This piece is reposted from the “On the Issues Blog” maintained by the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education: http://futureofhighered.org/on-the-issues/ If you are looking for faculty-driven commentary on current issues in higher education, you should consider adding the “On the Issues” blog and the CFHE website to your links page. MOOCs may prove to…
Reviews of Recent Books Concerning Current Issues in Higher Ed: No. 5 Bradley, M. J., R. H. Seidman, and S. R. Painchaud. Saving Higher Education: The Integrated, Competency-Based Three-Year Bachelor’s Degree Program. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2012. This book proposes an idea previously treated at some length by Robert Zemsky in his book Making Reform…
If the GOP wants to “re-brand,” it might start by trying to win elections by attracting new voters, rather than by trying to win elections by suppressing Democratic turnout. Not only have these voter-suppression efforts ended up being counterproductive—making affected voters all the more determined to exercise their right to vote—but they have diminished the…
Testimony of John McNay, Ph.D., President Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors Before the House Finance Subcommittee on Higher Education Representative Cliff Rosenberger, Chair March 6, 2013 Chairman Rosenberger, Ranking Member Ramos, and distinguished members of the Higher Education Subcommittee: my name is John McNay and I am President of the Ohio…
This letter has been endorsed by the following faculty groups: the California Faculty Association, the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges, the California Community College Independents, the California Federation of Teachers, the California Teachers Association, the California School Employees Association, the California Labor Federation, SEIU California, and USW 5810. April 18, 2013 The Honorable Darrell…
Reviews of Recent Books Concerning Current Issues in Higher Ed: No. 3 Fethke, Gary C., and Andrew J. Policano. Public No More: A New Path to Excellence for America’s Public Universities. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford U P, 2012. This book has been very controversial. Not surprisingly, given that the authors have served as deans of…
“An example I came up with: A guy stabs another guy and then the victim is in the hospital. The guy who stabs him comes to the victim’s bedside with the victim’s family, just to tell him everything is going to be alright. That’s how I am feeling.” Kyle D. Johnson Millersville University Student Class of 2013 [POST…
The greatest irony in the increasing privatization of public education is that the deficiencies that the “reformers” typically claim to be trying to correct are often exacerbated by the very “reforms” that they are advocating. There is now a tremendous amount of statistical evidence that, on average, students in charter schools perform worse–and often much…
I live in a largely rural and very Republican region of Ohio. Somewhat regularly, letters to the editor that make my very progressive wife shriek are published in our daily newspaper. She usually reads them to me out loud and then suggests, for the umpteenth time, that I should write a reply so that anyone…