Stefan Collini: “Who Are the Spongers Now?”

Stefan Collini, Professor of Intellectual History and English Literature at Cambridge and author of the important book What Are Universities For?, has a wonderful review article in the London Review of Books responding to the Conservative British government’s proposal to establish a Teaching Excellence Framework.  Responding specifically to a new Green Paper written by Jo…

There Is a Better Way

I have previously reposted a number of items by University of California at Santa Barbara Professor Christopher Newfield, taken from the “Remaking the University” blog that he runs with UCLA Professor Michael Meranze (I suggest you subscribe).  The essay below was posted today under the title Top Trends for 2016 Higher Ed: Earth-Two Edition.  Cleverly taking…

“Academic Freedom” Out, “Innovation” In as Utah Trustees Approve New Mission Statement

On Tuesday, the University of Utah’s Board of Trustees voted to abandon a ten-year-old 120-word mission statement, branded too “long-winded” and lacking in tangible goals, replacing it with a new 70-word version that Academic Senate President Bill Johnson called “a nice, tight mission statement.”  According to a report in the Salt Lake Tribune, the new…

Barbara Bowen, president, Professional Staff Congress, the union of 25,000 CUNY faculty and staff, on Governor Cuomo’s 2016-17 Executive Budget

“We welcome and hope to build on the Governor’s acknowledgement of the need to provide funding for retroactive raises for CUNY’s 25,000 faculty and staff—who have not had a raise in six years—but are alarmed at what appears to be a massive funding cut. “A preliminary reading of the Executive Budget shows a proposal for…

Court Enjoins Nevada Voucher Law

The following is the text of a press release issued January 11 by the Education Law Center: Judge James Wilson of the First Judicial District Court of Nevada (Carson City) has ruled in Lopez v. Schwartz that the state’s school voucher law (SB 302) enacted last summer by the Legislature violates two provisions of the…

Contemplating the Friedrichs Case

Yesterday’s troubling oral argument in the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association has prompted a flurry of doom-and-gloom stories in the media about the potentially devastating consequences for the union movement of a decision by the high court to overturn 40 years of precedent and outlaw “agency fee” payments…

Hello to All That

An academic career never seemed a possibility for me until I was in my fifties. Unlike most who end up teaching in colleges and universities, I was never a star student. Nor did I show signs of creative genius. I had little direction in my life, drifting in and out of jobs over the years…