Category Archives: Students

Israel: Higher education reform group to recommend 70% tuition hike

Haaretz: Higher education reform group to recommend 70% tuition hike

The Shochat Committee’s report on higher education reforms is to recommend that tuition be raised by about 70 percent, to NIS 14,800, and that the higher education budget increase by NIS 2.5 billion over five years, according to senior committee members.

The report is due to be submitted Monday to the cabinet, which must approve the recommendations before they can be implemented.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Education Minister Yuli Tamir said in May, in the wake of a 41-day student strike protesting the recommendations, that they would discuss the committee’s findings with student associations before the cabinet votes on them.

Senior university officials said over the past few days they were happy with the recommendation to increase the higher education budget, but college and university students have warned that they will not stand for a tuition hike.

Lawsuit Accuses San Francisco State U. of Violating Rights of College Republicans

The Chronicle News Blog: Lawsuit Accuses San Francisco State U. of Violating Rights of College Republicans

The College Republicans at San Francisco State University sued it today for alleged violations of the group’s First Amendment rights.

As part of an anti-terrorism rally at San Francisco State last year, members of the political group’s campus chapter stomped on makeshift flags of Hamas and Hezbollah, which the U.S. government considers terrorist organizations. (Both flags include Arabic script spelling the word “Allah,” but the lawsuit says the plaintiffs did not know that.) The university investigated the College Republicans and conducted a disciplinary hearing, though ultimately it found no violation of its code of student conduct.

Student Convicted of Threatening to Kill President Bush, Faces Up to 35 Years in Prison

Fox News: Student Convicted of Threatening to Kill President Bush, Faces Up to 35 Years in Prison

A Purdue University graduate student was convicted of threatening to kill President Bush, vice president Dick Cheney and others in postings on the Internet.

Vikram Buddhi, 35, an Indian national who was attending advanced engineering classes at Purdue’s West Lafayette campus, was found guilty by a federal jury Thursday on 11 counts of making threats that were posted in a chat room in 2005 and 2006.

MAULED OVER MYSPACE

New York Post: MAULED OVER MYSPACE

COLLEGE students, consider yourselves warned: Your school may be watching you online. Twenty-seven-year old Millersville University student Stacy Snyder found out the hard way. Snyder was just one day away from graduating last year when Millersville administrators informed her that due to “unprofessional” conduct, the school was refusing to issue her bachelor’s degree in education.

Students Will Begin Hunger Strike in Support of DePaul Professors Denied Tenure

The Chronicle News Blog: Students Will Begin Hunger Strike in Support of DePaul Professors Denied Tenure

Students who staged a sit-in this month at DePaul University on behalf of two professors denied tenure said today they would begin a fast this afternoon to bring renewed attention to their cause. During two weeks of protest, the students have demanded that the university grant tenure to Norman G. Finkelstein, an assistant professor of political science, and Mehrene A. Larudee, an assistant professor of international studies.

On Friday the Illinois Conference of the American Association of University Professors sent a letter to the university’s president, the Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, echoing the students’ demands. In the two-page letter, Leo Welch, the chapter’s president, says the decision to deny tenure to the two assistant professors violated both the association’s standards and those of DePaul’s own Faculty Handbook.

Mr. Finkelstein’s alleged lack of “collegiality” appears to have been the “sole basis” for denying him tenure, Mr. Welch writes. “It is entirely illegitimate for a university to deny tenure to a professor out of fear that his published research … might hurt a college’s reputation,” he says. The association has explicitly rejected collegiality as an appropriate criterion for evaluating faculty members, and has criticized it as “ensuring homogeneity” and undermining the leadership role of colleges and universities, according to the letter. —Sierra Millman

Stanford Removes Marching Band From Double-Secret Probation

The Chronicle News Blog: Stanford Removes Marching Band From Double-Secret Probation

No, wait, check that. Stanford has removed its marching band from “indefinite provisional status.” It earned that unenviable fate last year, when its members vandalized a temporary practice center to the tune of $50,000. Their excuse: They thought the facility was slated for demolition anyway. Based on that and other incidents in recent years, several band members were suspended, and the whole group was put on probation. And the band’s appearances were limited to home games, where it had to perform from the stands.

Student-press freedom act passes

Chicago Tribune: Student-press freedom act passes

College journalists across Illinois could see greater free press protections under a new measure passed by the Illinois legislature this week.

The Illinois House voted 112-2 and the Senate unanimously approved the College Campus Press Act, which would allow college student journalists to write articles without fear that college officials could sensor or bar publication of their work.

Students sue Ontario colleges for $200M

Toronto Star: Students sue Ontario colleges for $200M

As a child-care worker, Dan Roffey knows the importance of teaching kids to play by the rules.

That’s why he was outraged to learn that not only were Ontario colleges “cheating” each student out of hundreds of dollars annually in extra fees he claims are expressly forbidden under a tuition freeze imposed by Queen’s Park, but that the province “turned a blind eye.”

