Toronto Star: Profs blast lazy first-year students
Wikipedia generation is lazy and unprepared for university’s rigours, survey of faculty says
University professors feel their first-year students are less mature, rely too much on Wikipedia and “expect success without the requisite effort,” says a province-wide survey to be released today.
World University News: GREECE: Under attack from within
For more than two weeks, the administration headquarters of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the largest in the country, has been occupied by youths, members of non-parliamentary leftwing organisations and sundry other anarchist groups. They have prevented staff from carrying out their duties and are causing serious disruption in the management of the institution.
World University News: KENYA: Violent protests close Kenyatta indefinitely
Kenyatta University in Kenya was closed indefinitely last Monday after students went on the rampage, destroying property worth millions of shillings hardly three days after its re-opening. One student died and several were injured after riot police were called in.
IRIN News: NIGER: Teacher strike threatens to reverse MDG gains
NIAMEY, 26 March 2009 (IRIN) – An ongoing three-month strike by 37,000 contract teachers in Niger threatens recent gains toward meeting the country’s Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of providing universal primary education, according to union leaders.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Tagged Niger, Strikes & Labor Disputes
Daily Sun: Salary: Delta NUT vows to sustain strike
In spite of assurances by the Delta State Education Commissioner, Dr. (Mrs.) Elizabeth Uvo- Gardner that the strike action by teachers in the state would soon be called off as government has commenced the desk payment of the teachers’ salaries which is a major point in the dispute, there are indications that the two-week-old strike action embarked upon by the teachers would not be called off.
This is coming on the heels of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) Delta State chapter vowing to sustain the strike until their February 2009 salary is paid.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Tagged Nigeria, Salary/Economic Benefits, Strikes & Labor Disputes
Jerusalem Post: Hamas wins teachers union elections for UN schools in Gaza
Hamas supporters scored a victory in elections for the school teachers’ union of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) that were held in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday.
Palestinians pick up bags of…
Palestinians pick up bags of flour at a United Nations food aid distribution center in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip.
Photo: AP
SLIDESHOW: Israel & Region | World
However, the rival PLO list won a majority of votes for two other UNRWA workers groups: the employees’ and the services’ unions.
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Posted in Unions
Tagged Gaza, Hamas, Palestine, Teacher unions
Denver Post: Churchill $1 award result of one juror
Five on the six-person jury wanted to give the fired professor more.
Five of six jurors favored awarding fired University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill as much as $110,000 or more — while a single juror insisted he get nothing, a juror and Churchill’s attorney said Friday.
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Posted in Legal issues
Tagged Legal issues, Ward Churchill
Reuters: Exam cheaters jailed on state secret charges
BEIJING (Reuters) – Eight Chinese who used high-tech communications equipment, including mobile phones and wireless earpieces, to help their children cheat at university entrance exams have been jailed on state secret charges, local media said.
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Posted in Academics
Tagged Cheating, China, Government
Globe and Mail: Ontario campus employee wages at top of class
U of T investment manager was paid more than $550,000 last year, making him highest-paid university executive
The highest paid university employee in the province is not a campus leader, but the man responsible for managing investments at the University of Toronto.
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Posted in Salary/Economic Benefits
Tagged Salary/Economic Benefits, U of Toronto
National Post: Ottawa professor fired over perfect grades
OTTAWA — The University of Ottawa has fired its controversial physics professor, Denis Rancourt.
He was suspended in December after he attracted national attention for his teaching methods, including giving a grade of A-plus to every student in an advanced physics class.
Rancourt plans to grieve the dismissal with his union, which in turn will take it to court, he said.
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Posted in Academics
Tagged Faculty, Grades, Termination, University of Ottawa
The Herald: Hundreds of courses dropped in Scottish schools
Hundreds of courses have been scrapped at schools around the country in recent years, new figures have revealed.
Data obtained by the Conservatives show that 289 Higher and Advanced Higher courses have been cut since 2006.
The Guardian: Cambridge University Press: dons step in as digital age threatens jobs at world’s oldest publisher
• Unions take their case to university’s Syndicate
• Management says press was losing £2m a year
College dons have become embroiled in a bitter row over plans to axe more than 150 jobs at Cambridge University Press – the oldest continually operating book publisher in the world.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding
Tagged Budgets & Funding, Cambridge, Job cuts, University presses
Haaretz: Arab professor says booted from eatery over bartender’s ‘racist’ T-shirt
An Arab psychology professor at the University of Haifa said Sunday he was booted out of a restaurant over the weekend after complaining that the bartender was wearing a shirt advocating killing Palestinian children.
