BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Brandon Busteed, the executive director for education and workforce development at Gallup, wrote a stimulating and thought provoking op ed earlier this month. The article’s title captured Busteed’s summary opinion: It’s Time for Elite Universities to Lead in Non-Elite Ways. Mr. Busteed argued that America’s colleges and universities have traditionally followed…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL In many respects, what a college or university business officer (CBO) thinks about the health of higher education says more about the vitality and sustainability of America’s colleges and universities than the opinions of any other group surveyed. The reasoning is simple. The business officers know where the money comes from…
BY MIKE ALEWITZ Last week, Connecticut state employees agreed to accept yet another new concession contract. To read the mainstream media, or announcements from the governor’s office, or statements from state union officials, this is a victory for working people. In fact, the agreement is a theft of epic proportions – planned in secret and…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following is the text of a letter sent yesterday to the Trustees, President, and Provost of Mills College by the chair of the University of California at Berkeley Department of Philosophy. A philosopher was among the five faculty members laid off last month by Mills trustees as part of a…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement was sent via email on Monday, July 10 by the University of California at Berkeley Faculty Association (BFA): To: Elizabeth Hillman, President, Mills College Board of Trustees, Mills College CC: Roger Sparks, Chair, Faculty Executive Committee Chinyere Oparah, Provost and Dean of the Faculty The Berkeley Faculty…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last week I reported on the layoff of five tenured professors at Mills College in Oakland, California. Although Mills’ action has failed to receive coverage in either the higher education press or the local media, as of this writing my post has been viewed more than 36,000 times. Yet Mills may not…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH What follows is the fifth section of the most recent higher education report produced by the Ohio Conference of AAUP. John McNay, the President of the Conference, and Sara Kilpatrick, the Executive Director of the Conference, deserves kudos for doing the bulk of the work on this report. The report…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Friday, June 2, 2017 To the WSU Board of Trustees, Interim President Curtis McCray, and incoming President Cheryl Schrader: We, the undersigned faculty, are writing to express our objection to the proposed FY18 budget announced on May 19. It calls for a $1.6 million increase in budgeted spending for intercollegiate…
BY HANK REICHMAN On June 26, the board of trustees of Mills College, meeting behind closed doors, approved a vaguely formulated “Financial Stabilization Plan” (FSP) previously rejected overwhelmingly by the institution’s faculty. The plan calls for reducing the number of departments from 18 to 13 and the number of schools from four to three. Two…
BY KELLY HAND We already knew from the Trump administration’s initial “skinny” budget proposal, released in March, that higher education would be on the chopping block. The fleshed-out budget proposal released on May 22 details cuts that would have a devastating impact on student aid, the arts and humanities, scientific research, and international education. Following up…