Michael Behrent, the president of the Appalachian State University chapter of the AAUP, and John Steen, Program Coordinator of Scholars for North Carolina’s Future (with contribution from Jim Carmichael, professor at UNC Greensboro and president of the AAUP’s North Carolina Conference) have an op-ed today in The News & Observer or Raleigh, NC entitled “Outrageous move to foster runaway…
Colorado’s Community College System (CCCS) continues to pay 75% of its faculty (the so-called “adjuncts”) poverty-level wages. To help our hard-working peers make ends meet this semester, our Front Range Community College AAUP chapter is hosting the first-ever Adjunct Survival Workshop. This event will simultaneously help our peers save hundreds of dollars this year, give…
Phyllis Wise, former chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, issued a statement claiming the board of trustees of the University of Illinois reneged on a promise to pony up $400,000 upon her resignation that took effect on August 12. She claims the $400,000 that she had negotiated with new President Timothy Killeen, was…
Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner opposes the golden parachute $400,000 severance package for Chancellor Phyllis Wise, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. While Rauner, a Republican, wants to cut 31.5% from the state’s higher education budget, (another Scott Walker redux) his position on Chancellor Wise’s severance package is certainly laudable. The University of Illinois has a new board chair, Edward…
The two great parts of American higher education are the students and the faculty. The administrators are only around to facilitate the learning of the former and the teaching and research of the latter. Or that’s the way we imagine it. Over the past fifty years, the students have become customers instead of learners and…
This comes from The Chronicle of Higher Education: The Louisiana State University system’s Board of Supervisors voted last week to uphold the firing of Teresa Buchanan, an associate professor of curriculum and instruction, based on accusations she had engaged in sexual harassment and violated the Americans With Disabilities Act. F. King Alexander, the system’s president, had…
The rampant exploitation of contingent faculty—in particular, of part-time or adjunct faculty—is one of the more disgraceful developments in American higher education over the last quarter century. It ranks with the rampant abuses committed by online for-profit colleges and universities as one of the most pernicious effects of the corporatization of higher education—and, more broadly,…
President Timothy Killeen is completing his first month as leader of the University of Illinois system. In remarks before the Urbana-Champaign faculty Senate Executive Committee, he was rather cavalier about the AAUP censure vote last Saturday. Unlike Chancellor Phyllis M. Wise, who stated in a conciliatory tone that removal of censure was important, President Killeen, according to…
Forbes has just published an article by Kathryn Dill titled “The Ten Best- and Worst-Paying Education Jobs.” Here is the explanation of the methodology: “To determine the Best- And Worst-Paying Education Jobs, Forbes consulted the most recent Occupational Employment and Wages data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which reflects May 2014 salary and employment data,…
In January, Joan Axelrod-Contrada wrote an article for the Boston Globe in which she profiled a number of professionals who have moved from the private sector into higher education. Beyond providing such personalized illustrations of what is involved in such a change in career direction, the article explains why many skills are not only transferable…