USA Today: Coaches aren’t exempt from furlough programs
The economic downturn is becoming a leveling force between some NCAA Division I athletics departments and their universities at-large. Arizona State, Clemson, Maryland and Utah State are in the middle of mandatory furlough programs that apply to all school personnel, including coaches.
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Posted in Working conditions
Tagged Layoffs, Salary/Economic Benefits
The Chronicle: Notoriety Yields Tragedy in Iowa Sexual-Harassment Cases
After 2 suicides, colleagues question university’s role
Mark O. Weiger was a star oboe professor who had traveled the globe as an artistic ambassador for the U.S. government. But he was also known as the king of raunchy puns. Even when he performed for schoolchildren, the music professor from the University of Iowa couldn’t resist slipping in some fart jokes.
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Posted in Faculty
Tagged Faculty, sexual harassment, Working conditions
Pocono Record: ESU, Dillman, two executives sued over Sanders allegations
Accuses administrator of pursuing sex with six students; accuses university of cover-up
One current and five former students are suing East Stroudsburg University, claiming a top administrator pursued unwanted sex with them — including genital groping and oral sex — and school officials covered up his alleged crimes.
The allegations are detailed in an explicit, 50-page civil suit that was filed Friday in Monroe County Courthouse.
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Posted in Legal issues
Tagged Ethics, Legal issues, sexual harassment
World University News: US: Hiring temporary academics on the rise
Writer: John Richard Schrock*
Date: 15 February 2009
Universities across America are resorting to hiring freezes in the face of budget reductions. But a dangerous attitude is developing among higher education officials nationwide who see this is as an opportunity to change the way universities permanently operate by hiring more temporary faculty to teach a course and then leave.
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Posted in Contingent labor
Tagged adjuncts, Contingent labor
The Chronicle: Grad-School Blues
Students fighting depression and anxiety are not alone
By PIPER FOGG
The Academic Life
Graduate school is gaining a reputation as an incubator for anxiety and depression.
Social isolation, financial burdens, lack of structure, and the pressure to produce groundbreaking work can wear heavily on graduate students, especially those already vulnerable to mental-health disorders.
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Posted in Students, Uncategorized
Tagged grad school, Working conditions
The Chronicle News Blog: Los Angeles City College Is Sued Over Alleged Bias Against Christian Student
The Alliance Defense Fund sued the Los Angeles Community College District on Wednesday, asserting that a student at Los Angeles City College was shouted down and called a “fascist bastard” by his Speech 101 professor while giving a presentation about his Christian faith.
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Posted in Legal issues
Tagged Legal issues
The Chronicle News Blog: Johns Hopkins Freezes Hiring and Salaries, and Will Cut Top Administrators’ Pay
The Johns Hopkins University announced today that it would freeze all hiring and most salary increases, and would reduce top administrators’ pay by 5 percent, in response to the economic crisis.
The university’s endowment lost 20 percent of its value in the first six months of the fiscal year beginning last July, and revenue for the 2010 and 2011 fiscal years will be $100-million short of previous estimates, the university’s president, William R. Brody, wrote in a grim e-mail message sent today to faculty members, staff members, and students.
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Posted in Job market
The Chronicle: Minnesota Faculty Members Agree to No Raises for 2 Years
In a move to save jobs and programs at Minnesota’s state universities, faculty members have agreed to have their salaries frozen for the next two years.
According to an announcement from Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, a tentative contract agreement with the Inter Faculty Organization — which represents more than 3,000 faculty members at seven institutions — must still be ratified by union members and approved by the system’s Board of Trustees in order to go into effect.
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Posted in Salary/Economic Benefits
Tagged Contracts, Salary/Economic Benefits
The Chronicle News Blog: Georgia Southern U. Rescinds Speaking Invitation to William Ayers
Georgia Southern University has rescinded a speaking invitation to William Ayers, an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago who remains controversial for his involvement in the 1960s in the radical group the Weather Underground.
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Posted in Free speech
Tagged Bill Ayers, Free speech
Globe and Mail: Queen’s silences campus language-police program
Queen’s University has pulled the plug on a controversial program aimed at correcting students who are using language that might be deemed offensive.
The experimental program, which employed six students to step in when they heard undergraduates using racial slurs or making homophobic comments, set off a fierce debate over freedom of expression on campus. News of the language police spread through the school’s extensive alumni network and made national headlines.
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Posted in Free speech
Tagged Free speech
Wall Street Journal: Job Market for Economists Turns … Dismal
The dismal economy has claimed yet another victim: jobs for the economists who study it.
Columbia University’s economics department, for example, isn’t making any new hires this year. That’s in stark contrast to last year, when Columbia poached eight economics professors from other schools, and hired one economist out of graduate school. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Amherst College and the University of Minnesota all have suspended their searches for economics professors. And Harvard University has gotten permission to hire just one person — only after “many rounds of negotiation,” according to Harvard economist Lawrence Katz, who is handling recruiting this year. Typically, Harvard hires two or three economics professors out of graduate school.
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Posted in Job market
Tagged Economics, Job market
The Chronicle: Stimulating Higher Ed
By Marc Bousquet
Take students out of the workforce and create real jobs for educators.
