BY JOHN McNAY Colleges and universities are being pummeled by the financial impact of the coronavirus. Every day brings more bad news: cuts to state support, large deficits, questionable fall enrollment, and questions as to what degree campuses will be open. Yet, amid the human tragedy, we should see the crisis as an opportunity for…
The following is a press release from the Rutgers AAUP-AFT chapter. Rutgers AAUP-AFT has filed a lawsuit to force the Rutgers University administration to come clean about the huge sums of money it funnels to an athletics program that continually loses money. The suit, filed last Friday, asks a superior court judge to require the…
BY STEVE MOCKABEE AND PHOEBE REEVES, University of Cincinnati AAUP The AAUP-UC chapter leaders believe strongly that the University of Cincinnati’s budget should prioritize UC’s mission to serve the public good through teaching and research. This is why we have been promoting a Fight for 51% campaign urging university leaders to allocate the majority of…
BY HANK REICHMAN Calbright College, California’s totally online community college, a target of withering faculty criticism from its inception by former Gov. Jerry Brown, may be just a few steps from a well-deserved demise. Last week the California Legislature agreed on a state budget for 2020-21 that will eliminate all funding for the school. The…
BY THE UC BERKELEY FACULTY ASSOCIATION The University of California Office of the President (UCOP) is famed for its tough bargaining tactics in its dealings with its unions. From its ongoing conflict with AFSCME for failing to comply with its own rules around subcontracting, to a belligerent tendency to cancel AFT bargaining sessions at the…
BY HANK REICHMAN Two articles from today’s (London) Times Higher Education discuss how higher education systems in the U.S., the U.K., and Australia, which have embraced privatization and corporatization, and systems in continental Europe, which have largely retained the public funding model, are faring in the face of the challenges posed by the fiscal implications…
BY CHRISTOPHER NEWFIELD The following is reposted from the Remaking the University blog. While its focus is on the University of California its arguments are as relevant for other public research and teaching universities. Should university officials be fatalistic about Covid-powered cuts to their core educational budgets? Or should they work 24/7 on their state…
BY MARTIN KICH Everyone gives lip-service to the primacy of instruction in institutional missions, but the first place where administrators and boards look for “savings” is almost always instructional budgets and instructional staffing. They almost always say that instruction is where all of the money is, but typically “instruction” accounts for only 30%-40% of a…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The collective effort expressed in this pledge has been organized by AAUP Advocacy Chapters at Ohio University, Ohio State University, and Miami University. We pledge to demand genuine shared governance—visible and tangible involvement in decisions affecting the academic mission, at our own schools and all over Ohio. We pledge to demand…
BY JUDITH GRANT This three-part article continues from Part 1 and Part 2. Failure to Invest in the Region At OU, we have a special mission to educate the citizens of the state of Ohio, especially those in the region of Appalachia. “Today, fewer Ohio adults age 25-64 have at least an Associate’s degree or…