Teaching and Organizing in For‐Profit Higher Education: A Kaplan Story
Joe Berry, Jon Blanchette
Abstract
This article attempts to do two things: one, to describe the sizeable for-profit higher education sector; and second—and mainly—to tell the story of one of the very few successful organizing drives in recent years in that sector. In this case, the drive was at Kaplan International Centers (KIC) in New York City. The article is coauthored by Joe Berry, who has studied and written about contingent faculty organizing, and participated in it for many years, and Jonathan Blanchette, who was one of the leading member-organizers of the successful organizing drive at KIC. As part of the narrative of the organizing drive and subsequent negotiations for first contract, the article deals with teacher consciousness, fears, and management antiunion tactics, and why the antiunion tactics were ultimately unsuccessful. The article concludes with some strategic considerations and conclusions, as well as summary lists of tactics used and references for further reading on this case.
