) becomes obsolete to the point where it has to be re-written.

Nobody gets tenure, nobody gets job security or even benefits. Its as if professors are an obstacle to the business of education, which I suppose they are. The emphasis is more and more on automated academic functions, not just teaching, but registration, examinations, grading, even assignments and scheduling. Students have to have computers and network access and skills for all routine academic activities, even if they are in the liberal arts. Everything is geared to having more throughput: larger numbers of students, smaller numbers of less qualified staff, more "efficient profitable use of resources".

This desperation to increase productivity seems misplaced when the university seems determined to hand out degrees in disciplines which only serve short-term, short shelf-life business needs ("coders"), skills which could just as easily be learned on the job ("Sports Journalism"), or diplomas designed primarily to ideologically indoctrinate worker bees for the commercial sector (anything in Business Administration). Even technical skills, such as the sciences and engineering, are being degraded to certifications that require little actual preparation in the field, but provide paying customers with documentation primarily crafted to look good on the resume of some otherwise barely literate middle class kid who managed to borrow enough money to get through the program. You can get a Bachelor's in Chemical Laboratory Management with only 12 hours of actual chemistry courses. I presume that qualifies you to tell chemists what to do.

My old undergraduate major, Astronomy, no longer exists at my old school, but lots of money is being lavished on churning out ever more MBAs, Medical Records Administrators, Forensic Accountants, Paralegals and Real Estate Investment Counselors. And as I have pointed out before, my old graduate degree in Geography has been replaced with an MA in Geographic Information Systems--a graphical user interface I was expected to pick up on the job, on my own time, by reading a manual.

And of course, the administrative and executive functions of academia, the role of the former State Board of Regents, are no longer carried out by scholars and educators, but by "business and community leaders". These drones are not teachers. They're fucking Rotarians.

The commodification of American education will result in the most thoroughly credentialed work force in history, and the most docile, ignorant and incompetent one.

"And I'm never going back to my old school."