“I think students will be wondering, as I am, what kind of message our college administrators are sending students when they tell me on the one hand that we’ll fail if we cheat on an assignment, but at the same time we catch them cheating on our fees,” Roffey, 26, told a news conference yesterday.

High school graduate pretends to be a Stanford student, even living in the dorms, buying textbooks and ‘studying’ for exams

The Stanford Daily: Imposter caught

Azia Kim was like any other Stanford freshman. She graduated from one of California’s most competitive high schools last June, moved into the dorms during New Student Orientation, talked about upcoming tests and spent her free time with friends.

The only problem is that Azia Kim was never a Stanford student.

Venezuela’s President Eliminates Entrance Exams for Public Universities

The Chronicle: Venezuela’s President Eliminates Entrance Exams for Public Universities

In a move intended to open university access to students from poor families, Venezuela will eliminate its national college aptitude test and some other examinations, President Hugo Chávez announced last week.

Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor (Issue 14): Beyond the Picket Line: Academic Organizing after the Long NYU Strike

The fourteenth issue of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor is now available online at http://cust.educ.ubc.ca/workplace/

“Beyond the Picket Line: Academic Organizing after the Long NYU Strike” features essays gathered by Michael Palm (Chair of the Graduate Student Organizing Committee at New York University), all of which address the implications of graduate worker activism for the future of higher education. The graduate union at NYU has the distinction of being the first to bargain a contract at a private university, and the first to see negotiations terminated by a private university administration. *Workplace 14* provides various critical accounts of the administration’s renunciation of the union, and a series of in-depth analyses of the strike that followed. Written by the strikers themselves—with one important contribution by a unionist at the City University of New York—these articles comprise one of our most urgent releases to date.

Contents include:

“Introduction to the Special Issue”
by Michael Palm

“The Future of Academia is On the Line: Protest, Pedagogy, Picketing, Performativity”
by Emily Wilbourne

“The Professionalizing of Graduate ‘Students’”
by Michael Gallope

“Making It Work: Audre Lorde’s “The Master’s Tools” and the Unbearable Difference of GSOC”
by Elizabeth Loeb

“The NYU Strike as Case Study”
by David Schleifer

“Armbands, Arguments, Op-Eds, and Banner-Drops: Undergraduate Participation in a Graduate Employee Strike”
by Andrew Cornell

“Another University is Possible: Academic Labor, the Ideology of Scarcity, and the Fight for Workplace Democracy”
by Ashley Dawson

The issue also contains six new book reviews (edited by William Vaughn) as well as Wayne Ross’s *Workplace Blog.*

We are pleased to announce that Stephen Petrina (http://cust.educ.ubc.ca/faculty/petrina.html) has joined *Workplace* as a general editor. Stephen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum Studies at the University of British Columbia where he teaches courses in research methodology, curriculum theory, cultural studies, new media, and technology. His research explores the interconnections among cognition, emotion(s), and technology, concentrating especially on how we learn (technology) across the lifespan. Stephen was co-editor of *Workplace* 7.1, “Academic Freedom and IP Rights in an Era of the Automation and Commercialization of Higher Education” (http://www.cust.educ.ubc.ca/workplace/issue7p1/), and his recent articles have also appeared in *Technology & Culture*, *History of Psychology*, *History of Education Quarterly* and the *International Journal of Technology and Design Education*. Welcome Stephen!

Special thanks go to Stephen and to Franc Feng for their tremendous design work on the current issue. We welcome Franc as a member of the Workplace Collective.

We also want to express our gratitude to Julie Schmid for her continued editorial assistance.

Look for issues on “Mental Labor” (headed up by Steven Wexler) and “Academic Labor and the Law” (edited by Jennifer Wingard) in 2008.

(Please note that from this release forward, the journal will forgo the point system [1.1, 1.2, 2.1, etc.] and number according to our total collection of issues thus far. Although the last issue was 7.1 [the thirteenth release], we number this issue 14.)

Thanks for your continued support.

Solidarity,

Christopher Carter
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Oklahoma
Co-editor, *Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor*

E. Wayne Ross
Professor
Department of Curriculum Studies
University of British Columbia
http://web.mac.com/wayne.ross
Co-Editor, *Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor*

University studies to resume Thursday as 41-day strike ends

Haaretz: University studies to resume Thursday as 41-day strike ends

University and college students will return to their studies Thursday ending a 41-day strike, one of the longest in the history of student protests in Israel.

Representatives of student organizations ended the strike after signing a controversial agreement with the government, which recognizes the students as a community whose consent the government should seek regarding tuition changes.

However, the agreement does not promise the students a veto over tuition hikes, and also requires that universities and colleges implement reforms outlined by the Shochat Committee before funds cut from their budgets are returned.

