Several weeks ago, I was at a meeting for the leaders of “We Are Ohio” member and allied groups in southwestern Ohio, and one of the featured speakers asked the following rhetorical question about the corporate-funded “right to work” campaigns: “When was the last time that you heard of corporations spending millions of dollars to…
Today I received multiple email alerts from disciplinary associations participating in the National Humanities Alliance. The issue is threatened cuts to international education programs, specifically Title VI and Fulbright-Hays. The proposed cut would slash $25 million (35%) from Title VI and Fulbright-Hays, and it has already been passed out of the Senate Appropriations Committee. This…
Guest blogger Steve Krause published this on August 18, 2015 on his blog stevendkrause.com: A different kind of Trigger… There are two articles making the rounds about trigger warnings of late. There’s “The Coddling of the American Mind” in The Atlantic by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. And there’s (at least one) response to it, “The…
The following is a post I wrote back in July that still rings true regarding Governor Walker’s record in Wisconsin on education, job creation, and the importance of framing within political narratives.
This is a re-post of an article by Chris Newfield dated August 17, 2015. It originally appeared on Remaking the University: The Democratic candidates public college plans are more interesting than most coverage has implied (brief comparisons are here). They are all variations of “Debt-Free College”proposals, to use candidate Martin O’Malley’s term, structured in part as federal…
Just over a month after being censured by the AAUP annual meeting, the administration of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center took steps toward instituting a shared governance model and improving academic due process. The Cancer Letter reported this past Friday that UT System Chancellor William McRaven directed MD Anderson President Ronald DePinho in a July 23 letter…
One of the ways faculty are intimidated and coerced into accepting codified curricula is through the specter of not living up to assessable “outcomes” (I use the scare quotes because the word has become one of those cant words of educational “reform”—another word in the category—that have become so popular in some quarters, especially administrative…
This morning, the National Labor Relations Board issued a ruling overturning a decision last year by a Chicago district official that had supported the right of Northwestern’s football players to unionize. The NLRB ruled that the case “would not promote stability in labor relations.” They wrote, “Our decision is primarily premised on a finding” that…
When state governments began cutting state support for public higher education, one of the first casualties was the federal and state funding for providing college educations to prisoners. It was politically unsustainable to compel American families to bear much more of the cost of higher education while providing such an education free of charge to…
One of the most glaring weaknesses in American higher education is the strength of its governance group. There is a celebrated tradition within higher education to portray governance as a kind of three-leg stool. Led by the president as CEO, the administration manages the operation, works with the faculty, and reports to the Board of…