To Hell in a Hand Basket: GE and Other Fiascos

BY HARRY HELLENBRAND Harry Hellenbrand served for many years as provost and interim president at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) following a distinguished career as a faculty member, academic senator, department chair and dean at CSU campuses.  The essay below addresses changes in curriculum imposed on the CSU’s 23 campuses and their faculty by the…

Iowa City Old Capitol building with lawn in front and pedestrians on a path

AP: Iowa Regents “Secretly Recruited” Bruce Harreld

BY MICHAEL DECESARE One of the primary findings of the AAUP’s investigative report regarding the University of Iowa’s 2015 presidential search was that “the search was structured and engineered by the regents’ leadership from the outset to identify a figure from the business world congenial to its image of ‘transformative leadership.’” An AP story out yesterday confirms this conclusion.…

How to Build a Great Public University

BY HANK REICHMAN Recently I had occasion to look a bit into the history of the University of California at Berkeley, where I earned my doctorate and in whose shadow I have lived most of my adult life.  In doing so, I encountered an interesting document, “Shared Governance at the University of California: An Historical…

Assessing the ‘Outcomes’

BY AARON BARLOW Christine Emba, editor of In Theory, wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Post on July 28, 2017 calling the current mania for ‘outcomes’ a “familiar trap.” She was focusing on politics, particularly on the failure of health care ‘repeal and replace’ but her thoughts apply to education as well. They apply,…

Colleges and Universities, Bad News, and the Media

  POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Over the past two years, my university, Wright State, has been producing negative news stories with remarkable regularity. Our enrollment, which had been gradually increasing has dipped somewhat, and because we are in the midst of a largely self-created budget mess, any decline in enrollment makes the budget issues worse…

CCSF Trustees Make Questionable Choice of New Chancellor

BY HANK REICHMAN Already reeling from the lengthy and damaging, though ultimately successful, campaign to retain the community college’s accreditation, faculty, students, and community supporters at City College of San Francisco (CCSF) may now face a new challenge.  Yesterday, the college’s trustees approved a $310,500 contract for new Chancellor Mark Rocha, despite objections from dozens…