The following are two brief excerpts from Gongwer’s coverage of the Chancellor’s testimony and the legislators’ response to it. Gongwer is a subscription news service on Ohio government; so I cannot provide a link to the entire article. _________________________ “Chancellor Defends Governor’s Plan To Cut College Costs “A House subcommittee budget probed the higher education…
John McNay’s testimony was listed first in University Business’s daily overview of the most notable higher-ed news stories of the previous day The UB Daily item links to an article by Karen Farkus in the C leveland Plain Dealer. Here are the opening paragraphs in that article: “COLUMBUS, Ohio – College professors are taking a…
The Ohio Conference AAUP has produced an “Ohio Higher Education Report” entitled The Real Problems Deserve Real Solutions. The purpose of the report is to influence public policy around higher education issues, especially in light of HB 64, the state budget bill, as well as Gov. Kasich’s Task Force on Affordability and Efficiency. It is also a response…
Testimony of John T. McNay, Ph.D., President Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors, Before the Ohio Senate Finance Committee, Senator Scott Oelslager, Chair, March 3, 2015 Chairman Oelslager, Ranking Member Skindell, and distinguished members of the Finance Committee: my name is John McNay and I am President of the Ohio Conference…
Earlier this month, Dr. Patrick T. Harker, President of the University of Delaware, wrote an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer expressing his views of the American university and the faculty of the University of Delaware. His op-ed is available at: http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/20150205_Universities_must_adapt_to_meet_student_needs.html After an open meeting of the membership of the University of Delaware chapter of AAUP,…
Colleges are usually at the forefront of radical politics [The word “radical” suggests extreme and abrupt change driven by ideological rather than practical concerns. These days there is much more political radicalism on the Far Right than anywhere on the Left], but when it comes to their own privileges they become feudal empires [Loaded language…
The following chart shows total household debt in the United States, broken down into its major components, in the fourth quarter of 2014: In effect, although total household debt increased from $11.71 trillion to $11.83 trillion from the third to the fourth quarters of last year, student-loan debt remained a relatively flat percentage of that…
Much of what is coming from the Far Right these days could come straight out of George Orwell or Jonathan Swift. An Oklahoma legislative committee has just voted to forward to the legislature a bill eliminating the funding for Advanced Placement history courses. In fact, the overwhelming demonstration of support for that bill both within…
Whenever someone starts by saying that the problems with something or other are well known, watch out. That person is certain to follow with enumeration of ill-understood issues and solutions showing little knowledge of the complexities of the situation—and all human situations are complex. The phrase, “The problems with… are well known,” is little more…
On February 6th, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst released a statement of a policy change headlined “UMass Amherst Procedures on Admission of Iranian Students.” It ends with this: We recognize that these decisions create difficulties for our students from Iran and regard this as unfortunate. Furthermore, the exclusion of a class of students from…