I wasn’t sure who the terms ‘contenders’ and ‘pretenders’ are referencing, but I do think that the administrative drive to replace tenured staff with guest lecturers is shortsighted. Administration staff seem only concerned about filling timetables and have no insight about the actual process of learning and even in my limited experience, I have a tale of woe. After giving the same lecture each year to third year Uni students as originally agreed, someone in Uni admin slotted me to give it to first year students instead, without advising me of this change. There’s a lot of assumed knowledge, so it was simply unsuitable for first years, but all I received for each lecture was an invite & then confirmation of the time, venue and topic title of my presentation. I am now wiser about these various aspects of lecture delivery but from my tiny insight into how these institutions operate, I have a bad feeling about this event at NYU.
BTW, I no longer give lectures at Uni. Eventually, they wanted to upload my presentations so that students could access them and I was happy with that, but I couldn’t do so because I didn’t have an electronic ID which they found puzzling... then the penny dropped for me that an ex boss of mine holds an academic title there but rarely gave lectures, so I guess I had been co-opted to fill in someone else’s teaching obligations. The Uni couldn’t find a way around their own admin process, other than also formally contracting me and giving me a title, so I used it as an opportunity to politely bow out. I’m still involved with teaching but it’s mainly under the banner of CPE/CPD.
