Author Archives: E Wayne Ross

U. of California Faculty and Staff Members Could Face 8% Pay Cut

Posted on June 19, 2009 | Comments Off on U. of California Faculty and Staff Members Could Face 8% Pay Cut

The Chronicle News Blog: U. of California Faculty and Staff Members Could Face 8% Pay Cut

San Francisco — Salaries for most faculty and staff members at the University of California could be reduced by 8 percent through pay cuts, furloughs, or a combination of the two, under a proposal released on Wednesday by the university’s president, Mark G. Yudof.

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U. of California Weighs Options for Pay Cuts and Furloughs

Posted on June 19, 2009 | Comments Off on U. of California Weighs Options for Pay Cuts and Furloughs

Inside Higher Ed: U. of California Weighs Options for Pay Cuts and Furloughs

Faculty and staff at the University of California could face a salary cut of 8 percent, 21 days of unpaid furloughs, or a combination of pay cuts and furloughs in 2010, under a proposal made by the president of the university system Wednesday. In a letter and memorandum sent to all employees of the 10-campus system and obtained by Inside Higher Ed, President Mark G. Yudof said that the “unprecedented challenges” facing the university — a deficit of nearly $800 million in the current and next fiscal years — would require $195 million in pay reductions, on top of $211 million generated through tuition increases and about $400 million that would fall to individual campuses to save through program and other reductions. The systemwide cut would be accomplished, Yudof wrote, either through an 8 percent salary decrease from August 2009 through July 2010 (4 percent for those earning under $46,000), 21 days of unpaid holidays and scheduled furloughs (slightly fewer for those who work only during the academic year and for those earning under $46,000), or 12 unpaid days and a 3.4 percent salary decrease. Yudof said university leaders would decide on one option to present to UC’s Board of Regents in July.

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Posted in Budgets & Funding, Salary/Economic Benefits

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Slide show: Assault on the U of Tehran

Posted on June 19, 2009 | Comments Off on Slide show: Assault on the U of Tehran

The Chronicle: Slide show: Assault on the U of Tehran

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U. of Tennessee System Announces Layoffs for the Future

Posted on June 19, 2009 | Comments Off on U. of Tennessee System Announces Layoffs for the Future

The Chronicle News Blog: U. of Tennessee System Announces Layoffs for the Future

Unlike many states, Tennessee is reserving more than $300-million of its education stimulus money from the federal government to fill gaps in the 2011 budget year when its economy may still be flagging.

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Nevada Chancellor Urges Board to Fire UNLV Chief

Posted on June 19, 2009 | Comments Off on Nevada Chancellor Urges Board to Fire UNLV Chief

Inside Higher Ed: Nevada Chancellor Urges Board to Fire UNLV Chief

The chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education, whose own term is due to end this month, recommended to the system’s regents Tuesday that they fire David Ashley, president of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. The letter from Chancellor James E. Rogers to the members of the Board of Regents, recommended that “Dr. Ashley’s contract not be renewed and that you consider immediate termination of the contract as president…. [T]he problems that have become the subject of much media attention recently are the problems that I long ago asked him and expected him to correct.” Ashley’s performance has been the subject of significant news coverage and he returned from a trip to Singapore last week amid rumors that he would resign.

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The (Pro)-White Professor

Posted on June 19, 2009 | Comments Off on The (Pro)-White Professor

Inside Higher Ed: The (Pro)-White Professor

A tenured professor who has taught education classes at the University of Vermont for nearly 40 years has written extensively and sympathetically about white nationalism, drawing fire from civil rights groups but support from his institution in the name of academic freedom.

The Times Argus reported Sunday that Robert S. Griffin has authored several books and articles that are widely read by white nationalists, neo-Nazis and other extremists. In 2001, Griffin self-published The Fame of a Dead Man’s Deeds: An Up-Close Portrait of White Nationalist William Pierce, a biography of the late National Alliance leader who hoped to establish an all-white “living space” in the United States and Europe. William Pierce’s novel The Turner Diaries in part inspired Timothy McVeigh to carry out the Oklahoma City bombing.

