Inside Higher Ed: Adjuncting at a For-Profit
What is it like to adjunct at a for-profit? Does one drift to the “dark side” of academia, leaving behind the less-marbled halls of “pure” pursuit of academic arts for the more pedestrian pursuit of job skills? Is it as clear-cut as our fears often define it to move from tweed jackets to suit and ties?
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Posted in Contingent labor, Corporate University
Tagged adjuncts, Contingent labor, Corporate University, For-profit colleges
Inside Higher Ed: The Antioch Fight — Refought
Following years of turmoil, Antioch College may be about to be revived, independent of Antioch University, which many of the college’s advocates blame for its problems.
The American Association of University Professors is today releasing an analysis of the conflict, arguing that it is a “cautionary tale” about what happens when a board ignores the faculty role in governance. Antioch University leaders in turn are releasing their version of events, accusing the AAUP of being unfair.
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Posted in Corporate University, Faculty, Unions
News-Gazette: UI’s Global Campus staffers given notice of layoffs
URBANA – Virtually the entire University of Illinois Global Campus staff, which services about 500 students in the online education program, has been notified of layoffs.
Meanwhile, the leader of Global Campus has moved back to faculty status but retains the $344,850 salary he earned as administrator, at least for the next year.
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Posted in Academics, Budgets & Funding, Corporate University
Tagged Corporate University, Distance Education, Layoffs, U of Illinois
Bloomberg.com: Harvard Licenses Clothing Line Amid ‘Preppy’ Upswing
Aug. 6 (Bloomberg) — Harvard University, the world’s richest school, licensed its name to a maker of designer clothes to take advantage of a taste for seersucker, khakis, loafers and other “preppy” attire.
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Posted in Corporate University
Tagged clothing, Corporate University, Harvard U
Inside Higher Ed: Outsourcing Teaching, Overseas
In Utah State degree program in Asia, “lead professors” (from Utah) design the course work and assign the grade, but “local facilitators” (from partner universities) deliver much of the course content.
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Posted in Academic freedom, Academics, Corporate University
Tagged Academic freedom, Contingent labor, Corporate University, outsourcing, Utah State U
Inside Higher Ed; Measuring the Dreaded ‘P’ Word
Continuing its efforts to identify and encourage new ways to measure higher education performance, the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity and Accountability issued a new report Thursday designed to gauge how successfully public colleges in various states use their available resources to produce graduates with credentials that are valued in their markets. The report, “The Dreaded ‘P’ Word: An Examination of Productivity in Public Postsecondary Education,” also ranks states using the measure.
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Posted in Accountability, Administration, Corporate University
Tagged Accountability, productivity
The Chronicle News Blog: New Study Takes a Crack at Measuring Higher Education’s Productivity
Measuring value and productivity in higher education can be a complex and controversial topic: Lawmakers, taxpayers, and people paying tuition want to get the most for their money, while college administrators and faculty members argue that the quality of their educational product is directly tied to the amount of public support they receive.
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Posted in Accountability, Administration, Corporate University
Tagged productivity
The Chronicle News Blog: Provincial Ombudsman Wants Ontario to Crack Down on Rogue Career Colleges
Ontario’s ombudsman, investigating the abrupt closure of an unregistered private career college, said in a report released today that the Canadian province is “abjectly inept” in policing such rogue academic institutions, which can leave unwary students “out in the cold.”
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Posted in Corporate University
Tagged career colleges, Ontario
The New York TImes: Medical School Says Former Army Surgeon Hid Ties to Medtronic
A former military doctor and Medtronic consultant at the center of a research scandal did not tell his medical school employer for a year about his Medtronic ties even as he was conducting company-sponsored research, according to that institution, Washington University in St. Louis.
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Posted in Corporate University, Ethics
Tagged Corporate University, Research, research funding
The Chronicle: Phoenix Risen
How a history professor became the pioneer of the for-profit revolution
John G. Sperling, as he often reminds those around him, is running out of time. At 88, he is in relatively good health, despite a weak kidney and back problems. He still walks the dog, drives himself to meetings, and seems to have no shortage of nervous energy: Forced to sit still for any length of time, he twirls his cellphone between two fingers or distractedly peels the label from a bottle of water, leaving it in shreds on the table.
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Posted in Corporate University
Tagged Corporate University, U of Phoenix
World University News: NIGERIA: Lecturers slam Harvard training deal
An agreement struck between Harvard University and the Governors’ Forum in Nigeria for the world-leading US university to teach governors of states in African the fundamentals of good governance has been rejected by lecturers. They described the agreement as wasteful and unproductive, called for its cancellation and suggested governance training take place at home.
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Posted in Corporate University, Government
Evening Standard: Privatise top five UK universities to form Ivy League, says Imperial head
Britain’s best universities should be privatised to form an elite US-style Ivy League, a leading higher-education figure said today.
