Who teaches university students? Contract teachers

By Craig Mcfarlane. Behind the rhetoric about the brave new world of university education is a dystopia: students who live in their parents’ basements watching pre-recorded and perennially rebroadcast lectures on iPads, who never set foot on campus, and whose “work” (really, pressing the right button on a multiple-choice test) is marked by algorithms. When talking about the world of online learning, university administrators are fond of noting dramatic cost savings, not least because as a recent opinion piece had it, “less well-paid individuals” can teach some of the courses. Read more...