Money, the goal of all goals, today is ruining both education and government. When money becomes, as it has, our only measure of value, structures protecting anything else melt before it. As the “business model” is most keenly attuned to profit, it has become the one model for all of our endeavors. In my first “real” job out…
In the mid-1990s, a group of chief financial officers from Boston-area colleges joined together to form the Boston Consortium for Higher Education, or TBC for short. It quickly grew beyond the financial realm as local schools realized the gains that could be made from working together on common problems. In the new issue of Academe,…
Seizing a Sculpture “At Canada’s Capilano University, the administration confiscates a professor’s work caricaturing the president on the grounds that it constitutes ‘harassment.’” –INSIDE HIGHER ED I must say the Poodle is looking very presidential. The extended touch of gray shows someone who has had his share of worries, and the sharp, long tooth making…
Dear Students and Fellow Artists, Recently, nine of your murals at Central CT State University were ordered destroyed by CCSU President Jack Miller. Nine more are on the immediate chopping block. Miller and Chief Administrative Officer Richard Bachoo waited until classes had ended for the semester – then, without informing the artists, faculty or the…
The rise of online courses—massive and open or just regularly-sized—is one of the major trends in higher education over the last few years. Of course, the rapidly growing access to high speed Internet has been crucial in helping online education spread, but as Julie Vargas explains in the new issue of Academe, today’s online courses…
Ulf Kirchdorfer’s post yesterday made me laugh out loud. But, as funny as his observations about persistently dismal writing are, that sort of writing itself is just terribly disheartening, especially when one is confronted with document after document that seem to suggest that it has become something close to pervasive. If I have a choice…
Testimony of John McNay, President of the Ohio Conference of AAUP, on House Bill 484, before the Ohio State Senate Finance Committee, on May 13, 2014 Chairman Oelslager, Ranking Member Sawyer, and distinguished members of the Senate Finance Committee: my name is John McNay and I am President of the Ohio Conference of the American…
At The Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) Presidents Institute this past January, the theme was Leading Wisely: Linking Tradition and Innovation. The conference “explored ways presidents can tackle today’s unprecedented leadership challenges with a mix of time-tested solutions and new approaches.” CIC’s focus on ways for leadership at small and mid-size liberal arts colleges to…
I will begin by quoting Florence Nightingale, (I heard the full quote at all three of our Nursing Pinning ceremonies over the past week and a half), “to stand still is to go back”. As we look at the strategies that different institutions are using to respond to the challenges that are facing small colleges…