By a 94%-6% margin, the AAUP chapter at Portland State University has voted to strike on April 16 if substantive progress has not been made in their contract negotiations with their administration. They ask that you show your support for that vote by signing this petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/i-stand-with-the-educators-academic-professionals-at-psu They were initially hoping to get at least…
In an earlier post, “’Vodka Sam’ May Be a Symptom of a Problem but She Herself Is Not the Problem, Not Even the Public-Relations Problem” [https://academeblog.org/2013/09/11/vodka-sam-may-be-a-symptom-of-a-problem-but-she-herself-is-not-the-problem-not-even-the-public-relations-problem/], I wrote about the University of Iowa’s being named by Princeton Review as the Top Party School in the United States. Coincidentally, at around that same time, a female…
In its December 2013 report on state support for higher education in the previous fiscal year, the American Association of Colleges and Universities highlighted the singular decline of state support in Bobby Jindal’s Louisiana, where the 17.6% decline in state funding was very close to double the second highest decline among the states, an 8.9%…
This guest post was written by Michael DeCesare, Chair of the Department of Sociology at Merrimack College and President of the AAUP Chapter there. At a special meeting of the University of Southern Maine (USM) faculty senate on March 14th, USM President Theodora Kalikow announced her plan to eliminate four academic programs and lay off…
An “On the Issues” Post from the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education [http://futureofhighered.org] _______________ In the media and in the halls of our legislatures, the talk these days about the purpose of a college education seems to focus almost exclusively on its value in expanding a person’s employment opportunities. It’s a perspective that…
Susan Patton, author of Marry Smart, Finding the One, is an alumna of Princeton and was recently interviewed in the Daily Princetonian. The following exchange in that interview has provoked outrage: “Daily Princetonian: You wrote: ‘Please spare me your “blaming the victim” outrage,’ saying that a provocatively dressed drunk woman ‘must bear accountability for what…
What follows is a letter sent by a University of Southern Maine alumna to Theo Kalikow, the university president, in response to his announcement that full-time faculty positions need to be eliminated in response to a projected deficit in the institution’s budget. It is, in some respects, a follow-up to a previous post that I…
Northwestern University has already indicated that it plans to appeal this decision, and it may very well be overturned on appeal. But the arguments presented by the NLRB regional director who has communicated the decision are very thought-provoking. I have removed the footnotes because I think that the decision is more than long enough without…
In a big victory for labor rights (and student rights), the National Labor Relations Board has ruled that Northwestern athletes are eligible to form a union and called for a secret ballot election. Northwestern University spokesperson Alan K. Cubbage said the university would appeal the decision and declared: “Northwestern believes strongly that our student-athletes are…
An article published yesterday by Portside in Portland, Maine, opens: “Faculty and students launched an occupation of a Maine university building Friday to demand a halt to mass faculty layoffs and department slashes that they say are part of the austerity cuts devastating public education nation-wide. “Over 100 people launched a late-morning occupation of the…