Category Archives: Corporate University

Inside Higher Ed: ‘Free Market’ for Higher Ed

Larry Johnson is a self-described “entrepreneur from hell,” so it’s of little surprise that the University of Cincinnati dean likes the plan for a new budgeting system on campus.

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AP: University of Ill. virtual campus flounders

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) — An $8.9 million online campus launched by the University of Illinois nine months ago has had disappointing enrollment and fewer course offerings than expected, but the man who created it isn’t giving up.

Instead, University of Illinois President Joseph White said he wants to turn the school’s Global Campus into an independent, accredited university to speed up development of degree programs.

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The Chronicle: If Kent State Beats Goals, Professors Will Profit

The university will offer cash bonuses to professors when institutional goals for fund raising, research dollars, and student retention are met.

Kent State University is trying a new and unusual tactic to improve its status, retention rate, and fund raising—paying cash bonuses to faculty members if the university exceeds its goals in those areas.

The bonuses are built into a contract, approved last month, that covers 864 full-time, tenure-track faculty members who teach and do research on the university’s eight campuses. Proposed by Lester A. Lefton, Kent State’s president, the “success bonus pool” will be divided among faculty members if the Ohio institution improves retention rates for first-year students and increases the research dollars it generates and the private money raised through its foundation.

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Herald-Mail: India-based university buys former Allegheny Energy HQ

WASHINGTON COUNTY — The former Allegheny Energy headquarters on Downsville Pike has been purchased by a university based in India.

Vinayaka Missions America University Inc. finalized the purchase of the building and surrounding 45-acre site Tuesday for $8.5 million.

The university plans to open its first campus in the U.S. there, officials from the university announced at a press conference at the Washington County Administration Building hours after closing on the sale.

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Inside Higher Ed: Legal Win for Apollo

The week appears to be a good one for the Apollo Group, the parent company of the University of Phoenix. A federal judge has thrown out a $277 million jury verdict that found that the company had violated securities law and investors’ rights by not disclosing a harshly critical report by the U.S. Education Department. Apollo officials said that they were not required to disclose the report because they were contesting its findings. In addition to the legal win, Apollo is making progress on its international expansion goals.

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Arizona Republic: Franklin Pierce University signs lease with Goodyear for campus in City Center

Franklin Pierce University has signed a 99-year lease with Goodyear to build and run a campus on 20 acres in the City Center development.

The lease marks a significant step in Goodyear’s efforts to become a hub for higher education in the West Valley.

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Inside Higher Ed: ‘The Last Professors’

Two much-discussed trends in academe — the adoption of corporate values and the decline in the percentage of faculty jobs that are on the tenure track — are closely linked and require joint examination. That is the thesis of a new book, The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities, just published by Fordham University Press. Frank Donoghue, the author, is associate professor of English at Ohio State University. Donoghue recently responded to e-mail questions about the themes of his book.

Q: What prompted you to write this book? Does your career fit these trends?

A: More than any other factor, the career decision that prompted me to write The Last Professors was my move to Ohio State in 1989. I’d spent my prior academic life (undergrad, graduate school, my first teaching job) at elite private universities. Coming to a public, land grant university meant working at an institution that has no vast endowment, that is often strongly affected by the state’s economy and politics, and that is frequently forced to make very tough financial decisions. This new climate gave me an unmediated look at “how the university works,” to borrow the title phrase of Marc Bousquet’s new book. I reacted by reading everything I could find on the topic of academic labor (not much in 1990, other than Richard Ohmann’s English in America and Evan Watkins’ Work Time), and then began teaching courses on the subject. The book really grew out of those graduate seminars on academic labor, and I’m deeply grateful to the students who took them.

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Chicago Tribune: U. of I.’s Global Campus program is still struggling

University of Illinois officials said Thursday that their Global Campus project remains behind schedule, with fewer students and less tuition revenue than expected by now.

Still, the university’s board of trustees approved an additional $3.4 million for the online classes, bringing the total board funding for the program’s first two years to $9.8 million.

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Inside Higher Ed: Drexel West

Philadelphia-based Drexel University is looking to California for expansion. The university announced Thursday that it will open a graduate school in Sacramento, offering five master’s programs by January 2009 and introducing four more in September 2009. Further expansion may be on the way. Drexel’s announcement noted that a group in Sacramento has offered the university 1,100 acres to build an undergraduate campus in nearby Placer County. While Drexel called that offer “outstanding,” it said that the graduate programs are designed to “introduce” the university to the region.

