“This is What They Say They’re Doing. And They’re Doing it!” A Conversation with Isaac Kamola, Director of the Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom

BY CAROLYN BETENSKY At the AAUP Conference and Biennial Meeting last month, one of the most widely discussed sessions featured the presentation of a recent white paper written by Isaac Kamola, director of the AAUP’s new Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom. Manufacturing Backlash: Right-Wing Think Tanks and Legislative Attacks on Higher Education, 2021–2023…

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Austerity Speedups Eclipse New Horizons for Higher Education

BY AUDREY BERLOWITZ  I am a PhD candidate studying undergraduate teaching and learning at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, which serves a predominantly multiracial, multiethnic first-generation student population. Though students have been advised by higher-ups to keep our energies on our studies and our thoughts unsullied by internal university politics, I have juggled both…

A protest sign reading "Solidarity against Austerity." The person carrying the sign is facing away from the camera and only their head is visible.

Data and the Austerity Regime in Higher Education

BY NEIL KRAUS “The public has lost confidence in higher education.” This narrative is everywhere, its ubiquity reminiscent of the failing K–12 schools refrain post–A Nation at Risk. News stories about polling results, opinion pieces advocating increased online education, and consultants seeking to sell a wide range of products remind us of the public’s declining…

A boardroom with an empty table and row of empty chairs, with a notebook, writing pad, and pencil on the table

Higher Education Succumbs to the Corporate Model

BY JOHN A. ETERNO Faculty at many universities are experiencing frustration. Universities should be bastions of creativity, scholarship, and democracy, but administrators have been using a corporate management style which invariably leaves the faculty behind. Most importantly, shared governance, once a staple of higher learning, is becoming a relic of the past. Faculty, to the…

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Workforce Development in Community Colleges

BY GLYNN WOLAR The push toward implementing a workforce development orientation at the community colleges has been ongoing for several years. In 2016, the Brookings Institute published an extensive report articulating what might be termed an uncritically positive posture toward this development. There is no doubt that community college administrators are generally enthused about implementing…

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State University Budgets in the Neoliberal Age

BY RAPHAEL SASSOWER Once upon a time, the administration of a sleepy state university proposed a new budget, offering the rationale that the new budget would “incentivize” departments and promote “entrepreneurial” conduct—couching it in terms of “decentralized” operations and rewarding colleges for increases in their student full-time equivalent enrollments. Three years into the proposed experiment…

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Reporter Seeks Input on College Partnerships with Private Companies

BY TAYLOR SWAAK   Hi, everyone! I’m a reporter with the Chronicle of Higher Education covering technology and innovation. I’m in the midst of a newsroom report (see past examples here) on how colleges can thoughtfully, safely, and effectively partner with outside companies for services related to academic and student support. The broad umbrella of contracted services may…

St. Catherine University students stand on the steps holding protest signs on the steps in front of Derham Hall.

When the MBAs Take Over

BY AN ANONYMOUS SAINT CATHERINE UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR Saint Catherine University sits on an idyllic green bluff in a serene part of Saint Paul, Minnesota. It’s not too far from the Mississippi River. When it’s hushed, you can hear the faint sounds of a barge horn as it slowly heads down to New Orleans. It’s the…

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Sloganeering and the Limits of Leadership

BY HARVEY J. GRAFF  In my recent Washington Monthly essay, “The Banality of University Slogans,” I observed that “whether it’s ad campaigns for football season, gauzy reports from the provost, or bombast from the school’s president, higher education abounds with empty rhetoric.” In “Per Aspera ad Astra” Academe Blog contributing editor Hank Reichman shared and…