The Cold Facts about Higher Education and Contingent Faculty Appointments

This is a re-post from the “On the Issues” blog of the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education [http://futureofhighered.org/on-the-issues/] Although the details are shameful, it’s good to see the mainstream press publicizing the facts about higher education faculty appointments and compensation.  A recent NBC report highlights these facts from the most recent annual survey…

The Quest for Shared Governance at Boston College

The following piece is being re-posted from the Catholic Higher Education Advocate [http://cheausa.org/], which reprinted it from The Heights, the Boston College student newspaper.  The Catholic Higher Education Advocate is currently including this op-ed as part of a broader feature story, “Battle Intensifies at Boston College over Shared Governance,” covering the public back and forth between the Boston…

Right to Work, by the Numbers: Part 4

Historic Highs and Lows in Unemployment In my previous post in this series, I closed by noting that proponents of “right to work” might very well want to emphasize that eight of the ten states with the lowest current unemployment averages are “right to work” states. Those states are Virginia, Oklahoma, Iowa, Wyoming, Utah, South…

Review of The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities

Reviews of Recent Books Concerning Current Issues in Higher Ed: No. 6 Donoghue, Frank. The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities. New York: Fordham U P, 2008. In this seminal work of the corporatization of American universities, Frank Donoghue offers a much longer historical view than most other authors focusing…

Ohio: Where Graduation Rates, Teaching Loads, and Administrative Bloat Have Become Part of the Debate about the State Budget

Testimony of John McNay, Ph.D., President Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors Before the House Finance Subcommittee on Higher Education Representative Cliff Rosenberger, Chair March 6, 2013 Chairman Rosenberger, Ranking Member Ramos, and distinguished members of the Higher Education Subcommittee:  my name is John McNay and I am President of the Ohio…

Review of Public No More: A New Path to Excellence for America’s Public Universities.

Reviews of Recent Books Concerning Current Issues in Higher Ed: No. 3 Fethke, Gary C., and Andrew J. Policano. Public No More: A New Path to Excellence for America’s Public Universities. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford U P, 2012. This book has been very controversial. Not surprisingly, given that the authors have served as deans of…

American Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges.

Reviews of Recent Books Concerning Current Issues in Higher Ed: No. 2 Altbach, Philip G., Patricia J. Gumport, and Robert O. Berdahl, eds. American Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges. 3rd Edition. Eds. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins U P, 2011. In selecting the essays included in this collection, the editors…

Remarks on Benjamin Ginsberg’s Fall of the Faculty

Reviews of Recent Books Concerning Current Issues in Higher Education: No. 1 Ginsberg, Benjamin. The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters. New York: Oxford U P, 2011. Ginsberg’s book has very quickly become a seminal work in the growing body of scholarly literature dedicated to higher education’s…

Duke’s Composition MOOC & Writing Commons, First-Day Musings

Yesterday (3/18/13) at Writing Commons, the open-education home for writers, we had unprecedented interest in our project: 7,071 unique visitors came to our site! What caused our readership to more than double in a day? Professor Denise Comer’s team from Duke University launched its ground-breaking Composition MOOC, English Composition I: Achieving Expertise.  In case you missed the…