BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Despite the resourcefulness and creativity that characterizes American higher education, the failure of many colleges to rethink how they will continue to support the educational enterprise over the long-term keeps most administrators awake at night. But there is some good news out there. Surprisingly, much of it centers on the careers…
BY AARON BARLOW Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Tobacco. These are real collusions and they have had impact on all of our lives. But Big Academia? Jack Kerwick, one of David Horowitz’s followers at FrontPageMag, certainly seems to think so. He sees it, from the best I can glean from his confused piece,…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Today, the University of Chicago Graduate Students United announced that they are withdrawing their request to have the NLRB recognize the overwhelming vote last October to form an AFT/IFT/AAUP-affiliated union. This is not the end of the union movement, but a tactical move to prevent the Trump Administration from overturning precedents…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s recently released their updated outlooks for American higher education. The news is not good. Moody’s revised its 2018 outlook for higher education from stable to negative “as aggregate operating revenue moderates while expense growth increases.” Moody’s vice president, Susan E. Shaffer, elaborated: “the annual change in…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Those of you who follow this blog have probably noticed that last spring I suddenly became a much less frequent contributor to this blog. The reason for my absence has been fairly straightforward. We began negotiations on a new contract in January 2017, and we still don’t have a contract. Our…
BY MICHAEL DECESARE Yesterday the AAUP’s Committee on College and University Governance released the following statement: In October 2017, news broke of University of Wisconsin system president Ray Cross’s decision to propose a merger of the system’s two- and four-year institutions. It was the latest in a number of unilateral and secretive actions taken by system…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL I’ve been thinking a great deal lately about how disruption will play out in American higher education. My hopes – and concerns – reflect a bedrock belief that America’s colleges and universities operate on an unsustainable finance model that must adapt to new realities. It is impossible to predict how many…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN For the past few years Wisconsin has been ground zero in the fight over the future of public higher education. The AAUP, along with the Wisconsin AFT, has condemned a series of actions taken by Governor Scott Walker, the Wisconsin state legislature, and the University of Wisconsin system board of regents in…
BY MICHAEL DECESARE “Getting hammered by the ‘shared governance’ leaders because they weren’t involved in the process; however, had they been involved we wouldn’t be doing anything!!” That’s part of an October 11, 2017 email message from University of Wisconsin System President Ray Cross to a UW regent. Cross was complaining about the backlash he…
BY HANK REICHMAN Later this month the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case of Janus v. AFSCME, Council 31, in which anti-union “right to work” forces are challenging the right of public employee unions to collect agency fees from non-members that the unions represent. These fees have since 1977 been protected by…