Late last week I had a telling conversation with Dr. Jim Douthat, a colleague and mentor and the highly respected president emeritus of Lycoming College (PA). Like me, Dr. Douthat is convinced that the present operational path taken by many private colleges and universities is financially unsustainable. As Jim argued so perceptively, the looming financial…
The following is the text of my keynote address at “Hurdles on the Horizon: Governance & Student Success in the Connecticut State College & University System,” a conference organized by the Faculty Advisory Committee to the CSCU Board of Regents for Higher Education at Manchester Community College on April 10, 2015. Let me begin by…
The following is the Executive Summary of a report issued recently by the California Faculty Association, which represents all faculty in the 23-campus California State University system. The report is the third in a series. To see the entire series go to http://www.calfac.org/race-to-the-bottom The job of college professor used to be a solidly middle-class profession.…
Item 1 Marking the National Rifle Association’s 2015 Freedom Festival in Nashville To direct school staff on how to respond to a visitor who is carrying a visible firearm, a school district in Michigan has distributed the following flow chart: I would like to be able to say that one cannot help but feel…
Item 2 Marking the National Rifle Association’s 2015 Freedom Festival in Nashville In 2013, 17 states and the District of Columbia, gun-related deaths exceeded traffic-related deaths: Alaska: 144 gun deaths, 66 motor vehicle deaths Arizona: 941 gun deaths, 863 motor vehicle deaths Colorado: 619 gun deaths, 514 motor vehicle deaths District of Columbia: 71…
Item 3 Marking the National Rifle Association’s 2015 Freedom Festival in Nashville Yesterday, the U.S. Capitol was locked down because a gunshot was fired immediately outside its walls. Initial reports indicated only that the gunman had been “neutralized” by a “self-inflicted fatal gunshot.” Putting aside the very odd language that authorities used to summarize…
Item 4 Marking the National Rifle Association’s 2015 Freedom Festival in Nashville Some truisms, even about guns, turn out to be true. In January 2013, a security guard in Trinidad and Tobago accidentally shot off his penis with an illegal gun. The Trinidad and Tobago Guardian reported that the 33-year-old man was carrying a…
Is this what it is like to be making a mess of your life? Where does it all lead? Can one turn that mess around? Those of us who teach in community colleges and at the lower end of American university hierarchies face students asking these questions daily. That’s not surprising: We often encounter people…
Janet Napolitano, the President of the University of California system recently wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post in which she argued that, despite the challenges created by unprecedented cuts in state support for public higher education, it is a gross exaggeration to assert that American higher education is in crisis. Scott H. Levine,…
This past week, Bill O’Reilly cited, for the second time, statistics that supposedly show that more Whites than African-Americans are killed by police. Although he framed the discussion of these statistics by stating that he was in no way condoning the recent police shooting of an unarmed African-American man in North Charleston, South Carolina, he…