BY CONNOR GIBSON New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer’s new book Dark Money includes details that bolster concerns publicized by UnKoch My Campus, and students and professors across the United States who have blown the whistle on Charles Koch’s cooptation of higher education programs. Universities are at the heart of Charles Koch’s lobbying model, which after…
This post was written by Dave Johnson for the daily Progressive Breakfast newsletter of the Campaign for America’s Future [http://ourfuture.org/], which has become a driving force behind the New Populist Movement. The group’s report, Organizing to Take Back America: The New Populist Movement, is available at: http://y.ourfuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/New-Populist-Movement-Organizing.pdf. Prepared by Roger Hickey, the co-director of the Campaign for…
The Charles Koch Foundation has offered Western Carolina University a gift of $2 million in order to establish a Center of Free Enterprise. Mark Jamison, the retired postmaster of Webster, North Carolina, has an excellent op-ed piece in the Smoky Mountain News opposing the donation. He writes: The proposed $2 million gift from the Charles…
Writing for Westword, Alan Prendergast reports that “Colorado Community College Profs Seethe over Low Pay, Lame Raise.” Here are the opening paragraphs of the article: “In a part-timer economy, fast-food workers and janitors aren’t the only ones feeling the pinch. Skimpy wages, long hours and a lack of benefits can also be found in the…
The following item was posted on the blog of the UCLA Faculty Association: A poll was released by the Bay Area Council showing strong support of Californians for funding higher ed and possibly a ballot initiative to do so. When you read the poll question, it is clearly a push-poll, i.e., designed to suggest both…
This past fall, I somehow failed to post this notice on the most recent working paper published by the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education (CFHE). The CFHE website is located at http://futureofhighered.org/ _________________________ Executive Summary Although 50 years of research has shown that faculty/student interaction is crucial to student success, recent trends and…
What is occurring in Maine is the opposite of what has occurred in places where the “charter” university concept has taken hold–most notably Virginia. In those places, elite public universities have accepted lower state subsidies for more institutional “flexibility”–which has meant more aggressive efforts to attract out-of-state and international students who pay higher tuition.…
Two quotes from self-proclaimed education “reformers”: Margaret Spellings (former Bush administration Secretary of Education, and president-elect of the University of North Carolina) explaining her work with for-profit colleges: “The reason I did it was because I learned a lot about how we can serve our students and think of them as customers in providing a…
Writing for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution [1 Jan. 2016: A,1], Chris Joyner and Aaron Gould Sheinin have reported on the unusual aspects of how Georgia universities lobby state legislators. Their article, “AJC at the Gold Dome: University Lobbyists Spend Big on State Lawmakers,” details not only the practices of the lobbyists but the reasons why those…
Writing for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution [31 Dec. 2015: A,1], Nedra Rhone reports on the rise in organized student activism nationwide but especially in greater Atlanta. In the article “Today’s Student Activists: On Fire against a Gumbo of Issues,” she emphasizes that this new wave of student activism is targeting more than racism, addressing issues “from…