BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Last week, Thomas Farragher provided some thoughtful commentary on the perils of underfunding public higher education in Massachusetts. It’s an important discussion that reaches well beyond how much money flows to higher education. Mr. Farragher argued that the cost of attending U Mass Amherst is $26,445 annually but that tuition is…
This post is a follow-up to my recent post on the elimination of faculty and staff positions at Northern Kentucky University. Writing for the Lexington Herald-Leader, Linda Blackford reports: “Facing a $26 million shortfall caused by declining enrollment and a decade of budget cuts from state government, Kentucky’s community college system has cut 506…
Testimony of Stephen Mockabee, Ph.D. Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors before the House Finance Higher Education Subcommittee Representative Mike Duffey, Chair May 19, 2016 Chairman Duffey, Ranking Member Ramos, and distinguished members of the House Finance Higher Education Subcommittee: My name is Steve Mockabee, and I am an Associate…
Guest blogger Roberto J. González is an alumnus of UC Berkeley. He is chair of San José State University’s anthropology department and author of several books including Militarizing Culture: Essays on the Warfare State (2010) and Zapotec Science: Farming and Food in the Northern Sierra of Oaxaca (2001). His position on academic boycotts differs from that of…
BY CAPRICE LAWLESS Few Colorado taxpayers, students and hard-working, devoted, adjunct faculty members are aware that there is not one person — among the hundreds of six-figure-earning administrators in the Colorado Community College System (CCCS) — charged with advocating for paying adjunct faculty a living wage. In fact, recent, historic events prove that part of…
The federal data that will be presented in this series of posts was analyzed by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting (NCIR) in collaboration with the American Institutes for Research. The NECIR story on the data and its implications, written by Jon Marcus, who is currently an editor at the Hechinger Report, is…
Australia—Federal Funding for the Copenhagen Consensus Centre at Flinders University In October, Simon Birmingham, the education minister in the new government of Malcolm Turnbull, announced that it would uphold the decision by Christopher Pyne, the education minister under former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, to withdraw “funding offered to Bjørn Lomborg for the creation of…
Sheryl Sandberg’s commencement address at UC Berkeley has attracted considerable media attention because it includes some extended personal reflections on the sudden loss of her husband. Although there is very clearly a tabloid aspect to the media interest in Sandberg’s remarks, the personal elements of her observations actually do give considerable depth to what…
The Faculty Council of the University of Wisconsin Colleges — the 13-campus community college segment of the UW system — today became the latest UW faculty to vote “no confidence” in the administration of UW System President Ray Cross and the Board of Trustees. The colleges join a growing bandwagon of colleagues at Madison, Milwaukee,…