This Day: NUT Begins Nationwide Strike Feb 2
Osun State Wing of the Executive Council (SWEC) of the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) has directed principals, headmasters and teachers in all primary and secondary schools in the state, to resume the national indefinite stay-at-home strike with effect from February 2.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Daily Nation: Teachers’ union reject pay talks team
The Kenya National Union of Teachers Sunday called for the reconstitution of a committee appointed to negotiate teachers’ salaries before the talks can resume as ordered by a court last Friday.
The officials also maintained that the strike will continue to the second week in defiance of a court ruling, a Cabinet proposal and the ministry of Education’s threats.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Western News: Employee groups seek layoff alternatives
Two of the larger employee groups on campus are urging university administrators to re-consider their approach to trimming budgets in order to avoid layoffs of staff and faculty.
A sharp drop in stock markets has cut or eliminated expected income from investments, forcing all universities to review their budgets for new areas to cut spending. In a budget update released last week Western projected a possible loss of investment income from non-endowed funds at $46.25 million this year and the following two years.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding
Tallahassee Democrat: Union pushes to represent TCC faculty
The union representing faculty at Florida State and Florida A&M universities wants Tallahassee Community College to recognize it as the bargaining agent for teachers at TCC.
United Faculty of Florida officials are scheduled to attend today’s TCC board of trustees meeting and make their request official.
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Posted in Organizing
The Alligator: UF tenure–track professor fights to be reinstated
A hearing was held Friday to determine if UF improperly laid off Andrea Pham, assistant professor of Vietnamese language and linguistics.
A decision on Friday’s hearing should be reached within 60 days.
Pham was one of eight faculty members and 65 staff given layoff notices after last year’s $47 million budget cut.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding, Legal issues, Tenure & Promotion
The Windsor Star: Faculty mulls joining OPSEU
Part-time and sessional faculty members from St. Clair College campuses in Windsor, Wallaceburg and Chatham will be voting on whether to join Ontario Public Service Employees Union next Monday.
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Posted in Contingent labor, Unions
World University News: UK: Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education
A new online, peer-reviewed Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education, based at the University of Glamorgan, has been launched aimed at promoting “improved practice by encouraging informed debate into pedagogic and related matters in higher education”.
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Posted in Academics
World University News: ZAMBIA: University to charge ‘economic’ fees
The University of Zambia will begin charging ‘economic’ fees this year after submitting its proposals to the government. Vice-chancellor Professor Steven Simukanga said that although the government wanted affordable student fees, this was not possible because government grants were inadequate.
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Posted in Economics
World University News: UGANDA: Students protest ‘discriminatory’ fees
Writer: Kayiira Kizito
Date: 25 January 2009
Late last year, Kenyan students enrolled at Makerere University, Uganda’s most famous institution, protested against ‘discriminatory’ foreign student fees and other charges. As with many other universities around the world, Makerere charges differential rates for domestic and international students with those from East Africa pay around 1.5 times the local rate.
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Posted in Protests
The Advocate: LSU chief: Budget cuts could cripple
LSU System President John Lombardi said Thursday that college campuses are struggling to plan for the possibility of up to 30 percent cuts in state funding for higher education.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding
The New York Times: CUNY Plans New Approach to Community College
Students would be required to enroll full time, taking at least 12 credits a semester. Majors would be limited to about a dozen fields with robust job opportunities, including health care and environmental technology. Admission would still be open to anyone with a high school diploma or G.E.D., but face-to-face interviews would be required.
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Posted in Academics
International Herald Tribune: On the Internet, a university without a campus
NEW YORK: An Israeli entrepreneur with decades of experience in international education plans to start the first global, tuition-free Internet university, a nonprofit venture he has named the University of the People.
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Posted in Academics
Inside Higher Ed: Israel Boycott Movement Comes to U.S.
The movement to boycott Israeli academic institutions has largely been centered in Britain (where in 2007 the University and College Union dropped the call). In response to the conflict in Gaza, calls for academic boycotts have crossed the Atlantic, surfacing first in Ontario, and now in the United States.
