More than 70% of reporting faculty are not confident in University of Akron leadership. There are growing concerns about the recent actions and future plans of the administration at The University of Akron. The Akron-AAUP has conducted a survey of the faculty, the results of which reflect faculty sentiment across academic areas. “The Akron-AAUP…
In the late afternoon on Thursday, September 24, between 80 and 100 faculty and students at Miami University attended a presentation by CBC Chair Howard Bunsis on the university’s finances. The event was hosted by the relatively new but quickly growing AAUP advocacy chapter at the university. The presentation received fairly detailed coverage in the…
In June 2010, Jack Stripling wrote a piece for Inside Higher Ed reporting on faculty responses to a survey about the performance of University of Toledo president Lloyd Jacobs. Here are the first few paragraphs of that piece, titled “Toledo Chief Raked over Coals”: “In a scathing review of his controversial presidency at the University…
It is time for a direct and specific disavowal of a key component of the sacred text of the AAUP: the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. Most genuflect before its presence as either the Magna Carta of higher ed, the common law of the profession, the great classic document of academic freedom…
I’ve been working on a book about the effect of the Internet on the terms of employment and working conditions of faculty at all levels. As a result, I’ve read an extraordinary amount of “disruption” literature lately. You know, Christensen, Carey, et. al. – all those people who are just chomping at the bit to…
Kevin Carey, writing in The New York Times last July, said this of American colleges and universities: “These organizations are not coherent academic enterprises with consistent standards of classroom excellence. When it comes to exerting influence over teaching and learning, they’re Easter eggs. They barely exist.” This is humbug. It’s an attempt to channel the…
The following is an expanded version of a letter to the editor published last week in the Louisiana State University Daily Reveille. The author is LSU Professor of Physics and Astronomy A.R.P. (Ravi) Rau, who serves currently as President of AAUP’s Louisiana Conference and is a former president of the LSU AAUP chapter. The text…
“Change in any industry is difficult, but it is particularly problematic in higher education with its unique culture and history of shared governance.” So begins the description of the first “module” offered by the new Academy for Innovative Higher Education Leadership. The Academy, which launches in November, bills itself as “the premier training ground for those…
On Thursday, the Iowa Board of Regents unanimously appointed former IBM senior vice president J. Bruce Harreld as the University of Iowa’s next president. Harreld’s experience in higher education is limited to a few years as an adjunct business teacher, but the regents apparently selected him over three distinguished academic leaders for his alleged expertise…
By Stephen Kuusisto When Iowa’s Board of Regents selected J. Bruce Herreld, a businessman with no prior experience in education, as the new president of the University of Iowa they affirmed three principles: the university is now strictly a business, the faculty and students are to be put in their respective places, and those places…