Reported on WUIS: I received the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure’s report this morning, and I thank them for their time and effort. I have read the report. It contains a great deal of information, and it is important that I thoroughly review it and discuss the findings and recommendations with the authors, the…
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 370,000 times in 2014. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 16 days for that many people to see…
A source has subsequently clarified in an e-mail the status of the resolution. This update reflects a more accurate depiction of the process. Ten University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign senators have courageously co-sponsored a resolution that represents a stirring affirmation of AAUP documents and basic principles of academic freedom and shared governance. The UIUC Senate Executive Committee…
The Student Monitor survey for Fall 2014 is the result of a detailed questionnaire completed by a representative sample of 1200 students. It includes all sorts of data, largely related to the students’ purchases of digital devices and uses of digital technologies and media. I find the following chart of college students’ print or digital…
Education “reformers,” in an attempt to save the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), are now attempting to decouple “standards” and “high-stakes testing.” In an op-ed in The New York Times today, for example, David Kirp, who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, writes: Although the Obama administration didn’t craft the standards, it weighed in heavily, using some of…
In my previous post, I discussed James McNair’s article on the proposed multi-million-dollar gift by Koch Foundation and Poppa John’s CEO John Schnatter to the University of Louisville [http://kycir.org/2014/12/09/university-of-louisville-set-to-get-millions-from-charles-koch-foundation-and-papa-johns-ceo/]. That article includes the following paragraph: “The Koch-Schnatter gift would not be the first to expand free-markets instruction at the University of Louisville. Six years ago,…
On December 9, James McNair, writing for Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting, has explored the many implications of a pending gift from the Koch Brothers and Poppa John’s CEO John Schnatter to the University of Louisville. The article, the full text of which is available at http://kycir.org/2014/12/09/university-of-louisville-set-to-get-millions-from-charles-koch-foundation-and-papa-johns-ceo/, opens: “Declines in state appropriations and negative financial trends…
I have significant concerns about the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure report on the summary dismissal of tenured Associate Professor Steven Salaita in the American Indian Studies Program. The CAFT report states: “The investigative subcommittee interviewed the Chancellor on November 14.” I was able to independently confirm with multiple sources that the…
When I returned to teaching more than a dozen years ago, I taught a great deal of developmental writing. At that time, the City University of New York (CUNY) used an entrance exam for First Year Composition (FYC) placement whose prompt instructed students to write a persuasive letter, generally addressed to either school (often college) or…
An “On the Issues” Post from the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education [http://futureofhighered.org] _______________ Two thoughtful pieces, one recently published in the New York Times and one in Forbes, ask us to step back from our current obsession with “innovation” and “disruption,” business principles and technology in education, and think—just for a moment–about the purpose…