In a conversation with a newly retired and highly respected college president late last week, the conversation turned to the growing problem of how to govern American colleges and universities in uncertain times. American higher education operates on a system of shared governance. It is often presented as a 3-leg stool with each leg balancing…
The September-October issue of Academe has just been posted (and will be in your mailboxes soon). In the issue, Rick Perloff looks at the campaign to unionize Cleveland State University twenty years ago, and William Vesterman looks even further back—to turn-of-the-century economist Thorstein Veblen—to learn lessons about the university today. Leslie Bary uses the benefit…
The Far Right’s favorite euphemism is “reform.” Their notion of “reform” is the equivalent of “reforming” a criminal by executing him. Or since many on the Far Right (Ted Nugent, for certain) would applaud that analogy, it is the equivalent of running a chainsaw through the base of a shade tree in order to “save”…
This is crossposted from Daily Kos at the request of Aaron Barlow: The testing, accountability, and choice strategies offer the illusion of change while changing nothing. They mask the inequity and injustice that are now so apparent in our social order. They do nothing to alter the status quo. They preserve the status quo. They…
Guest blogger Peter Dreier is Dr. E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and Chair, Urban & Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College. His latest book is The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame (Nation Books, 2012). Dear Mitch Daniels: I’ve learned from recent news reports that thanks to your efforts as governor to…
At the outset, I want to apologize if I have gotten any of the details of this story wrong. It’s very complex, and I have had to piece it together from a number of sources. The Adjunct Faculty Association had not gone on strike since 1982. The Taylor Law makes public-employee strikes illegal in New…
Last night, at a church by Washington Square Park, Diane Ravitch spoke. She’s not the most long-term opponent of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and all the other “reform” battalions, but she is proving the best. She is becoming our champion, our Horatio defending Rome: Alone stood brave Horatius, But constant still…
I received the following e-mail yesterday afternoon: ________________________ Martin, last night the NRA successfully recalled two Colorado state senators who had voted to pass good gun safety laws. Democrats had more money and district demographics were in their favor. But the election came down to turnout and Republicans had more intensity and more reliable voters. The biggest challenge facing…
In an article last week on School Board News Today entitled “The New College ‘Caste System’–and How We Might Change It,” Lawrence Hardy writes: At a Washington, D.C., forum this week called “2013 College Rankings and Higher Education’s New Caste System,” a Texas college president, journalists from the Washington Monthly and elsewhere, and a key Obama administration aide,…