This week, lawmakers will meet to forge a compromise between the House and Senate versions of the stimulus bill. The likely consequence will be something similar to the Senate version, which targeted education funds for aggressive reductions — chopping an average almost $1-billion per state in funds that would largely have gone to help meet payroll for teachers.
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Posted in Government
Tagged Budgets & Funding, Government, labor
The Chronicle: To Save Money, Staff Members and Administrators Will Teach Classes at Nichols College
It’s not uncommon for staff members at Nichols College to teach classes for extra pay. But as the economy continues to worsen, a teaching load will be just part of the job for some of them.
And beginning this fall, staff members at the Massachusetts institution who aren’t yet teaching have been asked to step up to the lectern. Putting professional staff members, deans, and senior administrators in the classroom allows Nichols to shift money it would have spent paying adjunct professors’ salaries into student aid.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding
Tagged Budgets & Funding
Chicago Tribune: U Wisconsin fires prof for truancy
MADISON, Wis. – An accounting professor fired for not showing up for a job at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire said Thursday his absence was the result of eye surgery and he planned to work there.
Philip Siegel said he gave up a job at Florida Atlantic University and moved near Eau Claire for the position last summer. He said he had a university office and computer, published papers under the school’s name and went to a national conference for accountants before his contract started in August.
International Herald Tribune: Thai professor flees to England after alleged insult to monarchy
BANGKOK: A prominent academic facing 15 years in prison for allegedly insulting the Thai monarchy has fled to England, saying Monday that he did not believe he would receive a fair trial.
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Posted in Faculty, Government
Tagged Faculty, Government
Washington Post: A Degree of Agitation In UDC Transformation
Students Resist Changes in Structure, Tuition
The University of the District of Columbia plans to end its open-door policy for four-year students and raise their tuition sharply at the city’s only public college, a rapid transformation that has riled students accustomed to a school open to anyone who wants to enroll.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Clark Atlanta cuts 100 staffers
With university’s enrollment, endowment down, faculty must be let go, president says.
About 70 full-time Clark Atlanta University faculty members and 30 other full-time employees are receiving word today that they have lost their jobs.
To compensate for the cutbacks to the school’s 650-member staff, some classes are being combined, university President Carlton E. Brown said Friday.
Brown emphasized that the university remains fully accredited and financially sound.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding
Tagged Budgets & Funding, Layoffs
Inside Higher Ed: Campus protests of Israel’s military actions in Gaza, are growing — including in the United States. Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Rochester is claiming victory in the first “occupation” of a building at an American campus over the issue (although university officials say that the students signed up for permission to protest in a building Friday until midnight and so were there with authorization). The university and the SDS also have different versions of what both sides agreed to in order to end the protest late Friday. The SDS started its protest demanding that the university sell endowment holdings in companies that produce weapons or otherwise “profit from war”; that the university organize a day of fund raising for Gaza; that the university provide “necessary academic aid” such as computers and books to university programs in Gaza; and that a minimum of five scholarships be set up for Palestinian students. A blog by an SDS member involved in the protest says that Rochester committed to donate surplus goods to students in Gaza, to help create a Palestinian fund drive, to look for ways to provide scholarships to students from Gaza, and to “help organize a forum to expose or make transparent the investments of the university towards Israel.” University officials said that they had agreed to the following: helping the SDS find ways to donate goods to students in Gaza, helping the SDS find ways to raise money for Gaza, working to identify schools in Gaza where students might apply to attend the university, and organizing a forum to explain to students how the university makes its investments. Rochester officials stressed that they would help any student group trying to provide assistance for groups that could benefit, and that there are currently scholarships for foreign students available, but that the university doesn’t receive many applications from Palestinians. At the University of Strathclyde, in Scotland, 40 students occupying a building agreed to leave, and claimed that the university had agreed to honor a boycott of Israel by canceling a contract with an Israeli water company. A university statement said that it was indeed canceling the contract, but that Strathclyde had already committed to stopping the purchase of bottled water on a large scale (for sustainability reasons) and that this made it appropriate to end the relationship with the Israeli company. The university also pledged to set up some scholarships for Palestinian students.
Los Angeles Times: Drew University to lay off 10% of faculty and staff
Between 35 and 40 people will be laid off, and contributions to all employees’ retirement funds have been suspended, officials said. Job and salary cuts are expected to take effect in early March.
Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science will lay off 10% of its faculty and staff and slash executive salaries in an effort to reduce annual expenses by $10 million, officials said.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding
Tagged Budgets & Funding, Layoffs
Inside Higher Ed: Turmoil Over 70 Faculty Layoffs at Clark Atlanta
On Wednesday, a delegation of faculty leaders at Clark Atlanta University gave President Carlton E. Brown a list of 46 specific ideas for saving money. One of them was cutting the salaries of all faculty members by up to 10 percent. According to faculty leaders, he didn’t inform them of his plans for the next day.
On Thursday, the university announced the layoffs of 100 employees, including 70 full-time faculty members. (While the university did not indicate the tenure status of those affected, faculty sources and a university spokeswoman both said that some have tenure.) Most of the dismissed professors were told to leave immediately and classes were called off Friday and today to allow for courses to be reassigned to other professors. That may not be easy: Officially Clark Atlanta has 230 faculty members, which would mean that the layoffs constitute about 30 percent of the faculty. Some professors say that 230 is a high figure and that the base is actually lower.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding
Tagged Budgets & Funding, Job cuts
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