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…
BY NICOLE MONNIER When my article on taking the “contingent” out of “contingent faculty” appeared in the recent issue of Academe, I was feeling the irony, and not the good kind. Because I had just learned that thirty-eight of my NTT Mizzou comrades were likely to lose their jobs for the next academic year. When…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH What follows is the second 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 has…
POSTED BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL The results of the most recent Tuition Discounting Study from the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) are telling and worrisome. The study, released last week, examined how much colleges and universities awarded students in scholarship and grants and how deep tuition discounting has become. The NACUBO study…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH What follows are the introduction and the first 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.…
BY HANK REICHMAN A few weeks ago the California state auditor released damning reports on the management of both the California State University Chancellor’s Office and the University of California Office of the President (UCOP), with the latter stirring up a hornet’s nest of controversy in the legislature and the media. At a Board of…
BY HANK REICHMAN The California State University (CSU) system has hired new managers at more than double the rate of other employees over the past decade at salaries growing twice as fast as those of faculty members and support staff. The administration of the University of California (UC) system pays salaries and benefits to top managers…
BY AARON BARLOW Will New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s “free” college tuition plan have much positive impact on the City University of New York (CUNY), the massive system where I teach? I doubt it; it’s really not much more than repackaging of programs already in existence. And, as David Brooks points out in The New…