One of the numerous benefits of living in the US is that it’s a big country, and if you don’t like where you are currently living, or the location doesn’t provide you with the things you need, want, or desire, then all things being equal, you have the freedom to move.
This is especially true with respect to economic challenges and opportunities you encounter. If you lose your job and can’t find appropriate work in your city, county or state, or your dream job or business lies elsewhere, unless you want or need to be close to family members or friends, in general you have the liberty to pack up and go somewhere else.
Relocating (which is easier for some people than others) has been highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic. During this time some individuals (particularly knowledge workers) have jobs that are portable, and many of them can move to a different state or country and continue their work with a minimum of headaches.
Unless the local sheriff drove you to the outskirts of your town, and told you to never come back, people have the power to make a rational approach about where they want to relocate. Although “bounded rationality” is real, potential movers can rank order their priorities, develop a list of possible locations, maybe even develop a matrix, collect relevant information about these places, possibly take a vacation there, and even temporally live in the new community before making the final decision.
Here’s the rub. In the desire to move somewhere else many people are attracted to parts of the country that have low costs of living, including property costs and tax rates.
In this scenario some people consider moving from a blue (i.e., Democratic and liberal leaning) state, to a red (i.e., Republican and conservative) or even purple (i.e., half Democratic and half Republican) state.
Some, but not all, traditional red states (e.g., Kansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Wyoming) have very attractive lower costs of living, including lower real estate prices. Also state and sales taxes are less, if not close to nonexistent, in many red states (i.e., Alabama, Alaska, Montana, South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming).
Keep in mind, however, that just because a red state doesn’t have a personal income tax, doesn’t necessarily mean that other types of taxes (e.g., sales) are also absent, nor have the other benefits previously mentioned. But these criteria should not be the only ones that force your hand.
What many red states do have, on the other hand, is a different culture. In general, the majority of people living in these states, have red state attitudes towards politics, race, gender, sexual preference, equality, religion, etc.
If you live in a big metropolis, a university town, or are sedentary (i.e., don’t go out of your house much), home school your children, and really don’t interact with your neighbors or the locals, then this kind of situation may be ideal for you.
On the other hand, if you live in the suburbs of the bigger cities, or in the smaller towns of red states, and do interact with people in your community, you may be tad shocked or disappointed when you talk about things more consequential than the weather. You may end up biting your tongue more often than you care to avoid interpersonal conflicts.
Over time, these kinds of interactions can have very nonpecuniary costs to you, your mental and emotional health, and the people you live with.
In short, you don’t want to be back where you started, looking to move once again.
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/Screen-Shot-2022-01-28-at-1.10.43-PM.png238798Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2022-01-28 18:42:372022-01-28 18:42:37Choose wisely my friend. Just because a state’s tax rate and cost of living is low doesn’t mean it’s great place to live or move to
Over the past few years, COVID-19 has had significantly affected community college, liberal arts college, and university instruction.
Many institutions of higher education have pivoted to on-line and hybrid instruction. With the introduction of the vaccine, mask mandates, testing, and hygiene theatre during the past few semesters, there was an assumption that by the Spring of 2022, teaching at universities could go back to normal (e.g., in person instruction) or close to it. The appearance of Omicron, the current strain of the Corona virus, in late 2021 has once again forced universities to rethink how instruction should proceed.
Universities have had to remain flexible with respect to the courses they offer and who is going to teach them. One challenging area that has been called into question is who exactly is teaching the classes? With administrators, faculty, and staff out sick, suffering from long COVID conditions, or being extra cautious about face-to-face instruction, changing enrollment patterns, and the constant need to find part-timers or adjuncts, because of the challenges of staffing, the ability to find appropriate instructors for classes has been a daunting task.
Many people, from administrators, to professors, to students, to parents (who are often the ones footing the bill), are rightly asking, given the current pandemic, who exactly is teaching our classes.
Here are some basic facts. Universities depend on both full-time and part-time people to teach classes. Full-time instruction is typically done by professors at different stages of their career. Part-time teaching is usually provided by individuals on short term contracts including, doctoral holding experts, advanced graduate students, or other experts (typically with an advanced degree).
