News & Observer: Mary Easley told to quit NCSU post
RALEIGH — Mary Easley has been told that she should resign from her $170,000-per-year position at N.C. State University because it is in the best interest of the university.
UNC system President Erskine Bowles said today that Easley has been given that message. He said he could not elaborate on her response.
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Posted in Uncategorized
The Chronicle News Blog: Do College Rankings Belong on the Sports Pages?
Washington — College rankings may not be to blame for the decline in the quality of higher education in the United States, but they are doing little, if anything, to help. That was the nearly unanimous consensus of a panel of speakers from across the ideological spectrum who gathered here today at the American Enterprise Institute to discuss how the nation assesses the performance of its colleges.
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Posted in Academics, Accountability, Corporate University
Tagged Accountability, rankings
The Chronicle News Blog: Robert Morris U. Faculty Union Forgoes Much of a Raise to Free Up Scholarship Funds
The union representing the faculty at Robert Morris University has agreed to give up more than half the raise due its members next year to allow the private Pennsylvania college to spend more on student financial aid.
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Posted in Salary/Economic Benefits
Tagged Contracts, Pay raises, Salary/Economic Benefits, Scholarships & grants
News & Observer: Bowles wants NCSU chairman out
UNC system head is ‘very disappointed’ in Campbell’s role in the hiring of Mary Easley.
The president of the University of North Carolina system has asked McQueen Campbell, chairman of the N.C. State University board, to resign immediately after learning this week that Campbell played a role in hiring former first lady Mary Easley.
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Posted in Administration, Government
Tagged administation, Ethics, Governance, Government
The Chronicle News Blog: Canadian Professors Continue to Earn High Salaries
Full-time Canadian professors earn, on average, $86,000 to $132,000 in U.S. dollars, according to a preliminary report on faculty salaries issued today by Statistics Canada.
The data in the report represent a snapshot of salaries on October 1, 2008. The report says: “It should be noted that many factors can influence salaries, including qualifications and number of years teaching. As well, some universities impose a maximum to the salary range for each rank while others have an open-ended scale.”
The highest-paid professors, according to the report, are at the University of British Columbia, and the lowest are at Cape Breton University. The report contains data from only 27 of the 116 institutions that were included in the 2006-7 salary survey, the most recent with final results compiled by the statistics agency.
The Canadian university system is mostly publicly financed and has a reputation for paying full-time faculty members well, partly because most of them are unionized. Starting salaries in Canadian higher education are the highest in the world, according to a report comparing 15 countries that was issued last year by Boston College’s Center for International Higher Education. —Karen Birchard
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Posted in Salary/Economic Benefits
Guardian: Captive Knowledge
May 12, 2009 By George Monbiot
The funding for academic research has been taken over by business
Why is the Medical Research Council run by an arms manufacturer? Why is the Natural Environment Research Council run by the head of a construction company? Why is the chairman of a real estate firm in charge of higher education funding for England?
Because our universities are being turned by the government into corporate research departments. No longer may they pursue knowledge for its own sake: now the highest ambition to which they must aspire is finding better ways to make money.
Lusaka Times: Teachers in Southern province resolve to strike next Monday
Teachers in Southern Province have resolved to go on strike when schools re-open for the second term on Monday.
Basic Education Teachers Union of Zambia, BETUZ,Acting Chairperson, Mwangala Dyaunka and Provincial Secretary, Basil Hibajeene, disclosed this to ZANIS in Mazabuka today.
The two union officials said the teachers resolved not to report to work in order to press government to expedite the conclusion of negotiations for increased salaries and improved conditions of service.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Tagged K-12 issues, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Unions, Zambia
Detroit Free Press: DPS officials meet with teachers’ union leaders
Detroit Public Schools officials met with city, state and national teachers’ union leaders in Washington, D.C. today, just weeks before contract negotiations are expected to begin in Detroit.
DPS Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb and his top academic appointee, Chief Academic and Accountability Auditor Barbara Byrd-Bennett, met with Detroit Federation of Teachers President Keith Johnson and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten at AFT headquarters, according to district officials.
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Posted in Campaigns & Contracts
Tagged Contracts, Detroit, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Unions
MTI/Hungarian News Agency: LIGA strike – Teachers join strike, disruption sporadic
Budapest, May 8 (MTI) – Around six thousand public education employees joined the LIGA union strike on Friday, according to the education trade union PDSZ chairman Gabor Kerpen, who told MTI that the strike had been successful.
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Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Hungary, Strikes & Labor Disputes
The Age: Teachers poised to strike for better pay
Queensland teachers are voting on whether to take strike action, possibly within two weeks, as they pursue a new wage deal with the state government.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Tagged Australia, Queensland, Salary/Economic Benefits, Strikes & Labor Disputes
World Socialist Website: Los Angeles School Board eliminates thousands of teachers’ jobs
The decision by the Los Angeles School Board to eliminate thousands of positions is the latest in a series of attacks on California teachers. The vote by the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) came at a special April 14 meeting called to address a budget deficit of $596 million for 2009-2010.
