Ohio: Where Graduation Rates, Teaching Loads, and Administrative Bloat Have Become Part of the Debate about the State Budget

Testimony of John McNay, Ph.D., President Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors Before the House Finance Subcommittee on Higher Education Representative Cliff Rosenberger, Chair March 6, 2013 Chairman Rosenberger, Ranking Member Ramos, and distinguished members of the Higher Education Subcommittee:  my name is John McNay and I am President of the Ohio…

A Straightforward Case against the Privatization or Outsourcing of the Curriculum

Simply publishing material in a certain topic area does not confer on oneself or on one’s employees the expertise or the credentials of professionals in that field. So a publisher of books on government and politics would not necessarily have any special expertise in governing or in running a political campaign. Likewise, a publisher of…

California Faculty, Teachers, and Allied Labor Groups Unify in Opposition to California Senate Bill 520, an Attempt to Mandate Legislatively the Privatization of the Curriculum

This letter has been endorsed by the following faculty groups: the California Faculty Association, the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges, the California Community College Independents, the California Federation of Teachers, the California Teachers Association, the California School Employees Association, the California Labor Federation, SEIU California, and USW 5810. April 18, 2013 The Honorable Darrell…

That Best Most Imperfect Place

A long, tough week has ended — more or less — in Boston. I grew up in Boston’s suburbs and spent twenty-five years away to return recently from grand adventures.  Like millions of Boston expatriates living abroad – that is, west of Worcester – I always wanted to come back home someday. In these years,…

Footnote to the News (1): Missing Pieces in Mississippi

Anyone who doubts that history repeats itself has not been paying attention to the news this past week. If you recall, in 2001, as all attention seemed to be focused on the rubble of the World Trade Center towers, letters containing anthrax started showing up at the offices of newspapers and U.S. Senators. This week,…

Ideologies and Strategies

In my previous post, I quoted from a ThinkProgress blog post on a bill introduced in the Ohio legislature that would have defined comprehensive sex education as a “gateway sexual activity.” The bill was ultimately withdrawn after its proponents were forced by public ridicule to recognize that it was no longer passable. But as the…

Love as a Drug (or Why My Eating a Doughnut May Make Your Child More Sexually Active)

The following item recently appeared on the Think Progress blog: “Ohio lawmakers failed to advance an amendment to the state budget that would have prohibited sex ed classes from including any instruction of “gateway sexual activity” under penalty of a potential $5,000 fine. News of the provision sparked outrage earlier this week, particularly since banning any health materials that…

Right to Work, by the Numbers, Part 2

The Impact of Immigration In the first post in this series, I attempted to counter the claim that the population shift from the “Rust Belt” to the “Sun Belt” has reflected a preference for living in “right-to-work” rather than in “pro-labor” states. I can both summarize that argument and extend it by pointing out that…

Online Education in the Land of Oz

“If you follow the Yellow Brick Road, you’ll eventually reach the Emerald City, but once there, you’ll find, as Dorthy does, that the Wizard of Oz doesn’t have anything to offer but an illusionist’s cheap tricks. “Oz isn’t where we want to be. It’s where we end up when we don’t know where we want…