According to a “breaking news” story distributed by the Washington Post, at 4 a.m. on Tuesday, a hacker gained entry into a supposedly secure database containing the personal records, dating back to 1998, of 309,079 faculty, staff, and students at the University of Maryland’s College Park and Shady Grove campuses. Among other things, the compromised…
This series will review the employment data for U.S. colleges and universities from 2004 to 2012. That data has been measured against enrollment, by the percentage increase in each category per 1,000 students at the institution. The five categories are: full-time faculty, part-time faculty, upper administration, professional staff, and non-professional staff (with the last three…
The following report comes from Howard Bunsis, Chair of the AAUP Collective Bargaining Congress: There was an enormous turnout of faculty at UIC today, as picketing took place all over the sprawling campus, and everyone congregated for two large rallies. We had support from students, other unions on campus, as well as local activists, and…
As one who participated in the organizing campaign at the University of Illinois at Chicago two years ago, I have followed the negotiations for the past 18 months with increasing distress. The administration has been recalcitrant and has drawn out the bargaining process unnecessarily. The union’s demands appear to be reasonable, especially with regard to…
I have found Walter Breau’s post, “Big Bang Disruption,” to be extremely thought-provoking. That said, neither I nor anyone else should hold him in any way responsible for anything that follows in this post (or, for that matter, anything that has preceded this paragraph in this post). If one compares the life cycles of gadgets…
The title of this post is another one of those entrenched but hackneyed questions that obscures the real issues in higher education. The often-heard claim that federal mandates have necessitated the proliferation of administrators makes little sense on several levels. First, and most basically, why should keeping data, etc., on what are essentially secondary, if…
When I was entering graduate school in 1978, there were 29 new Ph.D.’s for every tenure-track job opening in English. It was the period in which anecdotes about Ph.D.’s driving taxi cabs became commonplace. I didn’t know that information at the time, but it became very apparent as I made my way through the Masters…
Writing for the Associated Press, Hope Yen reported recently that the earnings gap between young adults with and without bachelor’s degrees has stretched to its widest level in nearly half a century. She suggested that it is a sign of the growing value of a college education despite rising tuition costs. Citing Pew Research Center…
The latest book from Larry Downes and Paul Nunes, Big Bang Disruption, published in January by Portfolio/Penguin, outlines how the risks associated with Clayton Christensen’s theory on disruptive innovation have intensified due to the effects of the internet and rapid technological change. Instead of established industries having years to respond, or at least trying to…