Just because someone is a professor does not necessarily mean that they are good instructors. They may be Nobel prize winning researchers, raise lots of grant money (a portion of which goes to the university in terms of overhead), but have challenges communicating their knowledge to nonspecialists. On the other end of the spectrum, a reasonably educated person, with minimal subject knowledge may, when pressed into service, rise to the occasion and make a stellar performance teaching a university level class.
Throughout the United States, and other countries that have similar post-secondary types of education, we have lots of excellent adjuncts and part-time instructors. These individuals can have a Ph.D., be in the process of earning a doctorate, or they may have a masters but they have subject matter expertise (e.g., current or former practitioners).
On the plus side, there is an assumption that teaching part-time can be a good training ground for wanna be professors. If you have earned a PhD, or are in the process, are looking for a full-time contract or tenure-track job, and need to demonstrate that you can teach, then teaching part-time either at your university or another one may look good on your vita.
In fact, many universities, formally train their doctoral level students how to teach. They may start them off as teaching assistants asking them to grade quizzes, mid-terms or term papers. They may even be required to lead a seminar or a lab. This is a good proving ground. Over time, (one or more semesters) the department in which the student is enrolled, may even feel comfortable asking the graduate student to teach their own course. In this manner they are eased into teaching.
Also keep in mind, that in some particularly large urban centers (e.g., New York, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, etc.), there is a large pool of qualified adjuncts from surrounding campuses and/or from the at large population, so much so that there are literally scores of people with Ph.D.’s who cobble together a paltry income teaching a variety of courses at different institutions of higher education.
Let’s face it, in general, and regardless of the labor market, part-timers are cheaper to hire, and allow entities to accommodate to unpredictable demands for a product or service. The business or organization can staff up when demand is high, and let go of employees when the demand decreases. Adjuncts, who are part of the precariat, often bear the brunt of this process. They have little job security and considerable financial insecurity. They may be asked at the last minute to teach a class, or told right before a semester starts that a course they were scheduled to teach (and may have already prepped for) is cancelled or reassigned to someone else. That is why we have seen the formation of graduate student and adjunct unions in numerous universities and university systems.
Why don’t universities just hire adjuncts to teach all the classes? Is it because they are afraid of unions? No. There are lots of reasons why universities don’t simply replace the full time teaching staff with part timers. To begin with it’s a nightmare to manage such a diverse labor pool. And, professors (the full-timers) do lots more than teach (i.e., they engage in research and service, both of which have numerous implications for the university as a whole). In an attempt to build in another layer of quality control, most good universities are accredited. And accrediting agencies, like Middle States, tells universities that only a portion of the courses can be taught by part-timers.
But Omicron has made staffing even more challenging. Some universities have been forced to hire less than expert or unwilling graduate students to teach. In some cases these students have pressured graduate students to prepare and teach classes at the last minute. Many of them have never taught before, but are financially insecure and need additional income available.
True, younger grad students may have more abilities in online teaching and/or understand the challenges better than older professors. They may know their way around Zoom and other on-line technology especially the ability to create breakout groups, record
What is the result? There are two problems that students are confronted with here. The person who is teaching may not be adequately qualified to teach. And graduate students engaged in overwhelming assignments cannot make progress on their own course work, advance in their candidacy, or dissertations.
So how can we best address this current challenge.
This is the moment where department chairs, deans, provosts need to step up. Specifically:
1. Provide adequate training for new graduate student teachers and/or pathways to ease into teaching
2. Understand the needs of students and the reasons for low enrollment. Perhaps ask the students which modality is preferred and/or what their schedules look like. Times have changed and people have full-time lives, and
3. Adequately compensate grad students and give them enough warning to prepare for academically and financially for the semester.
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/pexels-pixabay-207691-1-scaled.jpg18282560Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2022-01-21 16:20:292022-10-02 12:21:15Who’s teaching this college course anyways? And why does it matter?
