Step Aside, Deanlettes. The Provost Fellows Have Arrived.
The following news item has appeared in this week’s digital newsletter from the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education: “A Google search for the term ‘chief diversity officer’ delivers 5.6 million results. Many colleges and universities across the world have added an administrative post with the title of chief diversity officer in recent years. At…
The Popularity of College Football—and the Very Thin Line between the Cute and the Macabre
Writing for the Lansing State Journal, Judy Putnam reports that a taxidermist named Nick Saade (well, at least it’s not “de Sade”) has attempted to capture the passionate gridiron rivalry between the Michigan State Spartans and the Michigan Wolverines in a diorama featuring 22 stuffed chipmunks wearing tiny versions of the football helmets worn by…
From “Awfulizing” to Organizing
Yesterday I posted an entry about the AAUP Colorado Conference’s efforts to organize part-time community college faculty, who represent the overwhelming majority of community college teachers in that state. Central to these efforts has been the work of Caprice Lawless, President of the Front Range Community College AAUP Chapter and Vice-President for Community Colleges of…
Higher Education: Like a Fire Bell in the Night
The decision by Moody’s Investors Service to upgrade its outlook for higher education from “negative” to “stable” was good news for higher education. This is Moody’s first outlook upgrade in more than two years. Eva Bogaty, who authored the Moody’s report, noted that “our outlook revision to stable reflects our view that aggregate operating revenue…
Newfield Does It Again
Last week I posted an entry on this blog encouraging readers to read an article on academic freedom and tenure by Christopher Newfield, published in Inside Higher Ed. Now Newfield has posted a kind of follow up piece, entitled Academic Freedom and the Very Serious People on the Remaking the University blog, which he edits…
Arne Duncan, Accreditation, and “Barking Watchdogs”
Yesterday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan delivered a “major” address on higher education. As Inside Higher Ed’s account put it, his call for “a greater focus on student outcomes at colleges was an effort to pivot away from discussions that he said are focused too narrowly on the burden of student loan debt.” Duncan argues:…
Colorado Community College Faculty Fight for Equity
In Colorado, somewhere between 70% and 80% of all community college faculty members teach part-time on term-to-term contracts. Yesterday, July 27, following the AAUP’s successful 2015 Summer Institute in Denver, AAUP-CBC President Howard Bunsis and I traveled to nearby Louisville, Colorado, to join some of those community college faculty members at a mini-Institute (the “Mini-Innie”)…
Universities Are No More Illusory Than Journalists
From Cathy Davidson, “Universities Are No More Illusory Than Journalists: Rsp to Kevin Carey and NYT”: The reputational system of the classroom and of universities is all we’ve got. We need to build upon and improve upon that system–peer mentoring, honor codes, honor systems, and other internal checks and balances have been shown to have…
Given the Choice between a Feckless and Hyperbolic Foreign Policy . . .
While being interviewed by Breitbart on Sirius XM radio, Mike Huckabee said the following: “This president’s foreign policy is the most feckless in American history. He’s so naive he would trust the Iranians, and he would take the Israelis and basically march them to the door of the oven. This is the most idiot thing,…