Univ. chair Kaveh says semester still valid after strike deal

Haaretz.com: Univ. chair Kaveh says semester still valid after strike deal

Professor Moshe Kaveh, chairman of the Committee of University Heads said Tuesday the current semester will not be cancelled, after the National Union of Israeli Students’ vote early Tuesday to end the student strike that lasted for 41 days and crippled the higher education system.

Israeli Students End Strike as Government Compromises on Financial Issues

The Chronicle: Israeli Students End Strike as Government Compromises on Financial Issues

Israel’s 250,000 college students will resume classes on Thursday after a strike of more than five weeks that brought the country’s universities and colleges to a standstill. The students were protesting higher-education cuts and proposals to increase tuition fees.

The semester will be extended by two to four weeks, depending on the discipline, to allow students to catch up on lost class time.

Student leaders approved a compromise deal late on Monday night, by a vote of 23 to 17, ending a long and acrimonious dispute that had spilled over into violence as student protesters scuffled with the police in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Under the deal, the government agreed to restore over four years some $300-million that had been cut from the higher-education budget, freeze student fees for one year, and consult with students before carrying out recommendations of a government-appointed panel known as the Shochat Committee, which is to due to report next month on reforming how higher education is financed.

Student leaders oppose plans by the Shochat Committee, so named for the former finance minister who leads it, to raise fees and introduce a system of student loans. A previous committee and the Knesset, Israeli’s parliament, have both recommended reducing student fees.

Grad School Survival Guide

The Tyee: Grad School Survival Guide

Grad school isn’t for everybody. In fact, it’s often pretty tough to tell whether or not you’ll benefit, in the long run, from hitting the books any more than you did for your undergrad.

Israel: Student strike talks end with no result

Jerusalem Post: Student strike talks end with no result

The student strike entered its 36th day on Monday morning, after late night negotiations between student leaders and protesters prevented the former from voting on a Prime Minister’s Office proposal that could end the strike.

Massachusetts: University panel says student parody “harassed” blacks

The Boston Globe: University panel says student parody “harassed” blacks

A judicial panel at Tufts University on Thursday ruled that a conservative campus journal “harassed” blacks by publishing a Christmas carol parody called “O Come All Ye Black Folk” that many found racist.

Anti-Sarkozy protests in Paris, students strike

Reuters: Anti-Sarkozy protests in Paris, students strike

French police arrested more than 100 demonstrators and hundreds of students went on strike at a Paris university as left-wing protests against president-elect Nicolas Sarkozy continued for a fourth night on Wednesday.

Israeli Higher Education Shuts Down as Student Strike Stretches Into 4th Week

The Chronicle: Israeli Higher Education Shuts Down as Student Strike Stretches Into 4th Week

University campuses across Israel were chained shut on Monday as students intensified their protest, now in its fourth week, against proposed reforms in who pays for higher educationStudents held demonstrations in Beersheba, Haifa, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv.

In advertisements published in newspapers on Friday, the leaders of Israel’s universities urged students to end their strike, which entered its 24th day on Monday, and threatened to cancel academic credit for the semester for anyone not showing up for class. The Committee of University Presidents extended that deadline until today as government representatives, university presidents, and students continued negotiations in a last-ditch effort to reach an agreement.

But student leaders on Monday rejected a draft agreement offered by the government. Itay Barda, leader of the National Student Organization, described the proposal as “media spin.”

“The draft is still very far from the demands which we have presented,” he said.

The country’s 250,000 students are protesting plans by the Shochat Committee — a government-appointed panel led by a former finance minister, Avraham Shochat — to raise student fees from their current level of about $2,150 per year. The Shochat Committee says student fees should be restructured, with wealthier students paying more. But its proposals, to be presented in June, ignore findings by a previous government-appointed commission and the education committee of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, both of which recommended lowering student fees.

The students are also demanding that the government reinstate some $300-million that has been slashed from the education budget in recent years. The Shochat Committee has agreed to recommend restoring the funds, but only if students accept future increases in fees.

Rabbi Michael Melchior, chairman of the Knesset’s education committee, said a government offer to freeze tuition for students already enrolled while raising fees for new students was “immoral.”

The government and the Knesset agreed to carry out the previous commission’s recommendations to gradually reduce fees, Rabbi Melchior said.

The students’ protest is backed by the two major university-faculty unions, but Moshe Kaveh, president of Bar-Ilan University and chairman of the Committee of University Presidents, said the students were in danger of losing sufficient class time to complete the semester. He offered to extend the current semester by two weeks if the students returned to class by today.

Israel: Student strike goes on despite warning

Jerusalem Post: Student strike goes on despite warning

The strike that has shut down public universities and colleges for more than three weeks will continue despite the threats of university presidents to punish students who do not return to their classes, a National Union of Israeli Students spokeswoman told The Jerusalem Post Saturday night.