The following is a letter submitted by Nancy MacLean, a fellow at the AAUP’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, to the Commission for Public Higher Education (CPHE) concerning the CPHE’s proposed evidentiary guidance for accreditation standards. The CPHE is a new accrediting body aimed at first implementing their standards at certain public universities…
BY AUDREY BERLOWITZ The recent announcement of the founding of the Commission for Public Higher Education (CPHE) reveals another “axis of power” in the multiwebbed right-wing war on the US university. Though the new body entails only the seven southern public university systems of Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas A & M,…
BY MATTHEW BOEDY Every AAUP member should be concerned about the new accreditation group recently birthed in Florida. This week Louisiana became the seventh state to say it was joining. While only for now targeting states in the South the group’s business plan shows its strategy is to take on as clients public schools in…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Cairn University has announced the elimination of the School of Social Work, prompting the following letter from the National Association of Social Workers: The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) and its Pennsylvania Chapter have grave concerns about Cairn University’s sudden dismantling of its social work program because of University President…
BY HANK REICHMAN In the current issue of Academe magazine I reviewed a new book, Free City! The Fight for San Francisco’s City College and Education for All. It’s a terrific book, which details the five-year fight to save the college from an over-aggressive accrediting agency and expand access. I had previously posted frequently about…
BY HANK REICHMAN In the waning months of his term as California governor Jerry Brown embraced a new pet project: a totally online community college. With the enthusiastic support of California Community College Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley, Brown got the Legislature to somewhat reluctantly agree to spend an initial $100 million to get the online…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH In an article for Forbes, Tom Lindsay reports on the scope of the student debt problem as a preface to discussing H.R. 4508, legislation introduced by Virginia Foxx (R-NC) to “reform” higher education ostensibly to make it more affordable. Titled the “Promoting Real Opportunity, Success, and Prosperity through Education Reform Act,”…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following is the text of a petition to the Higher Learning Commission signed by elected officials and community leaders from across Indiana and the Midwest, joined by thousands of faculty members and students at colleges and universities across Indiana and the Midwest. The petition calls on the Commission to reject…
BY HANK REICHMAN In a stunning development that the Faculty Association for the California Community Colleges called a “major win” for the state’s community college faculty, the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) yesterday announced that it had settled its lawsuit against the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC), the embattled agency that accredits…
BY RISA LIEBERWITZ On July 10, 2017, the AAUP submitted comments to the American Bar Association opposing proposed revisions to the ABA’s accreditation standards that would eliminate a requirement that full-time faculty “teach more than one-half of the total credit hours offered by the law school in a year or more than two-thirds of student…