BY SHERRYL KLEINMAN Years ago a colleague scolded me for saying that UNC employees can’t have a union. Yes, they can, he said; it’s collective bargaining that’s proscribed. Rudy Fichtenbaum, national president of the AAUP, reminded us of that message this past weekend at the annual meeting of the North Carolina state AAUP conference, attended…
BY HANK REICHMAN In The Future of Academic Freedom I devote a chapter to the baleful influence on academic freedom of colleges’ and universities’ increasing reliance on external donors, many of whom act on political motivations potentially detrimental to institutional values. Some of the possible pitfalls may be seen in how the Massachusetts Institute of…
BY HANK REICHMAN Two days ago I posted a piece on this blog about graduate student debt in which I cited an article in the New York Times that reported, among other things, that students in an online social work program at the University of Southern California (USC) averaged an extraordinary $109,486 in student loan…
BY HANK REICHMAN The following is the text of a talk delivered at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) on May 20, 2019. My thanks to the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment for hosting the talk as part of its colloquia series and to the UCLA Faculty Association and Professors…
BY JOHN T. MCNAY The growing obsession on the part of college and university administrations with secrecy, which I address in my recent Academe article, “Ohio AAUP Chapters Contend with Secretive Searches,” is indicative of a larger issue. The continual adoption of corporate models is undermining the academic mission at our institutions. Even corporations, when…
BY BETHANY LETIECQ, SAMANTHA PARSONS, AND GUS THOMSON We did it! We organized. We educated. We advocated. And with student activism, solidarity, and a collaborative spirit, we collectively achieved a huge victory for transparency at George Mason University (GMU). Last week, Provost Wu announced at our GMU Faculty Senate meeting that we will institute a…
BY HANK REICHMAN Nestled in the Rocky Mountains north of Salt Lake City, Utah State University (USU) is known for its agriculture, education and space research programs. In 2008, the Charles Koch foundation gave USU $25,000 every year for one “Koch professor” and the same stipend for each of four “faculty junior professors.” The agreement…
BY AARON BARLOW One of the more depressing articles I’ve read recently—outside of politics—is Kevin Carey’s “The Creeping Capitalist Takeover of Higher Education” for Huffington Post. He writes: Instead of students receiving a reasonably priced, quality online degree, universities are using them as cash cows while corporate middlemen…
BY HANK REICHMAN Today Democracy Now!, the daily, global, independent news hour hosted by award-winning journalists Amy Goodman and Rutgers University professor Juan González, ran a feature about the strike at Wright State University, which featured an interview with AAUP President and chief Wright State negotiator Rudy Fichtenbaum. You can watch it here:
BY KAILEY ADKINS Students and faculty have been clear: George Mason University must begin reviewing all of their future donor agreements for conflicts of interest and make them more transparent to the public. The Provost at George Mason University will be presenting his recommendations to the university’s board to improve gift acceptance policies next Wednesday.…