John K. Wilson began the month with an update on the Salaita situation: Considering that all of the trustees signed a letter embracing Salaita’s firing, it would be shocking if even a single trustee voted for Salaita. The Sept. 11 Board of Trustees meeting will obviously be the center of considerable attention, but it ultimately will…
The college football bowl season is reaching its climax, and the professional football playoffs are about to begin. By all accounts, football is indisputably the most popular sport in America. Indeed, according to an article published in Business Insider early in 2014, football is essentially keeping network television culturally relevant and financially solvent. Consider this…
In a feature article for University Business, Ioanna Opidee provides an overview of the major trends related to postsecondary teaching that we might expect in 2015. Opidee focuses on what she asserts will be four increasing areas of emphasis: 1. Academic Return on Investment 2. Competencies at the Core 3. Flipped Classrooms and Evolving MOOCs…
By Jeremi Suri, professor of history and public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. This essay originally appeared in the Dallas Morning-News. Universities provided the fuel for American economic growth and global leadership in the last century. This is particularly true for public universities. They educated more businesspeople, governors, soldiers, doctors, lawyers, teachers…
Brian C. Mitchell began his August posts with a look at a survey of higher-ed CFOs: Ultimately, it’s not the job of the CFO to find incremental solutions to systemic problems eating away at the financial sustainability of American higher education. Collaboration like that proposed by CFO’s in the recent survey is important. But it…
Hank Reichman’s first post of the month dealt with Foundation for Individual Rights in Education lawsuits against campus speech codes: FIRE’s mission and approach differ from those of the AAUP and we sometimes disagree. Nonetheless, often our concerns overlap, as was indicated in an enlightening session offered by FIRE staff members at AAUP’s recent Annual…
Janet D. Stemwedel started off June with an explanation as to why she can no longer donate to her alma mater: As a professor at San José State University, a teaching-focused institution in the California State University system, I am teaching a very different student population than Wellesley’s. Approximately half of our students are first-generation…
BY HANS-JOERG TIEDE One hundred years ago today, the AAUP was founded at an organizational meeting at the Chemists’ Club in New York. A committee of 33 professors, chaired by John Dewey, organized the meeting. Among the members of the committee were Harvard law professor Roscoe Pound and Stanford engineering professor Guido Marx. Arthur Lovejoy served…
A May Day reprinting of an article by Jack Rasmus concluded: That condition of the 100 million plus working families in America today, International Labor Day 2014, is as lamentable as the accelerating accrual of income and wealth by the 1% is disgusting. Of course, the two trends are not mutually exclusive but directly related.…
On December 12, Myles Udland reported the following in an article for Business Insider: “Consumer confidence is at an almost 8-year high. “On Friday, the University of Michigan’s preliminary consumer confidence reading for December came in at 93.8, the best reading since January 2007 and a complete blowout of expectations. “According to Paul Dales at Capital…