BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Much of the discussion about how to fix the broken higher education business model sounds a little like conversation about how best to squeeze blood out of a turnip. Where can the cuts occur? What can be delayed? What new programs can produce revenue quickly? These are legitimate questions. They represent…
BY AARON BARLOW A decade or so ago, I applied for a travel grant to examine papers of Carlos Salzedo, a twentieth-century French/American harpist. The request was turned down, the result of a scathing evaluation by someone who was incensed that I had not mentioned the other important French/American harpist of the time, Marcel Grandjany.…
A special guest post by Dr. Bilinda Straight, Professor of Anthropology Western Michigan University I recently revisited press coverage of the 2010 union win for faculty in anthropology and other disciplines at Florida State University, where an arbitrator reversed the termination of 21 tenured faculty members earlier that year, ruling that the firings had violated the…
Yesterday was a hard day for the University of Wisconsin (see AAUP statement). But there are a few moments that gave me hope for the future. Regent José Vásquez’ impassioned plea that we stop “cannibalizing ourselves over the fiscal crisis.” Regents Evers and Bradley providing eminently reasonable amendments that could have gone a long way…
BY DAVE VANNESS The media (and many of my colleagues) are missing the most significant problem with the Board of Regents’ proposed policy on layoff of tenured faculty. That’s not surprising – the policy is intentionally murky (the best landscape for hiding loopholes). Simply put, the policy allows UW administration to discontinue programs (and layoff…
BY JONATHAN REES I spent much of last weekend with two of my colleagues from the Colorado Conference of the AAUP at Adams State University in Alamosa, CO, helping to form a brand spanking new AAUP chapter. Hello everybody in the Paris of the Valley! [JR waves enthusiastically.] Turns out their chapter will be helpful…
BY JOHN HINSHAW To paraphrase Tolstoy, all happy colleges are alike; all unhappy universities are unhappy in their own way. This is the story of an unhappy place: Marywood University. There, the faculty, with help from their colleagues throughout the state and region, are fighting against despair to make the institution true to AAUP principles…
The following essay by University of California at Santa Barbara English professor Christopher Newfield appeared originally on the Remaking the University blog and is republished with permission. Although the three institutions discussed are from the San Francisco Bay Area, the issues addressed are ones we faculty members are confronting everywhere. The New Normal Isn’t Normal–It…
BY CAPRICE LAWLESS Alarmed by heartbreaking requests from their teaching colleagues for food, health-care, beds, housing, help with shut-off notices from Xcel Energy, etc., the faculty majority in the state’s most financially secure system of colleges asked Colorado’s State Board of Community Colleges and Occupational Education (SBCCOE) today to rethink its priorities. Risking the retaliation…
Image: I am exhausted. I spent the entirety of yesterday with my mother in the emergency room until she was admitted to the hospital and had a breakdown when I got home because it’s scary when a parent is in the hospital and you have that moment when you realize your they aren’t immortal. I just wanted…