My Professional Activity Report and Self Evaluation (or PARSE) is over twenty pages long… not counting all of the required documentation. PARSE was instituted to save time and space–it’s all on computer and just needs ‘updating’ each year–but it seems to have become a repository of everything that can either be scanned or entered having…
Many of us, and for many years, have been raising our voices against the growth of two-tiered systems in the United States. The sense of security felt by those at the top, unfortunately, keeps them from listening–and this is just as true in academia as it is elsewhere. Let me be blunt: Instead of seeing…
Ever since the American Studies Association announced in mid-December that its membership had voted to endorse an academic boycott of Israel, criticism of the organization’s action has snowballed. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education the “Association has itself become the target of widespread criticism and ostracism. It has gone from relative obscurity to prominence…
The Board of Regents at Texas A&M have selected Mark Hussey as Interim President of the University System. Hussey has served as a Vice Chancellor at the institution and as Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Governor Rick Perry, an alumnus of the Texas A&M, had expressed his preference for another candidate…
On Nov. 14, 2013, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign engineering professor Louis Wozniak had his tenure revoked and was dismissed by a unanimous vote of the Board of Trustees. Illinois Academe invited him to tell his side of the story, and this essay is reprinted from the Fall issue. By Louis Wozniak This is not…
Guest blogger Jeanne Zaino is professor of political science and international studies at Iona College. In his provocative and deeply depressing The Last Professors Frank Donoghue warns that corporate logic has taken over the academy. His findings are confirmed by Andrew DeBlanco who, in his award winning College: What it Was, Is, and Should Be not…
On Monday, the Columbus Dispatch reported that Governor Kasich has appointed Gordon Gee, President Emeritus of Ohio State University, to “lead a study looking for ways to make college more affordable and relevant for Ohio students.” More specifically, Gee will “spend the next year working with other college presidents, K-12 education leaders, and the business…
At this point, no one can deny that higher education has changed seriously over the last few decades. Call it corporatization, or administrative bloat, or any other name, but the symptoms are clear: more administrative control over things that had been the faculty’s. Faculty governance becoming a mere rubber stamp for administrators’ proposals. Less funding…
The September-October issue of Academe has just been posted (and will be in your mailboxes soon). In the issue, Rick Perloff looks at the campaign to unionize Cleveland State University twenty years ago, and William Vesterman looks even further back—to turn-of-the-century economist Thorstein Veblen—to learn lessons about the university today. Leslie Bary uses the benefit…
Last week, President Obama released a higher education reform proposal, citing the goals of making college more affordable and reining in student debt. While the AAUP applauded the President for raising these concerns – ones that we share – AAUP President Rudy Fichtenbaum called the plan “little more than a version of the failed policy of ‘No Child Left…