I’ve been working on a book about the effect of the Internet on the terms of employment and working conditions of faculty at all levels. As a result, I’ve read an extraordinary amount of “disruption” literature lately. You know, Christensen, Carey, et. al. – all those people who are just chomping at the bit to…
I’ve had a strange fascination with an education start-up called Minerva for some time now. They’re a Silicon-Valley inspired online operation that has actually enrolled students now. Yet unlike so many other for-profit education ventures they’ve always aspired to be highly selective – the first “Online Ivy.” I think the source of my fascination stems…
Usually, I save everything I write about subjects like tenure for the blog that you’re reading now. After all, I’m in the AAUP and even if you’re not (and you certainly should be), you’re probably sympathetic to most of the principles that the AAUP stands for otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this blog in the…
Does your university have troubles? At the risk of turning this post into the academic equivalent of Monty Python’s “Four Yorkshiremen” sketch, your school probably has nothing on Northern New Mexico College. The situation there has come up before on this blog, and to summarize let’s just say their administration hasn’t exactly covered itself in…
Getting to “know” other academics on Twitter is a very strange process. First you follow the ones you know. Then you follow the most interesting people who they “know,” and by then other folks who they follow who you don’t know have started following you. One of the people I’ve gotten to “know” through this…
“To be absolutely blunt, it is time for individual faculty to give up, cheerfully and not grudgingly, any claim to sole authority over teaching methods of any kind.” – Former Princeton President William Bowen earlier this week at the “Teaching in the University of Tomorrow” conference at Rice University (via Jason Jones). That’s a pretty…
Last Friday, the Colorado Conference of the AAUP (for which I serve as co-President) held a one-day meeting at Fort Lewis College in Durango devoted to the topic of shared governance. Our thinking behind planning this gathering was that Colorado higher education seemed to be going crazy. So many weird things had been happening at…
Over on my personal blog, I write a lot about MOOCs. You might say I’m more than a little MOOC-obsessed, but I really am trying to develop other interests. That effort ran aground this week when a Massive Open Online Course at the University of Zurich basically imploded. It’s a confusing story (the Chronicle report on…
A few hours ago, Aaron posted a story about the situation at Northern New Mexico College. I’m told that this is a blog written by Northern New Mexico faculty. Here are some low-lights: 1. “In the last 60 days, Northern New Mexico College has removed or lost over 25% of its full-time faculty. In addition, 4 program directors,…