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Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Job cuts, K-12 issues, Layoffs, Los Angeles, UTLA
ABC News: Qld teachers vote to stage 24-hour strike
Queensland’s state school teachers will go on strike for 24 hours over its pay dispute with the State Government.
More than 37,000 teachers will strike next Tuesday, May 19.
The State Government has been in talks with the Queensland Teachers Union (QTU) over a new enterprise bargaining agreement, which has expired.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Tagged Australia, Queensland, Strikes & Labor Disputes
Guardian: Oxford tops Guardian’s 2010 university league table
Full Guardian university guide for 2010, along with advice on how to apply to university, fees, and how to get the best from your course
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Posted in Academics
Tagged Guardian, Oxford, university league table
Inside Higher Ed: The Disappearing Tenure-Track Job
Year by year, various federal data sets are released, and document the steady growth of adjunct positions and decline of tenure-track jobs in the academic work force.
In an attempt to draw more attention to these shifts over time, the American Federation of Teachers is today releasing a 10-year analysis of the data, showing just how much the tenure-track professor has disappeared. The overall number of faculty and instructor slots grew from 1997 to 2007, but nearly two-thirds of that growth was in “contingent” positions — meaning those off of the tenure track. Over all, those jobs increased from two-thirds to nearly three-quarters of instructional positions.
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Posted in Job market, Tenure & Promotion
Tagged adjuncts, AFT, Contingent labor, Job market, reports, tenure
The Chronicle: AAUP Plans to Investigate Clark Atlanta U. Over Faculty Layoffs
The American Association of University Professors today informed Clark Atlanta University of plans to investigate the university over its dismissal of 70 full-time faculty members in February.
In a letter to Clark Atlanta’s president, Carlton E. Brown, the associate secretary of the AAUP, B. Robert Kreiser, wrote that the institution’s “massive dismissals of faculty” raised “key issues of academic freedom, tenure, and due process” that remain unresolved after two months of communications with the university. Accordingly, Mr. Kreiser said, the AAUP plans to establish an investigative panel to determine whether the association’s committee on academic freedom and tenure needs to take action against the university.
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Posted in Unions
Tagged AAUP, Academic freedom, Budgets & Funding, Clark Atlanta U, Investigations, Layoffs, Termination
The Chronicle: Bucking the Trend, St. John’s U. Converts Instructors Into Tenure-Track Professors
Scholars who teach composition, a staple on the schedule of many a college freshman, often wind up stringing together a series of adjunct teaching jobs while keeping an eye out for that first step on the golden track to tenure. So it is easy to see why Roseanne Gatto marvels at her good fortune. She is not quite finished working on her dissertation but has almost finished her first year as an assistant professor of writing at St. John’s University. “This was huge for me,” says Ms. Gatto.
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Posted in Contingent labor, Faculty
Tagged adjuncts, Contingent labor, St John's U, tenure
The Chronicle: Who’s Teaching at American Colleges? Increasingly, Instructors Off the Tenure Track
At community colleges, four out of five instructors worked outside the tenure track in 2007. At public research institutions, graduate students made up 41 percent of the instructional staff that year. And at all institutions, the proportion of instructors working part time continued to grow.
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Posted in Contingent labor
Tagged community colleges, Contingent labor, Teaching, tenure
University Affairs: U.S. academics staying in Canada
Some who moved north in Bush presidency have no plans to return
In 2005, just after George Bush was re-elected President of the United States, University Affairs told the story of a number of American academics who had recently moved to Canada – attracted north by jobs but also by this country’s more liberal attitudes. (See “The pursuit of happiness,”).
Four years later, those academics are still here. All say they’re committed to staying despite the election of Barack Obama in the U.S. and the less certain outlook for research funding in Canada. And – while this is by no means a scientific survey – they say they’ve heard of no American-born colleagues who are packing up and going back home.
CAUT Bulletin: CAUT Council Postpones Acadia Censure
Caut Council delegates voted last month to postpone consideration of censure of the board and administration of Acadia University over the firing of professor Colin Wightman, following a recommendation of CAUT president Penni Stewart and executive director James Turk.
They told delegates that recent discussions with the university administration were productive, and they were optimistic a suitable resolution would be forthcoming from mediated talks to be held in the coming weeks.
In a report released last year, a CAUT committee of inquiry said Wightman was fired without due process and should be reinstated.
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Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Acadia U, CAUT, censure, Governance, Termination
Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?
The Chronicle: Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?
By JOSEPH MARR CRONIN and HOWARD E. HORTON
The public has become all too aware of the term “bubble” to describe an asset that is irrationally and artificially overvalued and cannot be sustained. The dot-com bubble burst by 2000. More recently the overextended housing market collapsed, helping to trigger a credit meltdown. The stock market has declined more than 30 percent in the past year, as companies once considered flagship investments have withered in value.
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Posted in Commentary
Tagged Commentary