The U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel, launched last week, enumerates five goals. These include: “Refraining from participation in any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions that do not vocally oppose Israeli state policies against Palestine,” “promoting divestment and disinvestment from Israel by international academic institutions,” and “supporting Palestinian academic and cultural institutions directly without requiring them to partner with Israeli counterparts as an explicit or implicit condition for such support.”
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Posted in Protests
Inside Higher Ed: Camp Jackson
University presidents are often criticized for excessive compensation, but Shirley Ann Jackson is taking heat for a benefit that may place her in a class all her own.
Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is taking heat for her high pay, and a notable perk: a second home in the Adirondacks, provided by RPI in addition to her presidential residence. Inside Higher Ed surveyed all 26 private institutions within the Association of American Universities, and officials with 25 of those colleges confirmed that their presidents are not provided a second residence. The University of Chicago was the only institution not to respond, but Chicago’s 2006 Form 990 only mentions a single home provided to the president.
While RPI is not a member of the AAU, the elite cohort of research universities surely constitutes the institute’s aspirational peer group.
Jackson’s $1.3 million compensation makes her one of the highest-paid private university presidents in the country, and her generous perks have drawn particular scrutiny as the university faces financial challenges. RPI recently laid off 80 of its more than 2,100 employees, and Jackson’s Adirondacks home, first reported on by The Albany Times Union, has emerged as a symbolic structure of inequity.
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Posted in Administration, Budgets & Funding, Salary/Economic Benefits
Ottawa Citizen: Some students allowed back at York after strike
TORONTO – Some students at Canada’s third largest university began to trickle back to classes Monday, but the majority were still out of luck as teaching assistants and contract professors continued their strike at York University.
About 5,000 students returned to class Monday, following a decision last week by the university’s senate executive that applies to undergraduates in the Schulich School of Business and students in the School of Administrative Studies, Faculty of Education’s Pre-Service Full Time Consecutive Program and the Master of Public Policy, Administration and Law Program.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Globe and Mail: NDP stalls back-to-work bill for York University strikers
TORONTO — Back-to-work legislation to end the strike at York University stalled yesterday, prompting calls for compensation for the 50,000 students caught in the middle of the 12-week dispute.
At an emergency Sunday session of the Ontario legislature, members of the New Democratic Party denied Premier Dalton McGuinty the unanimous consent needed to rush through a vote that would have forced York’s 3,500 striking teaching assistants and contract faculty back to work as early as today.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Ottawa Citizen: NDP ties up resolution of university strike
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
AP: Chancellor calls Nevada schools a ‘disaster’
LAS VEGAS — Nevada’s public education system is a “disaster” and is certain to deteriorate more under budget cuts proposed by Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons, Chancellor Jim Rogers said Thursday.
Rogers outlined a grim picture of the public school system and issued a scathing critique of Nevada’s commitment to education in remarks released in advance of a “state of the system” speech. Rogers, who as chancellor oversees the state’s universities and community college system, will air his speech Friday on television stations he owns in Reno, Las Vegas and Elko.
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Posted in Administration, Economics, Government
CBC: Ontario to legislate end to York University strike
Premier Dalton McGuinty has recalled the Ontario legislature to introduce back-to-work legislation Sunday to end the strike at York University by teaching assistants and contract faculty despite warnings from the New Democrats that they will oppose the bill.
McGuinty said Saturday that mediator Reg Pearson told him it appears there is no chance of a negotiated settlement between the university in north Toronto and the union representing the workers, who have been on strike since Nov. 6.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Omaha World-Herald: Judge upholds affirmative action ban
Nebraska’s ban on affirmative action looks like it’s here to stay after supporters scored a courtroom victory on Thursday.
A Lancaster County judge ruled in the ban’s favor, upholding the legality of the petition drive that put the measure onto the November ballot. Voters overwhelmingly approved the constitutional amendment.
With her ruling, District Judge Karen Flowers seemingly dashed the best hope for opponents, who had shrugged off the Election Day defeat and focused their energy on defeating the amendment in court.
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Posted in Diversity, Equity, Legal issues
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