Testimony of John McNay, Ph.D., President Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors Before the House Finance Committee Representative Ryan Smith, Chair April 16, 2015 Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Driehaus, and distinguished members of the Finance Committee: my name is John McNay and I am President of the Ohio Conference of the…
Rudy Fichtenbaum has sent me the following statistical analysis in response to the assertions made by Campos in the article in the New York Times and as a follow-up to my own post on that article. I don’t think that anything that Rudy points out in this analysis substantially contradicts anything that I have asserted…
In the Sunday Review section of the New York Times, Paul F. Campos has offered his opinion on “The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much.” [The whole piece is available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/opinion/sunday/the-real-reason-college-tuition-costs-so-much.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0] Campos argues that attributing the rise in tuition costs to reductions in state funding is a fairy tale that administrators have been…
John McNay’s testimony was listed first in University Business’s daily overview of the most notable higher-ed news stories of the previous day The UB Daily item links to an article by Karen Farkus in the C leveland Plain Dealer. Here are the opening paragraphs in that article: “COLUMBUS, Ohio – College professors are taking a…
The Ohio Conference AAUP has produced an “Ohio Higher Education Report” entitled The Real Problems Deserve Real Solutions. The purpose of the report is to influence public policy around higher education issues, especially in light of HB 64, the state budget bill, as well as Gov. Kasich’s Task Force on Affordability and Efficiency. It is also a response…
Colleges are usually at the forefront of radical politics [The word “radical” suggests extreme and abrupt change driven by ideological rather than practical concerns. These days there is much more political radicalism on the Far Right than anywhere on the Left], but when it comes to their own privileges they become feudal empires [Loaded language…
I just realized that this is something that I posted previously. If you haven’t read it in its previous iteration, it is very much worth reading. If you have read it, I apologize. I am not deleting it simply to avoid e-mails from subscribers to the blog, asking where the post on administrative bloat is.…
On August 10, the Chicago Tribune has published an editorial titled “How Purdue Is Re-Inventing the American University.” No author is identified. The article title is both misleading and hyperbolic. It is misleading because it focuses entirely on Mitch Daniels and not on any broader initiatives within the university. It is hyperbolic because it does not…