Ideologies and Strategies

In my previous post, I quoted from a ThinkProgress blog post on a bill introduced in the Ohio legislature that would have defined comprehensive sex education as a “gateway sexual activity.” The bill was ultimately withdrawn after its proponents were forced by public ridicule to recognize that it was no longer passable. But as the…

Right to Work, by the Numbers, Part 2

The Impact of Immigration In the first post in this series, I attempted to counter the claim that the population shift from the “Rust Belt” to the “Sun Belt” has reflected a preference for living in “right-to-work” rather than in “pro-labor” states. I can both summarize that argument and extend it by pointing out that…

Right to Work, by the Numbers, Part 1

Part 1: Population and Population Movement People who are pro-labor often argue against right-to-work legislation by pointing out its fundamental unfairness to dues-paying union members and by arguing that, in weakening unions, it erodes the wages, benefits, and working conditions of all workers. I myself made such an argument in an earlier post to this…

American Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges.

Reviews of Recent Books Concerning Current Issues in Higher Ed: No. 2 Altbach, Philip G., Patricia J. Gumport, and Robert O. Berdahl, eds. American Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges. 3rd Edition. Eds. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins U P, 2011. In selecting the essays included in this collection, the editors…

Remarks on Benjamin Ginsberg’s Fall of the Faculty

Reviews of Recent Books Concerning Current Issues in Higher Education: No. 1 Ginsberg, Benjamin. The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters. New York: Oxford U P, 2011. Ginsberg’s book has very quickly become a seminal work in the growing body of scholarly literature dedicated to higher education’s…

A Follow-Up to “Taking Heed from the Front Lines”

The greatest irony in the increasing privatization of public education is that the deficiencies that the “reformers” typically claim to be trying to correct are often exacerbated by the very “reforms” that they are advocating. There is now a tremendous amount of statistical evidence that, on average, students in charter schools perform worse–and often much…

PASSHE Chancellor Hits the Road, Attacks on Public Higher Ed in PA Likely to Continue

Ever since the attacks on public sector unions, working families, and public education in Wisconsin that began just over two years ago, my own writing has changed. It’s become less…well, “academic.” I find myself more interested in plowing through company SEC filings on Lexis-Nexis than some of the newest scholarship in my field. Don’t get…

Requiem for the Twinkie, Addendum

In September, I posted to this blog an entry titled “Requiem for the Twinkie,” in which I observed that the venture-capital firms that hold a controlling interest in Hostess Bakeries were attempting to plunder worker pensions as a last step in their wringing all possible profit out of the company that they were purportedly trying…