Guest blogger Jerry Harp teaches at Lewis & Clark college. Judging from recent reports, one might think that trigger warnings—alerts about classroom material involving pedophilia, rape, and other disturbing topics—are the latest threat to civilization. To their credit, the warnings about trigger warnings are not entirely without merit, in that we do indeed need to…
Nicholas Piotrowicz, a sportwriter for the Toledo Blade, has provided an analysis of the high cost of competing at the bottom end of Division 1 intercollegiate athletics and, in particular, the FBS division of college football. The article is titled “MAC Schools’ Cost of Athletics Up 75% over last 10 Years,” and it opens…
BY HANK REICHMAN Jonathan Cole, professor and former provost at Columbia University, is a distinguished advocate for academic freedom whose work I have long admired. Last year he and his Columbia colleague, Akeel Bilgrami, edited an important collection of thoughtful essays, Who’s Afraid of Academic Freedom?, which I review along with several other titles in…
The National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) published its report on tuition and revenue trends last month. NACUBO surveyed 401 colleges and universities, including 305 smaller colleges, 57 comprehensive and doctoral universities, and 39 research institutions. It also compared this year’s results with previous data collection. The data show that American higher…
Direct the Eastern Michigan University Board of Regents to put off the privatization of dining services for at least one year, as we do not believe that students should put up with mold, human hair and under-cooked meat, and we do not believe students should be left out of the process. Direct the EMU administration…
BY PETER N. KIRSTEIN A spectre is haunting Chicago–the spectre is academic unionism. Both the University of Chicago and Loyola University Chicago have witnessed the rise of contingent faculty organising success. Now at Northwestern University, a placid campus in Evanston, part-time faculty and non-tenure track full time faculty are moving rapidly in that direction. According…
This guest post is by J. Michael Rifenburg of the University of North Georgia: The NCAA was founded out of a need to provide more safety for students playing extracurricular sports, particularly football. A century later, safety issues may end the NCAA’s long run of lucrative dominance and governance of all thing intercollegiate athletics. According…
BY HANK REICHMAN As regular readers of this blog know well, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s efforts to decimate public funding for the University of Wisconsin System and erode the protections of tenure and shared governance have aroused broad opposition among faculty members. On the defensive, Walker has issued a series of misleading and outright false…
BY HANK REICHMAN The University of Chicago has earned well-merited praise for its powerful 2014 “Statement on Principles of Free Expression,” a document that has been endorsed by a growing number of institutions. That statement, authored by a committee chaired by Geoffrey R. Stone, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law and former Provost…