Many of our institutions are paying consultants very large sums to improve their “branding.” My own institution, Wright State University, has budgeted $2.3 million for this purpose. And I believe that that funding has been designated simply for a “branding” plan and not for conducting a actual “branding” campaign. So who knows what the price…
An “On the Issues” Post from the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education [http://futureofhighered.org] _______________ In “I Used to be a Good Teacher,” Alice Umber contrasts her experiences teaching as a tenure-track professor and then as a contingent, “adjunct” faculty member. Her piece should be required reading for college students and parents, for administrators…
This month’s issue of Washington Monthly includes a thoughtful article by Ben Miller in which he attempts to compile such rankings and, in fact, provides several alternative lists of the twenty worst colleges and universities in the U.S. For analyses of the rankings, see the full article, which is available at: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2014/features/americas_worst_colleges051752.php?page=all. Most of the…
I should have expected the exploitative nature of news coverage concerning Ebola. I don’t know why I thought the news media would offer an educational experience. Offerings on television and on websites have much in common with Shark Week and the coverage of the O.J. Simpson disaster. Watching a patient being transported from an airport…
Professor Steven Salaita on October 8, 2014 spoke at Columbia College Chicago that I previously commented on. John Dworkin asked the panelists, Steven Salaita, Iymen Chehade and myself whether we would consent to being taped and YouTubed: a neologism? Mr. Dworkin recently released on his YouTube channel videos of the three panelists. Here are parts one and…
It’s 6:50 in the evening on Wednesday, October 8, 2014. The 7:00 event start time at Columbia College Chicago draws near. The lecture hall is filling up rapidly. The star attraction has not arrived. Professor Iymen Chehade, indeed a star in his own right, and I are waiting for Steven Salaita. A skilled, poised and charismatic student…
The Chicago Tribune has updated the Steven Salaita whirlwind speaking tour in Chicago. Kindly see here. I noticed that a scheduled appearance at the University of Illinois at Chicago was canceled according to the paper. This is a link to another article in the Chicago Tribune that announces the tour and discusses the Salaita tenure travesty…
The Campus Faculty Association of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was an early advocate of an American Association of University Professors investigation of the university’s administration. Throughout the Steven Salaita viewpoint-cleansing assault on academic freedom, CFA has sustained an impressive advocacy in support of academic freedom and shared governance. One of the benefits in being engaged in AAUP matters, is the…
It is hard to say exactly what the long-term impact of the Occupy Wall Street movement will turn out to be. Will it seem in retrospect a very impassioned but transient response to a very serious economic crisis caused largely by the unprincipled marketing of mortgage-backed securities of very dubious value? Or will it be…