Mergermania in Pennsylvania

BY CAROLYN BETENSKY In the middle of the summer and in the middle of a pandemic, with an overwhelming majority of faculty and other community stakeholders voicing their objections to the plan and with few students weighing in on it, the Board of Governors of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) voted on…

AAUP Supports APSCUF in Struggle for Quality Education, Fair Contract

POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement was issued by Rudy Fichtenbaum, President of the American Association of University Professors, and Howard Bunsis, chair of the AAUP Collective Bargaining Congress: “The AAUP and the AAUP-CBC stand in solidarity with our colleagues in Association of Pennsylvania State Colleges and University Faculties (APSCUF) in their struggle for…

Support APSCUF Strike!

BY HANK REICHMAN Faculty members at Pennsylvania’s 14 state-owned universities went on strike today after bargaining to prevent the first classroom walkout in the system’s 34 years collapsed. The Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties (APSCUF) announced shortly after 5 a.m. that a strike could not be averted after five consecutive days of…

PA Faculty Harden Resolve and Move Closer to Strike

BY KEVIN MAHONEY In the morning session of APSCUF’s Legislative Assembly meeting, faculty delegates received the unvarnished news about the state of negotiations from the union’s chief negotiator Stuart Davidson. Davidson emphasized that PASSHE’s behavior at the bargaining table indicates that they are not really serious about reaching an agreement. “Do you remember the tapes…

Negotiations Breakdown: PASSHE Sets Stage for First Ever Faculty Strike

BY KEVIN MAHONEY Faculty union members at the 14 Pennsylvania state-owned universities (PASSHE) have had just about enough. Following three consecutive days of marathon negotiating sessions on Tuesday and more sessions scheduled for Wednesday and beyond, faculty members were showing signs of optimism that a deal might not be that far off. However, after PASSHE continued to put…

APSCUF Contract Impasse Continues

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Writing for the Reading Eagle, David Mekeel reports that Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties (APSCUF), the union representing the faculty of the 14 universities in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE), has made little progress in its continuing efforts to negotiate a new contract. The previous…

PA State Senators Crafting Legislation to Allow Universities to Secede from State System of Higher Ed

Author’s Note: A version of this post was publish on Raging Chicken Press under the title, “Slow Train to Destruction of Public Higher Ed in PA?: Defund then Divide-and-Conquer,” on Saturday, Feb. 22.  If the fall 2013 semester saw the term “retrenchment” – the elimination of faculty, programs, and jobs – become part of daily…