The New York Times: Doctoral Candidates Anticipate Hard Times
Chris Pieper began looking for an academic job in sociology about six months ago, sending off about two dozen application packets. The results so far? Two telephone interviews, and no employment offers.
Washington Post: UDC Chief Wants to Cut Undergrad Major in Education
Low Graduation Rates Prompt Change as Sessoms Proceeds With an Institutional Overhaul
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The University of the District of Columbia plans to shut down its struggling undergraduate education department, which, officials say, is out of touch with current thinking on how to train teachers and fails to graduate the vast majority of its students.
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Posted in Academics
Tagged Academics, DC, Degrees, Standardized tests
Los Angeles Times: Pasadena-based plan for online university draws interest, skepticism
An Israeli entrepreneur hopes to start a global, very-low-cost institution soon. But by dispensing with professors, it’s already a tough sell for some.
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Posted in Corporate University
Tagged Corporate University, Distance Education, Faculty, Online
The Australian: Drive for more poor students in unis
THE Rudd Government today set a target of increasing the participation of the poor studying for degrees by 20 per cent by 2020.
The move will require universities and other providers to boost enrolments of low socio-economic status students by 55,000.
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Posted in Students
Tagged Admissions, Australia, Students
The Times of India: Higher education panel slams ‘mindless’ HRD
MUMBAI: Early last month, the Yash Pal committee was informed that the Union HRD ministry had whittled down its position to an advisory body, but members stuck to their recommendations and the original terms of reference.
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Posted in Accountability
Tagged Accountability, Governance, India
Inside Higher Ed: Academic Accountability in Athletics
March 9, 2009
A new study of 77 Division III institutions of the National Collegiate Athletic Association reveals a consistent and widening academic performance gap between athletes and non-athletes.
Monday, the College Sports Project – an initiative of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation – released its second annual report as part of a five-year longitudinal study comparing the academic performance of athletes to that of non-athletes at participating Division III institutions. The research project has gained much attention because Division III, unlike Divisions I and II, does not track the academic performance of athletes separately from that of the rest of an institution’s student body.
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Posted in Academics
Tagged Academics, Accountability, Athletics
Inside Higher Ed: Fraud and Friction at Florida St.
NCAA finds that tutors helped 61 athletes cheat in online courses, but university balks at punishment — including giving up wins in football that could cost coach shot at record.
Inside Higher Ed: Tightening Picture for Faculty Pay
March 9, 2009
The rate of increase in faculty salaries is down this year – and that is evident even in data collected before many colleges started to announce furloughs and, in some cases, salary cuts. The median increase for faculty members at four-year colleges and universities for 2008-9 was 3.7 percent, according to a study being released today by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources.
The survey showed larger increases for faculty members at private institutions and for the senior faculty ranks.
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Posted in Salary/Economic Benefits
Tagged Faculty, Salary/Economic Benefits
CUPA-HR recently released the findings of its 2008-09 National Faculty Salary Survey. Results indicate that the median increase in overall average salary for faculty members in colleges and universities was 3.7%, down from last year’s 4.0% increase. This finding reflects the salaries as of October 15, 2008, of more than 218,564 faculty members in public and private colleges and universities nationwide. Salaries are also reported for 5,154 researchers. Salaries were reported by 837 institutions, including 500 private institutions and 337 public institutions. Click here to see the data table for select positions.
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Posted in Salary/Economic Benefits
Tagged Faculty, Salary/Economic Benefits
The Chronicle: Faculty Raises Are Down Slightly From Last Year
Salaries of college faculty members increased by a median average of 3.7 percent in 2008-9, a lower rate of increase than in 2007-8, a study has found.
The study, by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, says public doctoral institutions had the smallest increase, at 3.3 percent, down from last year’s 4.4-percent growth. Private doctoral institutions had the largest increase, at 4.1 percent. In all, the salaries of faculty members and administrators together grew by 4 percent last year.
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Posted in Salary/Economic Benefits
Tagged Faculty, Salary/Economic Benefits
Emerald humbled by support, looking forward
Last night, representatives of the Emerald’s editorial staff had a productive conversation with our Board of Directors for the first time in weeks, if not far longer. Together, we agreed to move forward in mediated discussions on the terms of a publisher’s contract.
