In one of my recent reviews of recent news items on higher education [https://academeblog.org/2015/10/23/u-s-higher-education-news-from-september-29-2015/], I opened with an item on the elimination of continuing contracts for faculty at Florida State College. Now the member of the college’s board of trustees who initiated that change of policy has been emboldened to advance a proposal that faculty…
What’s the point of calling academia, or an association of academics like the AAUP, “too liberal”? Doing so always has a political goal; it’s an attempt to make academia—or the organization—more conservative. It’s never an unbiased or objective (whatever that means) complaint; it is part of an agenda to transform academia into one’s own image and…
Here is how ThinkProgress has summarized this completely counter-intuitive situation: There is some drama surrounding this upcoming event. And it has to do with the debate’s location — the University of Colorado Boulder, or CU-Boulder. Since September, there’s been an twinge of animosity among some students who claim they were misled about what housing a…
Two days ago, Hank Reichman did a post on the anti-science bias on the House Science Committee. In the Ohio House, we now have a parallel situation. Here is how Diane Ravitch has described the new chairperson of the House Education Committee: “State Representative Andrew Brenner recently became chairman of Ohio’s House Education Committee. His…
This is an op-ed written by John McNay, president of the Ohio Conference, and published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer: Gov. John Kasich’s task force on affordability and efficiency in higher education released its recommendations to the General Assembly recently, and the results were to be expected. The task force was headed by Geoff Chatas,…
Writing for Nation of Change, Paul Buchheit has provided a very succinct but comprehensive overview of how corporatization has had a very damaging impact on higher education. In his article “Higher Education: Capitalism at Its Most Despicable,” Buchheit focuses on five inter-linked phenomena that are undermining the value of higher education because they undermine the…
I was associated with the University of Connecticut for almost 25 years before I learned that I did not have academic freedom. Naively I had assumed that all American institutions of higher learning, except some small religious colleges, guaranteed academic freedom. I had hoped that the current contract negotiations between UConn’s trustees and its chapter…
As part of Campus Equity Week, Brave New Films has released this terrific short film about the very real poverty of many faculty in contingent positions: Contains some illuminating stats comparing presidential salaries to adjunct wages, and personal stories from adjuncts–mostly women, which reflects the reality that contingent labor issues are also women’s issues. It’s…
[F]or those of us who think that universities exist for academic purposes — to teach academic knowledge and skills, to pass on academic virtues, and to sustain academic research — the stakes could not be higher. [former Secretary of Education under George Bush and newly appointed head of the University of North Carolina system Margaret]…
The following is taken from a media release issued today by the AAUP: The American Association of University Professors filed an amicus brief on October 26 with the Arizona Court of Appeals arguing that academic freedom to conduct research is essential to a vital university system and warrants protecting certain research records from disclosure. This case…