The Vergara Decision and the Threat to Tenure

Last week’s appalling California Superior Court decision in Vergara v. California, which overturned California statutes guaranteeing due process protections for K-12 teachers with more than two years experience (so-called “teacher tenure”) and layoff by seniority, has engendered considerable concern among instructors in higher education.  To what extent does this decision threaten the protections of the…

Adjuncting for Dummies

Yesterday Inside Higher Ed published a brief item entitled “Skeptical Reception for New Book on Becoming Adjunct.”  The article reported on a new 51-page book, available for free via the Internet, with the remarkable title Become a Part-Time Professor: live and teach anywhere you like.   Needless to say, more than a few “part-time professors” have…

Online Education and Faculty Rights

Colleen Lye and James Vernon, co-chairs of the Faculty Association at the University of California, Berkeley, have a fantastic piece in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education on the threat posed to faculty intellectual property rights, academic freedom, and educational quality by university claims to copyright over faculty-created online course materials. “The Erosion of Faculty Rights”…

The Tip of the Iceberg

This weekend two studies on the compensation of university presidents appeared.  The Chronicle of Higher Education released its annual report on “Executive Compensation at Public Colleges and Universities”  and the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington D.C. think tank, released a report finding that student debt and low-wage contingent faculty labor are increasing faster at…

The Latest on the CCSF Accreditation Controversy

It’s been a bit more than two months since I’ve posted on the continuing conflict between faculty, staff, and students at City College of San Francisco (CCSF) and the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC), which has threatened to revoke CCSF’s accreditation on what many — including San Francisco’s City Attorney and other…

Irresponsible Expressions of Dissent?

Readers of this blog know that I have been reporting occasionally on the continuing conflict between faculty, staff, and students at City College of San Francisco (CCSF) and the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC), which has threatened to revoke CCSF’s accreditation on what many — including San Francisco’s City Attorney and other…