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Posted in Students
Tagged Strikes & Labor Disputes, Students
Dallas Morning News: Texas regions battle for new public universities
AUSTIN – The tug of war for new Texas universities has begun.
In back-to-back hearings this week, North Texas lawmakers lobbied for new public law and pharmacy schools in Dallas, affordable educations largely absent in the region.
They face stiff competition from South Texas lawmakers vying for a medical school and their own law school. While the Rio Grande Valley has fewer higher-education options, Dallas’ proposed schools have lower price tags – a major selling point in a tight budget year.
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Posted in Academics
Tagged Academics, Budgets & Funding
The Guardian: Top universities face cuts in research funding
Top universities including Imperial College London, University College London and Cambridge face substantial cuts this year after losing out in the allocation of £1.6bn of research funding.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding
Tagged Budgets & Funding, research funding
The Independent: How does architecture affect academic study?
Can architecture promote intellectual excellence? On a cramped site in Oxford, in the university’s new biochemistry building designed by Hawkins\Brown, even eminent boffins can’t resist putting a new spin on Le Corbusier’s modernist declaration that buildings should be “machines for living in”. The head of biochemistry, Professor Kim Nasmyth, says: “Actually, this building is an interaction machine.”
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Posted in Working conditions
Tagged Academics, architecture
Telegraph: University standards being ‘dumbed down’, claim academics
University students are being given good marks despite failing to understand “intellectual ideas” and writing essays text message-style, according to academics.
Lecturers claim they are being encouraged to turn a blind eye to poor standards as universities compete to increase student numbers.
One told how some students believed they “should not do any work” because they paid £3,000 a year in fees.
Another said undergraduates were being allowed to pass courses with fewer than a quarter of the marks needed because institutions could not afford to let them drop out.
USA Today: Ayers: Colo. professor was fired in ‘witch hunt’
DENVER (AP) — William Ayers, the former Weather Underground radical whose past made him a lightning rod in the 2008 presidential campaign, said Thursday that fired Colorado professor Ward Churchill became the victim of a “witch hunt” after comparing Sept. 11 victims to a Nazi.
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Posted in Academic freedom
Tagged Academic freedom, Bill Ayers, Tenure & Promotion, Ward Churchill
Washington Post: Where Is Our Radical Youth?
In 1969, when Alice Echols went to college, everybody she knew was reading “Soul on Ice,” Eldridge Cleaver’s new collection of essays. For Echols, who now teaches a course on the ’60s at the University of Southern California, that psychedelic time was filled with “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” “The Golden Notebook,” the poetry of Sylvia Plath and the erotic diaries of Anaïs Nin.
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Posted in Students
Tagged capitalism, literature, radical politics, Students
Inside Higher Ed: Sabbaticals on Leave
It is perhaps no surprise that something that sounds as good as a sabbatical is now viewed in some quarters as a luxury these troubled times cannot abide. Several college leaders have announced in recent months that they will curtail or suspend sabbaticals altogether next year, opening a debate about whether granting research-intensive leave and professional development time is practical when colleges are laying off faculty or freezing hiring.
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Posted in Working conditions
Tagged Budgets & Funding, sabbaticals
Inside Higher Ed: On Israel, Shifted Ground
The ground seems to have shifted, activists on all sides say. What they make of it varies.
A shift toward more visible pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel sentiment has been profound on some campuses, prompted, in part, by the winter war in Gaza. Where some describe a corresponding disintegration of civil discourse or a scapegoating of Israel for a complex set of problems, others celebrate a newfound space in which to be critical of Israel — to mount a challenge to what they see as a dominant discourse, so to speak.
Neoliberalism and Higher Education
The New York Times: Neoliberalism and Higher Education
By Stanley Fish
I’ve been asking colleagues in several departments and disciplines whether they’ve ever come across the term “neoliberalism” and whether they know what it means. A small number acknowledged having heard the word; a very much smaller number ventured a tentative definition.
1 Comment
Posted in Commentary
Tagged Commentary, Neoliberalism, Stanley Fish