Your Gradebook Is Not Your Friend
Presidential Selection Is Not Like the Weather
BY JONATHAN REES The key part of what the AAUP Redbook has to say about the role of faculty in the selection of a new university president is in the Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities: “Joint effort of a most critical kind must be taken when an institution chooses a new president. The…
Trump University, Part II
BY JONATHAN REES Did you know that Donald Trump has promised to create a free national online university if he gets to become president again? You can read the basics of his proposal in Politico: Donald Trump wants to “revolutionize” higher education if elected president. And in a new campaign policy video, he is pledging…
Faculty Compensation—Like Seagulls Fighting for Scraps?
BY JONATHAN REES We’ve been arguing over salaries at my university. Sometimes we get cost-of-living adjustments, but those almost never keep up with inflation (even during years when inflation is low). There’s a model developed by our Faculty Compensation Committee designed to allocate additional funds on the basis of equity, but what is equity, anyway?…
It’s Time for a New AAUP Statement on Online Education
BY JONATHAN REES I’m a member of the AAUP Committee on Teaching, Research, and Publication. Last week, committee chair Hank Reichman and I convened a listening session at the AAUP biennial meeting to start the long process of revising the organization’s statement regarding online education. The existing Statement on Online and Distance Education dates from…
Academic Freedom and the Learning Management System
BY JONATHAN REES Jonathan Rees is Professor of History at Colorado State University – Pueblo and a member of the AAUP Council. The following is reposted from his “More or Less Bunk” blog. This morning [August 1], I delivered this paper in the Academic Freedom session at the West Coast Division of the American Historical…
Their Textbook, Your Choice.
The Invasion Has Already Begun
BY JONATHAN REES AND JONATHAN PORITZ A lot of people we know were beating up on an essay by Jeff Selingo in the Washington Post a few weeks ago. [See, for instance, Hank Reichman’s analysis here.] We certainly agree that putting tenure on some kind of clock won’t do anything to save universities money in…
There Be Dragons
BY JONATHAN REES I’ve been reading a lot of books about the history of maps and mapmaking lately. Apparently, one of the great myths of cartography is that medieval maps would label sections of unexplored territory “There be dragons” in order to discourage people from going to those places. Of course, even had this actually…