A number of years ago when it came time for my annual evaluation, which included pre-inked lines on a form to fill in, as if any human could possibly have fit much within those boundaries, I had left a few marks of my commitment to the community by listing such things as attending art shows,…
An “On the Issues” Post from the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education [http://futureofhighered.org] _______________ Jeff Kolnick CFHE Guest Columnist The dramatic increase in college tuition and fees over the past dozen years is justifiably big news. Few doubt that the massive disinvestment of public dollars is responsible for much of the…
Less than an hour after uploading my post earlier today entitled AFT 2121 on the Situation at CCSF, I received via Twitter the following press release from the California Federation of Teachers, of which AFT 2121 is a member: ACCJC’s Conflicts Of Interest Invalidate Appeal Decision CFT releases analysis of City College appeal panel finding,…
Yesterday I posted another in my continuing series of entries on the accrediting situation at City College of San Francisco (CCSF), in which I reported on indications that the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) had “blinked,” proposing new guidelines that would establish a new “accreditation restoration status.” My post included the text…
It is easy to teach good students. The “star teachers” at Harvard or Stanford can assume a certain knowledge base as starting points in their classes and can set expectations that the majority of their students can reasonably meet. They have a narrow range of students, all of whom have been carefully selected through an…
The following piece by Christopher Newfield, Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, first appeared on the blog, “Remaking the University,” which he runs with UCLA Professor Michael Meranze. It is reposted by permission. Must innovation disrupt everything so that society might have new and better things? Widespread fatigue with this idea…
Robert Morris University in Illinois has announced that it will be fielding a team to compete in the Collegiate Star League, a video-gaming league in which 103 other institutions now field teams to play the video game League of Legends. So, in those details, this is not a new story. But Robert Morris has taken…
Ignatius, David Reynolds. Agents of Innocence. New York: Norton, 1987. David Reynolds Ignatius is a journalist who has reported for the Wall Street Journal on subjects ranging from the challenges facing the U.S. steel industry to the corrosive conflicts in the Middle East, to the clandestine activities of the C.I.A. He has subsequently worked as…
Seeing the Department of Education’s Tweet of “Help Me. I’m Poor” with a picture of Kristen Wiig’s character in Bridesmaids memorably shnookered at first made me think yes, she is poor because she is saddled by student loan debts. But then I thought about an all-too-common occurrence these days. Increasingly kids are going to college…
To provide some context for appreciating the statistics related to the largest private employers in the U.S., let’s begin with the two largest public employers in the country. Those two employers are the Department of Defense, which with 3.2 million employees is the largest employer in the world, and the U.S. Postal Service, which with…