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The New York Times: At One University, Tobacco Money Is a Secret

On campuses nationwide, professors and administrators have passionately debated whether their universities should accept money for research from tobacco companies. But not at Virginia Commonwealth University, a public institution in Richmond, Va.

That is largely because hardly any faculty members or students there know that there is something to debate — a contract with extremely restrictive terms that the university signed in 2006 to do research for Philip Morris USA, the nation’s largest tobacco company and a unit of Altria Group.

The contract bars professors from publishing the results of their studies, or even talking about them, without Philip Morris’s permission. If “a third party,” including news organizations, asks about the agreement, university officials have to decline to comment and tell the company. Nearly all patent and other intellectual property rights go to the company, not the university or its professors.

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The Guardian: Education union attacks ‘creeping privatisation’

The “creeping privatisation” of colleges and universities risks damaging the UK’s reputation for educational excellence, the University and College Union (UCU) is claiming.

The curriculum, research, core subjects, staff and student relationships, choice of degree courses, entry standards and quality control are all under threat, according to Sally Hunt, the unions’s general secretary.

In a critical speech at a conference in London on Saturday, Hunt will say: “The creeping privatisation in further and higher education is one of the biggest threats we face today. In the ten years up to 2004, private sector investment in tertiary education grew by 85%, while public spending grew by just 6%.

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The Chronicle: Forum Focuses on Private Role in Expanding Global Access to Higher Education

Educators need to think beyond traditional models to expand access to higher education worldwide, said speakers at a conference here that was sponsored by a private lending arm of the World Bank that makes education loans and other private-sector investments in developing countries.

The International Finance Corporation’s International Forum on Private Education, which wraps up today, focused on issues and innovations that included the increasing role of private higher education in the world market, regulatory barriers to private investment, and the growth of private student loans.

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Cleveland Plain Dealer: Cuyahoga Common Pleas Judge Daniel Gaul picks Myers Education LLC. to buy financially strapped Myers Univeristy

Just a few weeks before Myers University would have once again run out of money, a new owner has been picked.

After a court hearing Tuesday when the mystery buyer was unmasked by a rival who had hoped to buy the school, Cuyahoga Common Pleas Judge Daniel Gaul said he would sell the school to a group that calls itself Myers Education LLC.

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Inside Higher Ed: Unusual Model for an Online College

There is no shortage of associate degree programs online, but private four-year colleges don’t tend to run them.

This fall, Tiffin University is trying a new model for an online two-year degree program. The institution, which was founded in 1888, is launching an associate of arts degree in general studies as part of what it calls Ivy Bridge College, an online-only program that targets traditional-aged students who intend to transfer into four-year institutions once they’re done. The program is unusual for being developed at a four-year private college, and also because of who it intends to enroll and what kind of degree the students will be earning.

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The Chronicle New Blog: Ohio Judge Selects Buyer for Troubled Myers University

An Ohio judge has chosen a buyer for the troubled Myers University, in Cleveland, selecting an investor from Connecticut who had previously acquired the nonprofit Heald College, in California, and Salem International University, in West Virginia.

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The Chronicle: An American College in China Struggles to Deliver

Language barriers and faculty turnover are major challenges

The LNU-MSU College of International Business, a collaboration between Missouri State University and a local university here, is designed to mirror academic life on Missouri State’s main campus, in Springfield.

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Silver & Gold: CCHE allows controversial institution to open doors in Colorado

A bill making its way through the House this month may put in place more oversight of private, for-profit higher education institutions in Colorado. But it will not give the Colorado Commission on Higher Education (CCHE) oversight of an institution whose predecessor was closed down in Hawaii and was referred to as a “degree mill.”

Last week, the CCHE authorized the American University for Humanities (AUfH) to offer degrees in Colorado. AUfH plans to begin enrolling students this fall and will offer undergraduate degrees in liberal arts, business administration, information technology, political science, psychology, “forensic psychology and criminal justice” and “psychology in business,” according to AUfH documents.

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The Chronicle: Online College Faces Criticism for Renting Out Space on ‘.edu’ Domain

Web addresses ending in .edu are usually reserved for accredited colleges and universities, but an online college in Missouri has started renting out blog space on its .edu domain to just about anyone willing to pay $50 a month. And the practice has quickly raised objections from college officials worried that such rentals undermine the .edu designation.

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