BY MICHAEL DECESARE The 2021 AAUP Shared Governance Conference is in June, and there’s just one week left to submit a proposal for a paper presentation on a topic relating to academic governance. Authors are encouraged to explore connections between their institutions and other institutions, and to consider the application of AAUP governance policies. Possible areas of focus…
BY ROBERT A. SCOTT Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic this past spring prompted the rapid turn to remote teaching and learning; caused uncertainty about whether teaching and learning would continue in the remote mode this fall; resulted in dire enrollment forecasts for domestic and international students; and raised questions about what plans should be made…
BY MARTIN KICH Empty Exercises in Planning without Much Meaningful Preparation Francois Furstenberg, a Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, has written an article for the Chronicle of Higher Education that is one of the most lucid and impassioned dissections of what’s wrong with American higher education that I have ever read—and I have…
BY MARTIN KICH Everyone gives lip-service to the primacy of instruction in institutional missions, but the first place where administrators and boards look for “savings” is almost always instructional budgets and instructional staffing. They almost always say that instruction is where all of the money is, but typically “instruction” accounts for only 30%-40% of a…
BY JUDITH GRANT This three-part article continues from Part 1 and Part 2. Failure to Invest in the Region At OU, we have a special mission to educate the citizens of the state of Ohio, especially those in the region of Appalachia. “Today, fewer Ohio adults age 25-64 have at least an Associate’s degree or…
BY DANE KENNEDY The George Washington University faculty and staff ain’t got no culture. Or worse, we’ve got a negative culture. This was the verdict of the Disney Institute, which the president of our university commissioned last year to assess the culture on our campus. Fortunately, the institute, which is the “professional development and external…
This is a guest post by David Schultz, a contributor to the September-October issue of Academe and professor of political science at Hamline University. He was formerly AAUP chapter president at Trinity University in Texas and Minnesota state chair for AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. Higher education’s business plan, as I argue in “The Rise and Coming Demise of the…
The September-October 2015 issue of Academe magazine begins with two articles focusing on disturbing trends in public education. Both articles point to increasing private sector influence as a threat to the integrity of public education. In an essay adapted from his address at the AAUP’s 2015 annual meeting, journalist Juan González argues that public education…
This weekend two studies on the compensation of university presidents appeared. The Chronicle of Higher Education released its annual report on “Executive Compensation at Public Colleges and Universities” and the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington D.C. think tank, released a report finding that student debt and low-wage contingent faculty labor are increasing faster at…
This is a guest post by Ellen Schrecker, a professor of history emerita at Yeshiva University. She also is a former editor of Academe and served on the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. Her article, “One Historian’s Perspective on Academic Freedom and the AAUP,” is in the January-February issue of Academe. Since I no longer edit…