<nettime> Sign the petition - Against the reduction of funding for adjunct faculty in public Greek Universities

[claudia bernardi <clod.zeta@gmail.com>]

Sorry for any cross posting
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Background (Preamble): On December 2010, the Greek Ministry of
Education announced a 15-20% reduction in funds for adjunct lecturers
and professors teaching at public Greek Universities. The announcement
came four months into the Fall 2010 semester, when at the time,
adjunct faculty had already been teaching without a signed contract
and without having been paid at all for the semester! As a result,
either adjunct faculty salaries have to be drastically reduced to
reflect the pay cuts, or a large number of them have to be laid off
for the Spring 2011 semester, thus reducing the number of courses
offered for students. At the same time, the Greek Ministry of
Education delays the appointment of elected tenured-track faculty for
about 2 years and refuses to open new permanent academic positions
to cover for the lost adjunct faculty positions. All this puts Greek
Universities under tremendous stress and many Departments will not
be able to function properly; this is especially true for smaller
regional Universities, whose teaching and research activities depend
upon adjunct teaching staff. The reduction of funding for adjunct
faculty is part of a broader attack on public Higher Education that
includes pressure on Universities to start charging students with
tuition, to accept business-style academic management, to seek funding
from private corporations, to reduce the total number of Departments
and Schools and to eliminate tenure for assistant professors. As a
result, hundreds of adjunct lecturers and professors, many of them
with many years of academic and research experience, are facing
massive lay-offs.

We protest against the reduction of funding for adjunct faculty in public
Greek Universities and we demand from the Greek government:
-to immediately provide Greek Universities with all the necessary funding
for adjunct teaching staff
-to immediately appoint all elected University faculty
-to put an end to the expansion of precarious academic employment
-to open new academic positions, thus allowing Greek Universities to achieve
academic excellence.

To sign the petition go to

http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41910.html





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