In an attempt to rein in rising tuition and skyrocketing debt President Obama has announced a plan for performance based funding for higher education. Under his plan colleges would be rated on affordability, graduation rates and earnings of graduates. While we applaud the President for raising concerns over rising tuition and student debt, concerns that…
The following letter to the editor appeared in the Columbus Dispatch in response to an article that placed some of the blame for increases in tuition and in student debt on inflated faculty salaries and continuing salary increases. ______________ Sunday, August 4, 2013 As president of the Ohio Conference of the American Association of University…
Certainly since Lyndon Johnson pushed through the social safety-net programs known collectively as the Great Society, but even since FDR began to create the first of those safety-net programs as part of his New Deal, the Far Right has been arguing vehemently that such programs are tantamount to communism, that they represent an unethical and…
In my first two posts in this series (links provided at the end of this post), I commented on the excessive compensation being received by David Petraeus for teaching a course as an adjunct faculty member at a CUNY campus and by Gordon Gee as president of Ohio State. This post provides updates on both…
This is actually a follow-up to two of my previous posts, “The Deepening Caste System in Higher Education” and “The Business Model for Higher Education.” In the first of those two posts, I describe the sweet deal that Richard Herman, the former president of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, received after he was forced…
Shortly after I made yesterday’s post, I received an e-mail from the group trying to galvanize broader support for higher pay for workers at McDonald’s and other fast-food restaurants: http://lowpayisnotok.org/mcdonalds/?utm_campaign=LowPay&utm_medium=email&utm_source=McDonalds. At the center of the page is a link to a video at the McDonald’s corporate website, ostensibly provided as a service to their employees…
Many commentators on what is undermining higher education have focused on administrative bloat, on the increasing allocation of revenues to non-instructional or administrative positions. Some have pointed to the increasing exploitation of adjunct faculty at most institutions, citing the very minimal compensation, the non-existent benefits, the general lack of staff support, and the complete lack…
This is a re-post from the “On the Issues” blog of the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education [http://futureofhighered.org/on-the-issues/] I encourage you to become more involved in this national advocacy group. ******************** It’s almost a truism in many places today that colleges and universities ought to be run more like businesses. But should they? …
In the 1990s, the concept of “job sharing” was introduced to allow employees, an especially women with small children, to “share” the equivalent of a full-time position. Each of the employees receives a proportionate share of the salaries and benefits normally allocated for the position. On the plus side, studies have shown that the employees…
This is a re-post from the “On the Issues” blog of the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education [http://futureofhighered.org/on-the-issues/] *************** When the new healthcare law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, takes effect in 2014, large employers will be required to provide healthcare benefits to employees who work over 30 hours a week.…