BY HANK REICHMAN In the waning months of his term as California governor Jerry Brown embraced a new pet project: a totally online community college. With the enthusiastic support of California Community College Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley, Brown got the Legislature to somewhat reluctantly agree to spend an initial $100 million to get the online…
BY HANK REICHMAN Two days ago I posted a piece on this blog about graduate student debt in which I cited an article in the New York Times that reported, among other things, that students in an online social work program at the University of Southern California (USC) averaged an extraordinary $109,486 in student loan…
BY HANK REICHMAN The following is the text of a talk delivered at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) on May 20, 2019. My thanks to the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment for hosting the talk as part of its colloquia series and to the UCLA Faculty Association and Professors…
BY HANK REICHMAN At their spring meeting May 10, the 22 members of the Board of Governors of the Faculty Association of the California Community Colleges (FACCC) took a unanimous vote of no confidence in the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office. It was only the second such vote in the organization’s 66-year history, the last…
BY HANK REICHMAN When I saw the headline this morning on Inside Higher Ed, “Another Speaker Unable to Appear at Middlebury,” I immediately thought, “Haven’t those students learned that shutting down speakers is not only wrong but counter-productive?” Two years ago Middlebury students famously shouted down conservative speaker Charles Murray and a faculty member was…
BY CHRISTOPHER NEWFIELD The following is reposted with permission from the Remaking the University blog. Christopher Newfield is professor of literature and American Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. To read his previous post on the cash-for-admission scandals see Bleeding Meritocracy: Responding to the Admissions Scandal as Outrage Fades. The admissions scandal…
BY CHRISTOPHER NEWFIELD The following is reposted with permission from the Remaking the University blog. Christopher Newfield is professor of literature and American Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. As it enters week 3, the promising new series Operation Varsity Blues is running out of gas. The story of wealthy white folks…
BY HANK REICHMAN Proponents of the “completion agenda,” which strives to ensure that more students graduate from college, often fail to recognize a major reason that students fail to succeed or drop out: food insecurity and hunger. The problem has been highlighted on this blog (see, for examples, here and here) and by a growing…
BY THE FREDONIA UNIVERSITY SENATE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE The following is the text of a resolution issued today by the Executive Committee of the State University of New York at Fredonia Senate Executive Committee on behalf of the Fredonia University Senate. Resolution in Support of a New Deal for SUNY and CUNY Fredonia University Senate Executive…
BY HANK REICHMAN According to a report by Bloomberg News, U.S. outstanding student loan debt reached a record $1.465 trillion last month, more than double the $675 billion outstanding in June 2009. “The Bloomberg analysis found that loans issued about six years ago have the highest cumulative loss percentage compared to any other year since…