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Higher Ed and the Third Reich

Posted on June 19, 2009 | Comments Off on Higher Ed and the Third Reich

Inside Higher Ed: Higher Ed and the Third Reich

A new book examines American colleges’ ties to Nazi Germany in the 1930s — and chronicles a record characterized by indifference, complicity and collaboration.

“In order to understand the whole course of development that leads us to the Holocaust, I think it’s very important to see what influential sectors in the United States were doing. And in the case of higher education, it’s a very shameful record of complicity and indifference to atrocities committed against the Jews from 1933 onward — and actually a lot of collaboration, in terms of participating in well-organized student exchange programs, participating in well-orchestrated Nazi festivals in Germany, sending delegates to those and ignoring protests,” says Stephen H. Norwood, a professor of history at the University of Oklahoma and author of The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower: Complicity and Conflict on American Campuses, new from Cambridge University Press.

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Universities and Students Are at Heart of Continuing Protests in Iran

Posted on June 19, 2009 | Comments Off on Universities and Students Are at Heart of Continuing Protests in Iran

The Chronicle: Universities and Students Are at Heart of Continuing Protests in Iran

Protesters continued to throng the streets of Tehran on Tuesday, in the second day of rallies and demonstrations that have erupted in the wake of last Friday’s disputed presidential election. The actions have been called the country’s biggest mass demonstrations since the 1979 Islamic revolution, and, as in that movement, university students are at the heart of much of the action.

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Bethune-Cookman U. Fires 4 Faculty Members for Sexual Harassment

Posted on June 19, 2009 | Comments Off on Bethune-Cookman U. Fires 4 Faculty Members for Sexual Harassment

The Chronicle News Blog: Bethune-Cookman U. Fires 4 Faculty Members for Sexual Harassment

Four faculty members at Bethune-Cookman University have been fired for sexually harassing female students, university officials announced today.

The university in Daytona Beach, Fla., did not name the faculty members or provide details of the alleged harassment. In a written statement, it said it had hired an independent investigator after a female student confided in a faculty member, who urged her to file a formal complaint with the university’s president, Trudie Kibbe Reed.

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N.C. State’s New Leader Revokes Added Pay for Provost Who Resigned

Posted on June 19, 2009 | Comments Off on N.C. State’s New Leader Revokes Added Pay for Provost Who Resigned

AP: Woodward: Former provost salary package ‘invalid’

RALEIGH (AP) — The interim chancellor of N.C. State has eliminated the lucrative resignation package given to the former campus provost, saying in a letter released Tuesday that the deal was “invalid.”

Interim chancellor Jim Woodward said in the letter that former Chancellor James Oblinger did not have the authority to “fundamentally alter” the 2005 employment agreement of former provost Larry Nielsen. Woodward said Oblinger should have sought the approval of the board of trustees.

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Posted in Administration, Government, Salary/Economic Benefits

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Brits discuss adoption of American university ranks

Posted on June 16, 2009 | Comments Off on Brits discuss adoption of American university ranks

The Chronicle: Britain’s Title Wave

With its lords and ladies, ancient honorifics, and titles both inherited and earned, Britain is a status-conscious realm. The halls of academe are no exception.

At most British universities, the title of professor has traditionally been awarded only at the culmination of an academic journey beginning as a lecturer, progressing through senior and principal lecturer, and, finally, reaching reader. But some universities have remained aloof from common practice, conferring professorships with relative rarity.

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Posted in Faculty

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California’s ‘Gold Standard’ for Higher Education Falls Upon Hard Times

Posted on June 16, 2009 | Comments Off on California’s ‘Gold Standard’ for Higher Education Falls Upon Hard Times

The Chronicle: California’s ‘Gold Standard’ for Higher Education Falls Upon Hard Times

Few documents in higher education have enjoyed the influence or longevity of the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the 1960 law that transformed the state’s public colleges and served as a blueprint for public systems across the country.

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Texas A&M Regents Name an Interim Leader for Flagship

Posted on June 16, 2009 | Comments Off on Texas A&M Regents Name an Interim Leader for Flagship

The Chronicle: Texas A&M Regents Name an Interim Leader for Flagship

One day after Elsa A. Murano announced her resignation as president of Texas A&M University’s main campus here, the university system’s Board of Regents on Monday appointed R. Bowen Loftin, leader of the system’s Galveston branch campus, as the flagship’s interim president.

