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Common Dreams reports:
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) said [August 23] that graduate students who work as teaching and research assistants at private colleges are employees--a ruling with "big implications" for both higher education and organized labor in the United States.
Inside Higher Ed explains:
The NLRB said that a previous ruling by the board--that these workers were not entitled to collective bargaining because they are students--was flawed. The NLRB ruling, 3 to 1, came in a case involving a bid by the United Auto Workers to organize graduate students at Columbia University. The decision reverses a 2004 decision--which has been the governing one until today--about a similar union drive at Brown University.
[...] Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and "the entire Ivy League" had jointly submitted a brief, the Washington Post reports, "arguing that involving students in the bargaining process would disrupt operations, if they want to negotiate the length of a class, amount or grading or what's included in curriculum. Bringing more people to the table, they said, could lead to lengthy and expensive bargaining to the detriment of all students".
But the NLRB, in its ruling (pdf), sided with the students, in a decision that "could potentially deliver tens of thousands of members to the nation's struggling labor movement", according to The Wall Street Journal.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 25 2016, @02:24PM
"You have forgotten something." -- Kosh Naranek
Someone has to spend time and effort rewriting the classroom textbooks each and every year so that a market for used textbooks does not take root and flourish. And so that the official teachers (and official authors and copyright owners of those books) can rake in huge profits from high priced custom books that are not available off the shelf from a major publisher.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 25 2016, @02:46PM
I buy most of my math and science textbooks on Amazon or BN's used books network, so I'd say it's flourishing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 25 2016, @02:50PM
Not everyone re-writes text books for extra profit. Our book came out 20 years ago, is being used for an engineering elective. It has stayed the same with only typo corrections between printings (reprinted every year or two). Except during the "great recession", sales have stayed around 1000 copies/year. There is also an active used market, because we requested that the publisher use a good binding, not "textbook binding" which falls apart after a year.
Obviously I have another job and don't depend on book royalties. What the book did was give our small company a lot of name recognition in our specialty--worth more than any increase in royalties from the usual practice of churning the customers/students.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday August 25 2016, @07:06PM
The fact that you didn't name the book, nor link to your company, does add to your argument.
On the other hand, now that you've done that, you should give the name so we can check it out.
(or was it your nefarious plan all along? In this case, I can still use the name and reward you for your advanced sneakiness)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 25 2016, @07:26PM
Not everyone does. As you say. But some people do. It's their class. They can use whatever book they want. So they write their own book. And be sure it changes every year.
(cynical sarcasm mode . . .)
This is especially important in fields like STEM fields.
Textbooks must keep up with fast moving changes to how the Cosine function works this year vs a couple centuries ago. Or changes to the Pythagorean Theorem. You wouldn't want engineers using out of date values for important constants, like acceleration due to Earth's gravity, or the speed of light. Or an out of date periodic table.
Even in the humanities, you want students to have the most up to date changes to Shakespeare.
So these teachers could argue that they are not brazenly ripping their students off in an obscene money grab to take advantage of poor students. No, they are making sure students have the most up to date materials in their field.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 25 2016, @09:07PM
In addition to the traditional markets, we've also mentioned open works here.
Professor Adds Open Knowledge Chemistry Textbook to OpenStax College's Collection [soylentnews.org]
Open Knowledge Textbooks Not Flunking Out [soylentnews.org]
US Education Department Encourages Schools To #GoOpen With Educational Resources [soylentnews.org]
This sort of thing should hurry along the conversion to openness and easy updates.
NH School District: One Chromebook Per Student by 2018; Paper Textbooks Going [soylentnews.org]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]