In general, if someone or an organization like a business, can make a buck they will.
From the agricultural to utility sectors, this approach is the backbone of capitalism.
Recently, this phenomenon has been increasingly visible in the field, actions, and products produced in the realm of street culture (i.e., the beliefs, dispositions, ideologies, informal rules, practices, styles, symbols, and values associated with, adopted by, and engaged in by individuals and organizations that spend a disproportionate amount of time on the streets of large urban centers, Ross, 2018, p. 8).
From streetwear to street art, from street music to concert halls, and from ghettos and barrios to now gentrified parts of cities, there are an increasing number of items, situations/experiences, and places once derived (or originating) from, or that embody elements of street culture, but are then modified, marketed, and sold as products and services to interested consumers.
On the upside, this process of commodification (e.g., turning something into an object of value) can provide jobs, income, and opportunities for some individuals and communities.
And, I don’t have a beef with this approach as long as the original creators are
• acknowledged for their original ideas and hard work,
• fairly compensated for their ideas and work,
• treated fairly after their products and items make their way into the market place, and
• the products and services don’t lead to damaging externalities (i.e., killing the environment, etc.).
But that’s rarely the case.
Commodification of street culture usually results in a:
A. Distorting (or exaggerating) the original intent and meanings of the things and services emanating from street culture. In a world where honesty and authenticity are increasingly in short supply, these modifications can distort intended meanings. This includes a process that selected elements of the original products are overly simplified, reduced to tropes, or more specifically kitschified. Sometimes this process borders on cultural appropriation.
B. More importantly, the generative products and services usually do not appropriately compensate the original creators. And this is bad. Frequently there are no or minimal copyright, patent, and trademark protections for many creators and thus they can’t reap an economic benefit. Individuals and organizations who profit from activities just described are often referred to as culture vultures.
On the positive side, we are seeing scholars in different social science and fields examine the commodification of lots of processes, including selected elements of street culture, and this is great to see. More light, however, needs to be shed on this topic in order to better contextualize its’ dynamics and better guide its development.
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_7705.jpg8111635Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2022-01-13 21:57:552022-01-18 01:24:27The downsides of commodifying Street Culture
Choose wisely my friend. Just because a state’s tax rate and cost of living is low doesn’t mean it’s great place to live or move to
/by Jeffrey Ian RossOne of the numerous benefits of living in the US is that it’s a big country, and if you don’t like where you are currently living, or the location doesn’t provide you with the things you need, want, or desire, then all things being equal, you have the freedom to move.
This is especially true with respect to economic challenges and opportunities you encounter. If you lose your job and can’t find appropriate work in your city, county or state, or your dream job or business lies elsewhere, unless you want or need to be close to family members or friends, in general you have the liberty to pack up and go somewhere else.
Relocating (which is easier for some people than others) has been highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic. During this time some individuals (particularly knowledge workers) have jobs that are portable, and many of them can move to a different state or country and continue their work with a minimum of headaches.
Unless the local sheriff drove you to the outskirts of your town, and told you to never come back, people have the power to make a rational approach about where they want to relocate. Although “bounded rationality” is real, potential movers can rank order their priorities, develop a list of possible locations, maybe even develop a matrix, collect relevant information about these places, possibly take a vacation there, and even temporally live in the new community before making the final decision.
Here’s the rub. In the desire to move somewhere else many people are attracted to parts of the country that have low costs of living, including property costs and tax rates.
In this scenario some people consider moving from a blue (i.e., Democratic and liberal leaning) state, to a red (i.e., Republican and conservative) or even purple (i.e., half Democratic and half Republican) state.
Some, but not all, traditional red states (e.g., Kansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Wyoming) have very attractive lower costs of living, including lower real estate prices. Also state and sales taxes are less, if not close to nonexistent, in many red states (i.e., Alabama, Alaska, Montana, South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming).
Keep in mind, however, that just because a red state doesn’t have a personal income tax, doesn’t necessarily mean that other types of taxes (e.g., sales) are also absent, nor have the other benefits previously mentioned. But these criteria should not be the only ones that force your hand.
