Here is the lead item, a legislative update, in the latest weekly communication to our members statewide from the Ohio Conference’s Communications Committee: On February 22, Department of Higher Education Director John Carey unveiled changes and new initiatives to Ohio’s higher education system that will be addressed in a mid-biennium review (MBR) bill. The highlights…
BY MARTIN KICH According to an article by Chris Buckley published in the New York Times, “Chinese students, already immersed in classes and textbooks that promote nationalist loyalty to the Communist Party as a bedrock value, must be made even more patriotic and devoted to the party, even when they are studying in universities abroad,…
BY MARTIN KICH These are the opening paragraphs of an article published by New York magazine: “A 27-year-old man was slashed in the face early on Sunday morning after arguing with a woman he didn’t know in a Harlem subway station. The New York Post reports that the fight occurred around 3 a.m. on the southbound platform of…
BY MARTIN KICH In “Scott Walker and Higher Education in the Media,” the article that I have contributed to the January-February issue of Academe, I have tried to show that it matters how professional journalists frame attacks on higher education, especially when the attacks are ideologically driven. I have focused on Scott Walker’s attempts to…
In his state-of-the-state address, Gov. Rick Snyder referenced a timeline of the Flint water crisis prepared by his office. Here is that timeline: The progressive blog The Daily Kos has provided the following list of significant dates missing from Gov. Snyder’s timeline: April 2011: Reports of partially treated sewage leaking into the Flint River. This is one…
This past fall, I somehow failed to post this notice on the most recent working paper published by the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education (CFHE). The CFHE website is located at http://futureofhighered.org/ _________________________ Executive Summary Although 50 years of research has shown that faculty/student interaction is crucial to student success, recent trends and…
What is occurring in Maine is the opposite of what has occurred in places where the “charter” university concept has taken hold–most notably Virginia. In those places, elite public universities have accepted lower state subsidies for more institutional “flexibility”–which has meant more aggressive efforts to attract out-of-state and international students who pay higher tuition.…
Writing for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution [1 Jan. 2016: A,1], Chris Joyner and Aaron Gould Sheinin have reported on the unusual aspects of how Georgia universities lobby state legislators. Their article, “AJC at the Gold Dome: University Lobbyists Spend Big on State Lawmakers,” details not only the practices of the lobbyists but the reasons why those…
Writing for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution [31 Dec. 2015: A,1], Nedra Rhone reports on the rise in organized student activism nationwide but especially in greater Atlanta. In the article “Today’s Student Activists: On Fire against a Gumbo of Issues,” she emphasizes that this new wave of student activism is targeting more than racism, addressing issues “from…
December 10, 2015 Colleagues, The BGSU Administration and the BGSU Faculty Association are aware that several faculty members have been mentioned in communications by external groups regarding recent Ohio legislative measures. In addition, we are also aware of allegations that several faculty may have violated University policy regarding use of the BGSU email system. We…