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Academic association to probe UTMB layoffs

Posted on June 15, 2009 | Comments Off on Academic association to probe UTMB layoffs

The Daily News: Academic association to probe UTMB layoffs

GALVESTON — A committee appointed by the American Association of University Professors will travel to Galveston and Austin this summer to investigate whether the University of Texas Medical Branch used Hurricane Ike as a handy excuse to thin out tenured faculty.

“We don’t launch an investigation lightly,” said Eric Combest, associate secretary in the Department of Academic Freedom and Tenure of the 94-year-old organization based in Washington, D.C.

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Zambia: Go Back to Work, Teachers Unions Urge Members

Posted on June 15, 2009 | Comments Off on Zambia: Go Back to Work, Teachers Unions Urge Members

AllAfrica.com: Zambia: Go Back to Work, Teachers Unions Urge Members

TEACHERS’ unions have appealed to their members to return to work after they agreed with the Government on a 15 per cent salary increment which was signed on Wednesday.

The Basic Education Teachers Union of Zambia (BETUZ) and the Zambia Union of Teachers (ZNUT) said in separate interviews that they had accepted the 15 per cent salary increment and urged their members to immediately return to work.

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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes

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Taipei: Group calls on Ma to respect teacher’s right to form unions

Posted on June 15, 2009 | Comments Off on Taipei: Group calls on Ma to respect teacher’s right to form unions

Taipei Times: Group calls on Ma to respect teacher’s right to form unions

Ahead of the legislature’s scheduled review today and tomorrow of a bill on whether teachers can form unions, the National Teachers Association (NTA) yesterday publicized a letter from Education International (EI) calling on the government to respect teachers’ right to organize labor unions.

The English letter was written by Fred van Leeuwen, secretary-general of EI — a global federation of teachers representing more than 30 million members in 171 countries — and addressed to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).

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South Africa: Sadtu strike unwarrented – officials

Posted on June 15, 2009 | Comments Off on South Africa: Sadtu strike unwarrented – officials

Independent Online: Sadtu strike unwarrented – officials

The SA Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) strike in Soweto was unwarranted and denied children their constitutional right to an education, school governing bodies said on Sunday.

Independent Online: Union action disrupts schooling

Children across Gauteng were turned away from their classrooms after the teacher union Sadtu called on its members to disrupt schools.

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Buffalo News: Mediation pursued in NCCC labor feud

NCCC President James Klyczek said he is trying to address increasing health care and pension costs.Charles Lewis/Buffalo News
Union negotiator Joseph F. Colosi said administrators have asked for too much.

SANBORN — Working without a labor contract for almost three years will go a long way to strain a relationship.

But the continuing feud between the faculty union and the administration at Niagara County Community College doesn’t mean that either side has sat still during the process.

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Harvard University: The banks, layoffs & growing fightback

Posted on June 15, 2009 | Comments Off on Harvard University: The banks, layoffs & growing fightback

Workers World: Harvard University: The banks, layoffs & growing fightback

On June 4, during Commencement Day 2009 at Harvard University—the richest university in the world—graduating students held up signs spelling “N-O L-A-Y-O-F-F-S” inside, while workers on the outside held up the same signs.

For months leading up to commencement, a loose coalition of Harvard students and unions has been protesting layoffs at the university. Comprised of members of the No Layoffs Campaign—started by members of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3650; UNITE/HERE; Service Employees union Local 615; Student Labor Action Movement; and other student activists—this grouping has held rallies, marches and forums demanding no layoffs and no cuts in services.

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South Africa: Cap all higher education pay, say unions

Posted on June 15, 2009 | Comments Off on South Africa: Cap all higher education pay, say unions

Business Day: Cap all higher education pay, say unions

CAPPING the pay of top managers at public higher education institutions was a step in the right direction, but all salaries at these institutions should be subject to government guidelines, two higher education staff unions said yesterday.

The government has proposed that the total cost of all senior university and university of technology management salaries be capped at 6% of each institution’s total staff cost.

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