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.…
BY HANK REICHMAN In the fall of 2016 the AAUP, the College Media Association, the Student Press Law Center, and the National Coalition Against Censorship issued a report, Threats to the Independence of Student Media. The report declared, “Candid journalism that discusses students’ dissatisfaction with the perceived shortcomings of their institutions can be uncomfortable for…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH What follows is a news release from the Wright State Office of Communications: Wright State University announced Nov. 16 that it has reached an agreement with the federal government to resolve questions and problems that arose when former university employees mishandled H-1B visa applications. The Wright State University Board of Trustees…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH These are the opening paragraphs of an article written by Alexandra Hutzler for Newsweek: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s security detail, one of the most extensive in the Trump administration, will cost U.S. taxpayers nearly $20 million through the fall of 2019. DeVos began receiving nonstop security from the U.S. Marshals Service…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Writing for Vox, Sean Illing interviews Joshua Hunt, a reporter for the New York Times and author of University of Nike. These are the opening paragraphs to the article, which provide the background to the book and the interview: In 2014, the New York Times sent an investigative reporter to the…