Major Attack on Academic Freedom in Michigan

In the Michigan Senate, the Appropriations Higher Education Subcommittee included in its budget proposal a penalty against any public college or university that teaches a labor-related course or offers a labor-studies program. Michigan State University has been considering an agreement to adopt a portion of programming from the National Labor College. A spokesperson for the…

College Is Making Inequality Worse–Potentially, a Terribly Misleading Headline

On Saturday, Salon ran a terrific article by Suzanne Mettler with this headline: “More Bad News for Millennials: College Is Actually Making Inequality Worse” [http://www.salon.com/2014/03/15/more_bad_news_for_millennials_college_is_actually_making_inequality_worse/]. Given the current attention to the issue of income inequality, the headline does a disservice to what is actually a very complex analysis of the economic impact of enrollment and…

If Picky Eating Is Now a Disorder, Here’s the Remedy–Eat a Plateful of Sausages and Call Me in the Morning if You Don’t Feel Cured

You wouldn’t know it from looking at me now, but as a child I was a very picky eater. I have an anecdote to illustrate just how picky an eater I was. And if you bear with me long enough, I’ll explain why I think that this discussion may be of broader interest. I grew…

We Are Just Not Working Hard Enough

Earlier this month, the Ohio Conference Communication Committee (although I formally chair the committee, our Executive Director, Sara Kilpatrick, now drafts most of the regular communications with our members) distributed the following item. Rosenberger Releases Report from Higher Education Study Committee As we reported to you in September, the Ohio House of Representatives had formed a “Higher Education…

Ohio Higher Education Coalition Holds Press Conference on Student Debt

The Ohio Conference of AAUP (OCAAUP) has joined such groups as the Ohio Education Association (OEA), Ohio Federation of Teachers (OFT), New Faculty Majority (NFM), Ohio Part-Time Faculty Association (OPTFA), and Ohio Student Association (OSA) in forming a statewide advocacy group on issues related to higher education. After taking some time to create an operating…

California AB 2705: A Small Step Toward Equity

The following statement was released today by the Steering Committee of AAUP’s California Conference: The California Conference of the American Association of University Professors (CA-AAUP) endorses Assembly Bill 2705. The bill changes terms used by the California Education Code to describe the hard-working professional educators who now teach the majority of our community college students.…

Arts Education: Saying the Right Things Is a Start, but Then Undercutting What You Appear to Be Promoting Is Either Ineptitude or Hypocrisy

A very recent post on the Department of Education blog Homeroom promotes “Arts in the Schools Month.” Written by Doug Herbert, a special assistant in the Office of Innovation and Improvement, the post begins: “The arts are an important part of a well-rounded education for all students. Arts-rich schools, those with high-quality arts programs and…

Academic Freedom Issues in South Carolina

South Carolina lawmakers have reduced the allocations to the College of Charleston and the University of South Carolina Upstate because the lawmakers object to the inclusion of several “gay-themed” books in the institutions’ common required readings for their first-year students. The College of Charleston was docked $52,000, the amount spent on copies of Fun Home,…