Restaurant owner Khaled Hajaj, who is also Arab, said he did not kick out Professor Ramzi Suleiman, though he did tell him he didn’t care if Suleiman took his money to a different restaurant.
“It hurts my feelings and the feelings of Arab customers,” said Suleiman. “I’m not willing to accept such shirts. It’s like the reaction of Jews who see people wearing shirts with a cross.”
The bartender at the Haifa restaurant was wearing a shirt with a drawing of a rifle sight and the words, in Hebrew, “Institution for special-ed children.”
San Francisco Chronicle: UCSF draws the line at $75 bottles of wine
UC San Francisco has issued new rules on how much money its medical faculty and staff may spend for wine at recruitment dinners and other University of California functions.
The maximum reimbursement: $75 per bottle of wine, or $15 per glass.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding
Tagged Job searches, University of California, wine
The New York Times: Parsons Faculty Is Cut Amid Protests by Artists
A dozen members of the fine-arts faculty at Parsons the New School for Design have been told that they will not be teaching in the department in the fall. The move has ignited further conflict at the New School, whose embattled president, Bob Kerrey, received an overwhelming no-confidence vote from the university’s full-time faculty in December.
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Posted in Contingent labor
Tagged adjuncts, Job cuts, New School
Inside Higher Ed: Vote of ‘No Confidence’ in Board That Abolished Tenure
On Friday, the faculty at Southeast Kentucky Community College passed a motion of “no confidence” in the president and Board of Regents of the Kentucky Community and Technical College system by a vote of 68 to 30. The motion cites the board’s recent decision to abolish tenure and retirement health benefits for all new employees hired after July 1. Southeast faculty behind the vote indicated that they expect many more faculty groups at the system’s 16 colleges to hold similar votes in the coming weeks. Richard Bean, chair of the Board of Regents, said the system leadership is “always listening” but did say he was “disappointed” in the college’s vote: “The board has listened for two years, and we had a very clear vote that we wanted to have the ability to meet the needs of Kentucky’s students. We wish [the faculty who voted ‘no confidence’] were as concerned about the students and population of the Commonwealth as [is the board]. We’re sorry that they don’t want the system to be agile enough to provide the type of education we want to provide and for the topics that need to be given at any given time.”
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Posted in Tenure & Promotion
Tagged Kentucky, no confidence vote, Tenure & Promotion
Inside Higher Ed: Call for ‘Fairness and Equity’ to ESL Instructors and Students
Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages has issued a statement calling for “fairness and equity” to such programs at times that colleges are cutting budgets and eliminating positions. “During turbulent economic times, educational programs that serve culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse student populations may be at a disadvantage when competing for reduced funding with programs that serve conventional, mainstream student populations,” the statement says. “This disadvantage is particularly acute for English as second language (ESL) programs, which are often mischaracterized as being remedial in nature.” Further, the statement noted that ESL instruction is is frequently provided by adjuncts who lack job protections. “Unfortunately, during difficult economic times, educational programs face the temptation of laying off part-time, adjunct, or contingent faculty educators that the institution is rarely under any legal or collectively bargained obligation to retain. Reductions of this kind only serve to reduce the level of continuity in high-quality instruction to which ESL students have become accustomed. TESOL strongly supports all ESL faculty’s employment rights ─ part-time and full-time — during these harsh economic times.”
The Chronicle: After the Crash, Scholars Say, Higher Education Must Refocus on Its Public Mission
The economic crisis weighed on the minds of the 200 scholars who gathered here last week for a national conference of the Network for Academic Renewal, a project of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. But even as the federal government announced that 660,000 more jobs had been lost in March, several of the speakers here saw—or perhaps grasped for—reasons for hope.
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Posted in Academics
Tagged Academics, Economy, Job market
Baltimore Sun: UM students to screen porn film
Canceled movie leads protesters to plan own showings on campuses
Students at state universities, upset that a screening of a pornographic movie at the University of Maryland, College Park, was canceled, are fighting back: They are organizing their own screenings of the hard-core film as a gesture of protest.
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Posted in Students
Tagged porn, Protests, U of Maryland
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Ward Churchill Redux
The New York Times: Ward Churchill Redux
By Stanley Fish
Last Thursday, a jury in Denver ruled that the termination of activist-teacher Ward Churchill by the University of Colorado had been wrongful (a term of art) even though a committee of his faculty peers had found him guilty of a variety of sins.
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Posted in Commentary
Tagged Commentary, Stanley Fish, Ward Churchill