The Ted Cruz Crusade: Part 1, A Cause in Search of a Strategy—unless the Cause Was to Bring Ted Cruz to a Specific Kind of National Attention

The following piece was written by my former student and friend Mike Lamm. Mike is a reporter for the Decatur Daily Democrat. _________________________ A recent poll by NBC news and the Wall Street Journal confirmed what most of us already know; that despite a concerted effort by the GOP to cloud the facts, most Americans…

Almost No One Is Actually a Luddite Anymore

I have written a number of posts expressing great skepticism about MOOCs, the for-profit online universities, and, more broadly, the view that technology can be used to make education more affordable by simply replacing educators. In several responses to my posts and more often in references to my posts on other sites, I have been…

Naïveté? Or Exploitation?

If there was one thing I learned from my Peace Corps experience it was that people everywhere know a lot more than the lucky few in the worldwide elites believe they do—and that the idea of helping them is really, at its heart, an idea of helping that elite. We lucky ones, generally from industrialized…

How to Be a Tenured Ally

Guest Blogger Dr. Elizabeth Keenan teaches music history at Fordham University and Columbia University. With the exception of a one-year VAP, she has been adjuncting since 2007. I’m an adjunct at two different private universities.* In those positions, I’ve encountered numerous tenured and tenure-track faculty who were allies to adjuncts, and numerous faculty who were not. …

Free Public Higher Education, Quality Instruction, and Job Security for All Faculty Members

By Robert Samuels This is the third in a series of Academe Blog guest posts arranged by the AAUP Committee on Contingency and the Profession in celebration of Campus Equity Week. For information on and resources for CEW, see the national website at http://www.campusequityweek.org/2013/.  In my book, Why Public Higher Education Should be Free, I argue…

Campus Equity Week: Building Platforms for Change

By Mayra Besosa This is the second in a series of Academe Blog guest posts arranged by the AAUP Committee on Contingency and the Profession in celebration of Campus Equity Week. For information on and resources for CEW, see the national website at http://www.campusequityweek.org/2013/ In organizing around contingency, there is no need to reinvent the…

Making the Right Cuts in Higher Education

CBS news reported this week that a number of colleges and universities had or planned to cut their sticker prices significantly. CBS noted that the reported tuition price for independent colleges and universities was slightly over $30,000 per year – or up about $1,100 since last year. These numbers translated into a 2.9 percent increase or…