What many red states do have, on the other hand, is a different culture. In general, the majority of people living in these states, have red state attitudes towards politics, race, gender, sexual preference, equality, religion, etc.
If you live in a big metropolis, a university town, or are sedentary (i.e., don’t go out of your house much), home school your children, and really don’t interact with your neighbors or the locals, then this kind of situation may be ideal for you.
On the other hand, if you live in the suburbs of the bigger cities, or in the smaller towns of red states, and do interact with people in your community, you may be tad shocked or disappointed when you talk about things more consequential than the weather. You may end up biting your tongue more often than you care to avoid interpersonal conflicts.
Over time, these kinds of interactions can have very nonpecuniary costs to you, your mental and emotional health, and the people you live with.
In short, you don’t want to be back where you started, looking to move once again.
Who’s teaching this college course anyways? And why does it matter?
/by Jeffrey Ian RossOver the past few years, COVID-19 has had significantly affected community college, liberal arts college, and university instruction.
Many institutions of higher education have pivoted to on-line and hybrid instruction. With the introduction of the vaccine, mask mandates, testing, and hygiene theatre during the past few semesters, there was an assumption that by the Spring of 2022, teaching at universities could go back to normal (e.g., in person instruction) or close to it. The appearance of Omicron, the current strain of the Corona virus, in late 2021 has once again forced universities to rethink how instruction should proceed.
Universities have had to remain flexible with respect to the courses they offer and who is going to teach them. One challenging area that has been called into question is who exactly is teaching the classes? With administrators, faculty, and staff out sick, suffering from long COVID conditions, or being extra cautious about face-to-face instruction, changing enrollment patterns, and the constant need to find part-timers or adjuncts, because of the challenges of staffing, the ability to find appropriate instructors for classes has been a daunting task.
Many people, from administrators, to professors, to students, to parents (who are often the ones footing the bill), are rightly asking, given the current pandemic, who exactly is teaching our classes.
Here are some basic facts. Universities depend on both full-time and part-time people to teach classes. Full-time instruction is typically done by professors at different stages of their career. Part-time teaching is usually provided by individuals on short term contracts including, doctoral holding experts, advanced graduate students, or other experts (typically with an advanced degree).
Just because someone is a professor does not necessarily mean that they are good instructors. They may be Nobel prize winning researchers, raise lots of grant money (a portion of which goes to the university in terms of overhead), but have challenges communicating their knowledge to nonspecialists. On the other end of the spectrum, a reasonably educated person, with minimal subject knowledge may, when pressed into service, rise to the occasion and make a stellar performance teaching a university level class.
Throughout the United States, and other countries that have similar post-secondary types of education, we have lots of excellent adjuncts and part-time instructors. These individuals can have a Ph.D., be in the process of earning a doctorate, or they may have a masters but they have subject matter expertise (e.g., current or former practitioners).
On the plus side, there is an assumption that teaching part-time can be a good training ground for wanna be professors. If you have earned a PhD, or are in the process, are looking for a full-time contract or tenure-track job, and need to demonstrate that you can teach, then teaching part-time either at your university or another one may look good on your vita.
In fact, many universities, formally train their doctoral level students how to teach. They may start them off as teaching assistants asking them to grade quizzes, mid-terms or term papers. They may even be required to lead a seminar or a lab. This is a good proving ground. Over time, (one or more semesters) the department in which the student is enrolled, may even feel comfortable asking the graduate student to teach their own course. In this manner they are eased into teaching.
Also keep in mind, that in some particularly large urban centers (e.g., New York, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, etc.), there is a large pool of qualified adjuncts from surrounding campuses and/or from the at large population, so much so that there are literally scores of people with Ph.D.’s who cobble together a paltry income teaching a variety of courses at different institutions of higher education.
