Expand Tenure, Don’t Weaken It
When Clark Ross sent me “Toward a New Consensus for Tenure in the Twenty-First Century” for possible inclusion in Academe, I was immediately interested. Not only was I seeing the ramping up of attacks on tenure but I have always felt the system too weak, if anything. My family moved every couple of years as I…
Will This Actually Help Make the Case for Study Abroad—Never Mind for Scientific Inquiry or for Higher Education?
Researchers at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, CA, are reportedly studying student brain scans in order to determine how study abroad impacts brain function. According to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education [http://chronicle.com/article/One-College-s-Method-to/230661/], the researchers have scanned the brains of 30 freshmen and will re-scan their brains when they are juniors and just after…
Trying to Do the Right Thing on Sexual Assaults May Be Tantamount to Trying to Do the Impossible
Barnard College has been in the news because of its decision to follow the precedents set by Mills College and Smith College and to admit transgender students who identify as female. But a recent memo of understanding between the college and the New York Police Department will almost certainly have much broader ramifications for the…
Peeling Back Still More Layers of the Scams Perpetuated by and through the Online For-Profit Universities
David Dayan’s article “’Chipping Away At My Soul’: Insiders Detail The Decline And Fall Of Corinthian’s For-Profit College Empire” was the lead item in yesterday’s HuffPost College daily newsletter. If you have been following the coverage of the rise and fall on the online for-profit universities, the article does not contain a great deal of…
Ronald Reagan, Warmed Over
Over this past week, Hank Reichman has been posting materials related to the attack on tenure in Wisconsin. I think that it might be helpful to many of us who live outside of Wisconsin to have a more precise perspective on Scott Walker and what has been driving his radical political agenda in Wisconsin—especially since…
Higher Ed Salaries According to Forbes: Or, a Lesson in How Averages Depend on What One Is Averaging
Forbes has just published an article by Kathryn Dill titled “The Ten Best- and Worst-Paying Education Jobs.” Here is the explanation of the methodology: “To determine the Best- And Worst-Paying Education Jobs, Forbes consulted the most recent Occupational Employment and Wages data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which reflects May 2014 salary and employment data,…
Statement of UW–Madison Research Award Winners on Tenure and Governance
The following statement was published yesterday (June 3) and as of this morning had acquired 361 signatures [UPDATE: As of the next morning (June 5) the number of signatories had climbed to 459. The additional names, however, have not been added to the list that follows the text of the statement]: We write as fortunate…
Administrative Staffing 1987-2011, A Statistical Profile by Institution, Part 6: California (Part 2)
The federal data that will be presented in this series of posts was analyzed by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting (NCIR) in collaboration with the American Institutes for Research. The NECIR story on the data and its implications, written by Jon Marcus, who is currently an editor at the Hechinger Report, is available…
