The following news item has been distributed today by the Far-Right news service Newsmax: _________________________ A crowd converged on the World War II Memorial on the National Mall, pushing through barriers Sunday morning to protest the memorial’s closing under the government shutdown. Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas were…
Why is it that we, the lucky ones, try so hard to divorce ourselves from those who have not had the same breaks? Why do we, the tenured ones, look away when we see adjuncts grading papers while sitting in a stairwell? Why do we, the lordly observers, think of ourselves as the master teachers…
This week the articles, blogs and op eds on higher education share a common, repetitive theme. The Wall Street Journal carried an opinion piece on rising costs, for example, naming the usual suspects. U.S. News & World Report published its ten most expensive colleges listing. They pick up on popular rhetoric now baked into the…
AAUP president Rudy Fichtenbaum spoke on Oct. 12 at the Field Museum in Chicago to the Illinois AAUP conference. Here is the powerpoint he used in his presentation on the AAUP in the 21st Century: AAUP’s Mission in the 21st Century.pptx
So the Far Right has been singularly focused on the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, and although they now want to decouple the two things because of increasingly negative polling data, they pointedly tried to force the repeal of the ACA through the shutdown of the government and their refusal to approve an increase…
This is a guest post by Cary Nelson, past president of the AAUP and Jubilee Professor at the University of Illinois. Recognizing that the financial services industry succeeded in bringing the world economy to its knees, the University of Delaware administration apparently decided it was time to give them a crack at higher education. An…
John K. Wilson has very succinctly highlighted the hullabaloo surrounding an innocuous e-mail by Rachel Slocum, a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse, which Chancellor Joe Gow has helped to escalate into a political controversy provoking all sorts of partisan responses from places well beyond the institution. I think that it…
FutureofHigherEd.org • #futureofHE • facebook.com/FutureofHigherEd _________________________ The “Promises” of Online Higher Education: Profits With so much national focus on the “promises” of online higher education to expand access and to reduce costs, one truth about online higher education rarely mentioned is that it is big—Very Big—business. Understanding and assessing developments in online higher education require…
Here is the September report from WordPress to its bloggers. I find some of the numbers absolutely astonishing. After digesting the report, I am all the more appreciative of all of you who have been reading my posts. Since so many people are blogging, it’s very encouraging to know that there are still so many…
In a grotesque violation of academic freedom, University of Wisconsin at LaCrosse Chancellor Joe Gow has banned faculty from criticizing Republican Party policies. Rachel Slocum, assistant professor of geography, sent an email to her students explaining that they were unable to use the Census Bureau website because of the government shutdown by “Republican/Tea-Party controlled House of Representatives.” Gow called…