Let’s face it, in general, and regardless of the labor market, part-timers are cheaper to hire, and allow entities to accommodate to unpredictable demands for a product or service. The business or organization can staff up when demand is high, and let go of employees when the demand decreases. Adjuncts, who are part of the precariat, often bear the brunt of this process. They have little job security and considerable financial insecurity. They may be asked at the last minute to teach a class, or told right before a semester starts that a course they were scheduled to teach (and may have already prepped for) is cancelled or reassigned to someone else. That is why we have seen the formation of graduate student and adjunct unions in numerous universities and university systems.
Why don’t universities just hire adjuncts to teach all the classes? Is it because they are afraid of unions? No. There are lots of reasons why universities don’t simply replace the full time teaching staff with part timers. To begin with it’s a nightmare to manage such a diverse labor pool. And, professors (the full-timers) do lots more than teach (i.e., they engage in research and service, both of which have numerous implications for the university as a whole). In an attempt to build in another layer of quality control, most good universities are accredited. And accrediting agencies, like Middle States, tells universities that only a portion of the courses can be taught by part-timers.
But Omicron has made staffing even more challenging. Some universities have been forced to hire less than expert or unwilling graduate students to teach. In some cases these students have pressured graduate students to prepare and teach classes at the last minute. Many of them have never taught before, but are financially insecure and need additional income available.
True, younger grad students may have more abilities in online teaching and/or understand the challenges better than older professors. They may know their way around Zoom and other on-line technology especially the ability to create breakout groups, record
What is the result? There are two problems that students are confronted with here. The person who is teaching may not be adequately qualified to teach. And graduate students engaged in overwhelming assignments cannot make progress on their own course work, advance in their candidacy, or dissertations.
So how can we best address this current challenge.
This is the moment where department chairs, deans, provosts need to step up. Specifically:
1. Provide adequate training for new graduate student teachers and/or pathways to ease into teaching
2. Understand the needs of students and the reasons for low enrollment. Perhaps ask the students which modality is preferred and/or what their schedules look like. Times have changed and people have full-time lives, and
3. Adequately compensate grad students and give them enough warning to prepare for academically and financially for the semester.
The downsides of commodifying Street Culture
/by Jeffrey Ian RossIn general, if someone or an organization like a business, can make a buck they will.
From the agricultural to utility sectors, this approach is the backbone of capitalism.
Recently, this phenomenon has been increasingly visible in the field, actions, and products produced in the realm of street culture (i.e., the beliefs, dispositions, ideologies, informal rules, practices, styles, symbols, and values associated with, adopted by, and engaged in by individuals and organizations that spend a disproportionate amount of time on the streets of large urban centers, Ross, 2018, p. 8).
From streetwear to street art, from street music to concert halls, and from ghettos and barrios to now gentrified parts of cities, there are an increasing number of items, situations/experiences, and places once derived (or originating) from, or that embody elements of street culture, but are then modified, marketed, and sold as products and services to interested consumers.
On the upside, this process of commodification (e.g., turning something into an object of value) can provide jobs, income, and opportunities for some individuals and communities.
And, I don’t have a beef with this approach as long as the original creators are
• acknowledged for their original ideas and hard work,
• fairly compensated for their ideas and work,
• treated fairly after their products and items make their way into the market place, and
• the products and services don’t lead to damaging externalities (i.e., killing the environment, etc.).
But that’s rarely the case.
Commodification of street culture usually results in a:
A. Distorting (or exaggerating) the original intent and meanings of the things and services emanating from street culture. In a world where honesty and authenticity are increasingly in short supply, these modifications can distort intended meanings. This includes a process that selected elements of the original products are overly simplified, reduced to tropes, or more specifically kitschified. Sometimes this process borders on cultural appropriation.
B. More importantly, the generative products and services usually do not appropriately compensate the original creators. And this is bad. Frequently there are no or minimal copyright, patent, and trademark protections for many creators and thus they can’t reap an economic benefit. Individuals and organizations who profit from activities just described are often referred to as culture vultures.
On the positive side, we are seeing scholars in different social science and fields examine the commodification of lots of processes, including selected elements of street culture, and this is great to see. More light, however, needs to be shed on this topic in order to better contextualize its’ dynamics and better guide its development.