Campus Equity Week: Building Platforms for Change

By Mayra Besosa This is the second in a series of Academe Blog guest posts arranged by the AAUP Committee on Contingency and the Profession in celebration of Campus Equity Week. For information on and resources for CEW, see the national website at http://www.campusequityweek.org/2013/ In organizing around contingency, there is no need to reinvent the…

Making the Right Cuts in Higher Education

CBS news reported this week that a number of colleges and universities had or planned to cut their sticker prices significantly. CBS noted that the reported tuition price for independent colleges and universities was slightly over $30,000 per year – or up about $1,100 since last year. These numbers translated into a 2.9 percent increase or…

The Difficulty in Speaking Plainly about Truly Abysmal Statistics

One of my posts this past week was on John Kasich’s appointment of Gordon Gee to explore ways of increasing affordability at Ohio’s public universities. Given Gee’s continuing status as the highest paid administrator at any public university in the United States, I expressed my skepticism about the appointment, a skepticism based in part on…

Want to Understand the Tea Party? Look to How They See Themselves

This map comes from the U.S.Census Bureau (and thanks, Rodger Cunningham, for alerting me to it). It is based on self-reporting on the 2000 census. What is fascinating to me is the number of people who identified themselves simply as “American.” Their location covers almost all of Appalachia and, I suspect, if you took out “African…

On the Issues: “Pay It Forward”

An “On the Issues” Post from the Campaign for the future of Higher Education [http://futureofhighered.org] _______________ The Oregon legislature recently passed a law requiring the state to study a “Pay It Forward” model for higher education.  Under the plan, students could attend college with no upfront costs but with a payback over 24 years amounting…