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Posted in Corporate University
Tagged Corporate University, Privatization, UK
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
howtheuniversityworks.com: We Work
This essay is drawn from the final issue of minnesota review to be edited by Jeffrey Williams, featuring a series of statements of professional commitment or belief–credos–by representative scholars. It’s a very special series of essays, and a worthy capstone to Williams’ extraordinary run as editor.
I’ll follow up with more about Williams’ accomplishments, and the future of the journal, which received several bids from institutions willing to step in where Carnegie Mellon stumbled. A letter of intent has been signed, and an orderly transfer to a great new editorial board is underway.
The issue also brings nearly to a close Williams’ spectacular series of in-depth interviews. Often twenty pages in print, these leisurely portrait-of-an-era conversations have been typically longer than the articles in the same issue. Despite Williams’ normally unerring judgment, the issue includes a talk with me, Higher Exploitation.
My credo: We Work
for the minnesota review, winter/spring 2009
I once shocked a colleague by responding to one of those newspaper stories about a prof “caught” mowing his lawn on a Wednesday afternoon by saying that many tenured faculty were morally entitled to think of their salaries after tenure as something similar to a pension.
AP: OSU to allow posts on Facebook page
University changes direction after removing comments about Gee
COLUMBUS: Ohio State University said Monday it will allow postings on its Facebook page that don’t always paint the university in a positive light.
Last week, the university deleted comments by a graduate student who asked about OSU President E. Gordon Gee’s service on the board of an energy company criticized by environmentalists.
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Posted in Corporate University
Tagged Facebook, Ohio State U
Inside Higher Ed: Revolt Against Outsourced Courses
Here’s the pitch: “Can you really GO TO COLLEGE for LESS THAN the cost of your monthly CELL PHONE BILL? We can’t say that this is true in ALL cases — hey, you might have a GREAT cell phone plan. But maybe it’s your cable bill, electric bill, or your GAS bill. … The point we’re trying to make is that taking general education, required college courses just became A LOT more affordable.”
How affordable? $99 for a course. And if you take the courses offered by StraighterLine — in composition, economics, algebra, pre-calculus, and accounting — you don’t need to worry that the company isn’t itself a college. StraighterLine has partnerships with five colleges that will award credit for the courses. Three are for-profit institutions and one is a nontraditional state university for adult students. But one college among the five is more typical of the kinds of colleges most students attend. It is Fort Hays State University, an institution of 10,000 students in Kansas.
There, even as professors are still pushing to get information about StraighterLine so they can evaluate it, students have taken a look and decided that they don’t like what they see. In articles in the student newspaper and in Facebook groups (attracting debates with the university’s provost and the company’s CEO), the students argue that StraighterLine is devaluing their university and higher education in general.
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Posted in Corporate University
Tagged Academics, Corporate Univeristy, Online, outsourcing
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Drug firms’ cash skews doctor classes
Company-funded UW courses often favor medicine, leave out side effects
Do your legs feel tingly? Do you suffer from mood swings before your period? Would you take a mind-altering drug to quit smoking?
If so, the pharmaceutical industry and the University of Wisconsin-Madison want to teach your doctor a lesson.
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Posted in Corporate University
Tagged Academics, Conflict-of-interests, Drug companies, medicine, Wisconsin
Inside Higher Ed: Protection for For-Profit Colleges
Arbitration clauses in contracts are designed to give parties a clear-cut and less expensive route to resolving potential disputes. But provisions that require parties to go through arbitration and relinquish their right to pursue other legal avenues have been controversial, particularly when one of the parties is viewed as being at a disadvantage to the other, as in the case of nursing homes and their clients.
Those issues took center stage in a decision issued Tuesday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, which reversed a lower court’s ruling last year forcing a for-profit college to defend itself in court against 38 students’ charges of fraudulent misrepresentation and negligence. In its ruling, a three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit said that the arbitration clause contained in the enrollment agreement that students signed before entering High-Tech Institute, a vocational institution in Missouri, compels the student plaintiffs to enter arbitration before they can rightfully pursue their claims in state or federal court.
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Posted in Corporate University, Legal issues
Tagged Corporate University, For-profit colleges, Legal issues
The Chronicle: President of Harvey Mudd College Lands High-Profile Microsoft Board Seat
Maria M. Klawe, the offbeat president of tiny Harvey Mudd College, has landed a seat on the board of one of the highest-profile corporations in America: the technology giant Microsoft. The appointment could help Ms. Klawe — a computer scientist who juggles and skateboards in her spare time — raise the profile of Mudd, a 730-student college in Claremont, Calif., that emphasizes science, mathematics, and engineering.
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Posted in Corporate University
Tagged Administration, Corporate University
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
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