Executive Summary This report has been prepared to serve as public comment regarding the 2015 revision of Florida State University’s Gift Acceptance and Counting Policy, otherwise known as FSU Policy 81. This gift policy determines the conditions by which the FSU Foundation accepts private donations, and as such, it is the only policy…
The Campaign to Stop Fresh College Thinking The Koch Foundation gives money to encourage debate on campus. Activists want to silence that debate. by John Hardin May 26, 2015 College should be a place where students encounter a diversity of ideas—just ask many of the more than 1.8 million students who are graduating this year.…
On Tuesday the Wisconsin State Journal published an op-ed piece by John Wiley, who was Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, from 2001 to 2008. Wiley pointed out that “In 1900, Wisconsin was one of only 14 research universities that came together to form the now prestigious Association of American Universities (AAU is now…
In a post yesterday entitled “The End of Tenure in Wisconsin?” I discussed proposals approved last week by the Wisconsin Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee that would remove tenure protections from statute, weaken shared governance, and modify layoff policies and procedures for faculty. While the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents will remain empowered to restore…
New University of Akron President Scott Scarborough announced in May that the school was being rebranded as “Ohio’s polytechnic university.” He justified the change by asserting that the university “needs a new, distinct identity to attract students and survive in the future.” But, according to an article by Rick Armon published in the Akron Beacon-Journal,…
This week, Politico published an article by Matt Valentine titled “Texas Just Made College Less Safe: University Leaders Have Thought That Guns on Campus Are a Bad Idea since 1824. So Why Do States Keep Allowing It”—a very provocative title and slant for Politico. Here are the opening paragraphs: “When the founding fathers wrote that…
AAUP President Rudy Fichtenbaum, in his column in the May/June issue of Academe, when did the growth and vigor of the American middle class–and of American higher education–end? The reversal began under the Carter administration and accelerated during the Reagan years. Why did it end? The answer has been well documented in the book Winner-Take-All Politics by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson.…