Adjunct Survival Workshop: An AAUPportunity for chapter-building

Colorado’s Community College System (CCCS) continues to pay 75% of its faculty (the so-called “adjuncts”) poverty-level wages. To help our hard-working peers make ends meet this semester, our Front Range Community College AAUP chapter is hosting the first-ever Adjunct Survival Workshop. This event will simultaneously help our peers save hundreds of dollars this year, give…

The Whistleblower Effect

This is a guest post by Mihran Aroian and Michelle L. Damiani, contributors to the September-October 2015 issue of Academe. Mihran Aroian is a lecturer in the Management Department of the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin and was the first faculty member in residence in the Office of the Dean of Students, Student Judicial Services. Raymond…

How NOT to Encourage Interest in STEM

I don’t know how much I can add to this item from the political blog Talking Points Memo (the headline says it all):  “Police in Texas Arrest Muslim Teen Who Brought Homemade Clock to School.”  Read it and weep! UPDATE:  President Obama has invited the teenage scientist to the White House for Astronomy Night, to…

Computers May Be an Obstacle to Learning

A recent international study has thrown a bucket of cold water on the heated frenzy for computer-assisted and online education.  The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which has an authoritative program for assessing school education quality in its 34 member countries, has published a report demonstrating that increased computer use in classrooms may…

O Brave New World

There’s an article on Wired about something called a “Camera Restricta,” a prototype developed by Philipp Schmidt for a camera that, if “it identifies more than 35 photos taken in a given location—about 115 feet in any direction from where you’re standing—the camera’s shutter retracts and blocks the viewfinder so you can’t take a photo.”…

Marco Rubio and the Silliness of Some Politicians

Intrastate athletic rivalries between public universities (e.g., Michigan-Michigan State) frequently spill over into the silliest sorts of comparisons between institutions, which usually ignore their differing missions.  That some politicians embrace such comparisons may offer a small glimpse into the extent of their knowledge and the level of their insight into higher education.  Take the case…

The Paradox of Incremental Perfection

[excerpted from  How Strategic Planning Encourages Academic Capitalism is forthcoming in Sheila Slaughter (Editor), Barrett Jay Taylor (Editor), Higher Education, Stratification, and Workforce Development: Competitive Advantage in Europe, the US, and Canada, Springer For almost 40 years, institutions of higher education have been writing business plans – sometimes called strategic plans or, more pretentiously, academic plans. By anticipating…

Undermining Public Education

The September-October 2015 issue of Academe magazine begins with two articles focusing on disturbing trends in public education. Both articles point to increasing private sector influence as a threat to the integrity of public education. In an essay adapted from his address at the AAUP’s 2015 annual meeting, journalist Juan González argues that public education…