Typical part-time or adjunct faculty who are not in the tenure system have it even worse. In most cases, their wages are so low that they end up working 60+ hours per week just to make a living - and they usually do not have the benefits of health care and retirement provided to full-time employees.

On the bottom of the higher education food chain, you will find graduate assistants. These poor sots are students working to attain post-graduate degrees; and in order to pay for those degrees, they teach undergraduate courses for stipends that barely cover their expenses. They generally have no health care benefits, no retirement savings, and their jobs are more tenuous than part-time faculty, since they can easily be replaced due to their status as students, which put them outside of normal employment regulations.

In his introduction, Cary Nelson explains how U.S. higher education got to this point, and why you should care. He uses real-world examples and writes in an easy to follow style. If you read nothing else, at least read this section of the book.

We need to keep pounding the drums on the issues raised by the academic labor movement, but I am not so sure this book is speaking to the right audience for it. Bousquet writes in a more academic style than Nelson, and those outside of academia may find it difficult to wade through the text. Even though his arguments are well researched and thoroughly articulated, I found myself skimming the chapters for his key points, following more closely when something caught my attention. Still, in an era of increased attention on the unionization of higher education instructors, this is a timely book and one that will easily complement the collection of literature on the topic of academic labor.