It occurred to me, in the midst of a conversation where folks were marveling at the money being spent by a flagship state university on a marketing initiative, that it should, at this juncture,* be possible to formulate a very simple test for evaluating the wisdom of this and other university spending initiatives:
"How many part time lines could be made full time and / or how many adjunct lines could be made permanent with the money being spent on this**?"
*A conjuncture defined, let us say, by the circumstance that the majority—or even a significant portion—of faculty at US universities continue to be employed, against their preferences, in contingent positions without the full measure of academic freedom and the full participation in shared governance afforded by tenure and / or in positions that, by virtue of low salaries, lack of benefits, etc., make their very material existence substantially precarious.
**Depending on the conversational context, one may wish to add something like "bullshit" here. Use your judgment.
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