POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Scott D. Miller, the President of Virginia Wesleyan University, has written a guest column for the Virginian-Pilot with the same title as this post. After providing an overview of what a university president’s summer routine typically involves, he writes: “Then there’s this summer — which to me is exceptionally hot, volatile,…
BY AARON BARLOW Over the past few years, I’ve become less and less enthusiastic about grants as a funding mechanism for higher-education-related projects. It’s not just the Koch brothers and their use of grants to promote particular ideologies but even the gentler tugs by funders such as the NEH toward consideration of particular arenas or inclusion…
BY HANK REICHMAN Let’s face it, the pharmaceutical industry has one heck of an image problem. Even if it is recognized that the notorious and now-indicted Martin Shkreli, who raised the cost of a life-saving pill from $13.50 to $750, was really an exception, price-gouging and the accumulation of excessive profit are charges regularly and…
In a recent article for the Australian journal The Conversation, Dana Ruggiero explains why the “Black Market In Academic Papers Is Spooking Publishers.” The title is actually somewhat misleading because scholarly papers are being shared without cost in ways that circumvent the corporations that have come to dominate the “market” in academic publishing. Ruggiero reports…
Statement on “Academic Analytics” and Research Metrics The following statement was approved by the Executive Committee of the AAUP Council at its March meeting: Recently a number of colleges and universities have contracted with independent private companies to provide allegedly “objective” quantitative information about faculty scholarly “productivity.” Among the most prominent of these “metrics providers”…
BY AARON BARLOW A decade or so ago, I applied for a travel grant to examine papers of Carlos Salzedo, a twentieth-century French/American harpist. The request was turned down, the result of a scathing evaluation by someone who was incensed that I had not mentioned the other important French/American harpist of the time, Marcel Grandjany.…
The following statement was released today by the AAUP’s University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee chapter. UWM AAUP Calls on the Board of Regents to Support and Sustain UWM’s Research and Access Missions The eyes of the country are on the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) this week as the campus hosts a Democratic presidential debate. What will UWM…
Use of a proprietary database that purports to show the publications, citations, books and grants awarded to a professor provides far too limited a perspective on faculty achievement and creates the potential for career-ending errors, according to David M. Hughes, professor of anthropology and president of the faculty union AAUP-AFT at Rutgers. The same data…