About Our Collective Mood
POSTED BY AARON BARLOW
Pursuing Virtue in State-University Relations
BY DAVID J. WEERTS Guest blogger David J. Weerts is associate professor and faculty director of the jCENTER for Innovative Higher Education at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. His research focuses on state-university relations, community-university engagement, and alumni giving, volunteerism, and advocacy. For those interested in the politics of higher education, the ongoing sparring in…
Negotiations Breakdown: PASSHE Sets Stage for First Ever Faculty Strike
BY KEVIN MAHONEY Faculty union members at the 14 Pennsylvania state-owned universities (PASSHE) have had just about enough. Following three consecutive days of marathon negotiating sessions on Tuesday and more sessions scheduled for Wednesday and beyond, faculty members were showing signs of optimism that a deal might not be that far off. However, after PASSHE continued to put…
"[T]ell me who controls the production of pins."
BY JONATHAN REES “To believe in ‘the greater good’ is to operate, necessarily, in a certain ethical suspension. Ask anyone committed to Marxist analysis how many angels on the head of a pin, and you will be asked in return to never mind the angels, tell me who controls the production of pins.” – Joan…
Merger Mania in Higher Ed?
BY BARRY EISENBERG Guest blogger Barry Eisenberg is associate professor in the State University of New York Empire State College’s School for Graduate Studies and a consultant to health-care organizations on strategic planning and governance. He was a hospital executive for twenty years and is coauthor of Mastering Leadership: A Vital Resource for Healthcare Organizations. When…
Be Wary of Easy Answers to Higher Ed Problems
BY KEVIN R. MCCLURE Guest blogger Kevin R. McClure is assistant professor of higher education in the Watson College of Education at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Many colleges and universities in the United States find themselves between a rock and a hard place. They are tasked with educating an increasingly diverse body of…
Universities and Surveillance Capitalism
BY PAUL-OLIVIER DEHAYE Guest blogger Paul-Olivier Dehaye is a former assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Zurich. Surveillance capitalism, described by Shoshana Zuboff, is the logic of accumulation of data leading to commodification of a facet of the global digital life. As remarked by Oliver Stone, Pokemon Go fits in this logic, as it…
The Clash Between Data and Optics in Higher Education
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Earlier this month, Jeff Selingo wrote in The Washington Post about the coming era of consolidation among colleges and universities. Mr. Selingo based many of his comments on findings from a study by Parthenon-EY Education to which he also contributed. The study concluded that more than 800 American colleges exhibit factors that call into…
If It's Good for Business…
BY JOYCE MILAMBILING Guest blogger Joyce Milambiling is professor and coordinator of the TESOL/applied linguistics graduate program in the Department of Languages and Literatures at the University of Northern Iowa. Applications for sabbaticals at my university are due next month. The process is competitive, the number of paid leaves for one or two semesters is limited,…
And NASCAR Drivers Aren’t Running Moonshine Any More
BY MARTIN KICH Here are the lead paragraphs in a photo-essay published by Business Insider: “College football met NASCAR in Tennessee on Saturday night when Tennessee played Virginia Tech in the “Battle at Bristol,” played at Bristol Motor Speedway. “The game set a college football attendance record with 156,990 fans in attendance. That shattered the…