Writing for Bold Progressives, Marissa Barrow has highlighted the attention being given to legislative proposals to allow students to graduate from colleges and universities without debt: “Legislators in 10 states nationwide will be introducing debt-free college legislation, making debt-free college a central 2016 campaign issue from the top to bottom of the ticket. “This state-level…
The following is taken from an email sent to AAUP members on December 10: Today, the AAUP is releasing an investigative report on the University of Iowa’s 2015 presidential search. The investigation found that the search was nothing less than a crude exercise of naked power by the Iowa Board of Regents. Notably, In contrast…
This past week, there was a protest at Eastern Michigan University against the continuation of the Education Achievement Authority (EAA) that Governor Snyder’s administration created ostensibly to “save” Detroit’s “failing” public school system. The EAA has promoted charter schools at the expense of the already under-funded public schools, while producing no improvement in the educations…
In case you haven’t heard yet, here’s what U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had to say yesterday during oral arguments over the case, Abigail Noel Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, which centers on the constitutionality of admissions criteria that take race into consideration as one factor, what remains of the principle of…
Early in his controversial 14-year tenure as Chancellor of the California State University system, Charles Reed notoriously told a public audience that faculty members work only two or three days a week from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The comment sparked a firestorm of protest, but it sadly reflected an all too common perception among…
Two days ago I posted an item, Questioning Student Evaluations, which reported on two studies that call into doubt the utility of student evaluations of teaching as a mechanism for determining teacher effectiveness. In response, AAUP President Rudy Fichtenbaum, an economist, shared the following paper, adapted from an FAQ he prepared years ago for faculty…
The following was posted to the Talking Union blog by Paul Garver: I am writing this on the evening of 9th December in the USA, but in Hong Kong it is already the morning of 10th December. At this moment labor and human rights activists are converging on the Western Police Station in Hing…
Academic Analytics, a private database contracted to measure faculty productivity at Rutgers, may undermine our tenure process, while narrowing the range of scholarship. If you belong to SASNB [School of Arts and Sciences—New Brunswick], please attend the School’s faculty meeting on Monday, 14 December from 2:00-4:00 p.m. in Voorhees 105 (College Ave.) to vote on…
These statistics include, of course, millennials who have not attended or completed college, but given that the percentages for both attending and completing college are higher for their generation than for any previous generation, I think that it is very safe to suggest that the debt loads and employment prospects of those who have attended…
Very obviously, we have every reason to fear Islamic extremists who may wish to replicate a large-scale attack on the U.S. comparable in scope to the 9/11 attacks, or perhaps even worse. But the Islamic religion of the San Bernardino mass murderers has taken our attention completely away from the immediately preceding massacre at the…