I’ve had a strange fascination with an education start-up called Minerva for some time now. They’re a Silicon-Valley inspired online operation that has actually enrolled students now. Yet unlike so many other for-profit education ventures they’ve always aspired to be highly selective – the first “Online Ivy.” I think the source of my fascination stems…
The Yes Men — whose slogan is “impersonating big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them, and otherwise giving journalists excuses to cover important issues” — delivered a satirical speech yesterday at the Iowa City Public Library wherein they posed as representatives of the Iowa Regents, as well as the private consulting firm that is doing the…
The following is from an article by Rick Armon for the Akron Beacon-Journal: “The University of Akron is rehiring UA Press workers that it let go last month and says its publishing arm will remain ‘a vibrant, active academic press.’ “’The University of Akron Press has been and will continue to be a vital part…
Just over a month after being censured by the AAUP annual meeting, the administration of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center took steps toward instituting a shared governance model and improving academic due process. The Cancer Letter reported this past Friday that UT System Chancellor William McRaven directed MD Anderson President Ronald DePinho in a July 23 letter…
One of the ways faculty are intimidated and coerced into accepting codified curricula is through the specter of not living up to assessable “outcomes” (I use the scare quotes because the word has become one of those cant words of educational “reform”—another word in the category—that have become so popular in some quarters, especially administrative…
The photos have been taken from the “Save the University of Akron Press” Facebook page, which is available at: https://www.facebook.com/SavetheUAPress If you visit the page, please “like” it. If you wish to sign a petition in support of the press, please go to: https://www.change.org/p/dr-scott-scarborough-president-university-of-akron-restore-funding-for-university-of-akron-press _________________________ P.S. That guy in the last photo looks like…
This will be the first in a series of posts taken from the blog of the AAUP chapter at the University of Akron [http://akronaaup.org/blog/]. That blog provides a chronicle of the changes that have been occurring with often startling rapidity at the university in the wake of a change in institutional leadership. This sort of…
Steven Salaita, a tenured associate professor in the American Indian Studies program, was fired a year ago with a summary dismissal for tweets that were construed as lacking civility. A federal judge, Harry D. Leinenweber of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, has ruled against the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign…
Vincent J. Roscigno, a Professor of Sociology at Ohio State University, has published a clever and insightful piece under the above title in the online magazine Counterpunch. The entire article is worth reading, but here are some choice excerpts: Equating the administrative bloating of public universities and the harm it has caused as akin to…
The following statement was issued today, July 20, 2015: The AAUP and AFT‐Wisconsin stand together in condemning the attacks on higher education that the Wisconsin Legislature included in its biennial budget, which Governor Walker signed into law last Monday. We call on the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents and the UW System and campus‐level…