Category Archives: Uncategorized

Live Leak: Police Caught Abusing Fans Who Rushed Field After ECU-WVU Game

There are now at least three different investigations in claims that police officers used excessive force after Saturday’s East Carolina game. ECU police say they are looking into the allegations after video from WITN and ESPN showed police officers tackling fans, some who were punched when they tried to take the field after the big win over West Virginia. ECU police chief today said three people More..

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Des Moines Register: Iowa Central president receives $400K for resignation

Iowa Central Community College President Robert Paxton will collect $400,000 from the school in return for his resignation.

After 13 years as president of the Fort Dodge school, Paxton resigned Wednesday, one day before the school’s board of trustees was scheduled to discuss an undisclosed “personnel matter.”

The special meeting was called after The Des Moines Register published a July 4 photograph of Paxton aboard a boat with a group of young people, holding the spigot of a small beer keg suspended over a young woman’s open mouth.

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Burlington Free Press: Woodbury College likely to be sold

The 8-acre campus of Woodbury College in Montpelier will likely be sold and some of its employees face an uncertain future in the wake of a merger announced Thursday between the central Vermont institution and Burlington’s Champlain College.

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Inside Higher Ed: For Adjuncts, Progress and Complexities

A few years ago, sessions at gatherings of adjunct leaders featured a sort of one-upmanship of horror stories. Activists would trade tales of the worst abuses, the most impoverished scholars and so forth. On Saturday, at a national gathering of adjunct leaders, one session almost turned into a boasting session of how successful some unions have been in winning job security and other rights for faculty members off the tenure track.

At one point, those present talked about the problem of achieving job security close enough to tenure that it might be called “tenure light” or “de facto tenure” without using language that might upset those who have tenure.

Such conversations just didn’t used to happen at these meetings.

But even as participants at the biennial meeting of the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor, which took place over the weekend at San Diego State University, relished in these success stories, they considered real tensions in the movement.

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The Chronicle: Todd Gitlin, who argues that nonstop media stimuli undermine democracy and foster a society of disposable emotions.

By ANDREA L. FOSTER

Todd Gitlin, who argues that nonstop media stimuli undermine democracy and foster a society of disposable emotions.

Mr. Gitlin, a sociologist, directs an interdisciplinary program in communications at Columbia University. His book Media Unlimited faults the media for promoting a culture of celebrity worship and paranoia. It was first published in 2001, and a new edition was recently released. Mr. Gitlin blogs for Talking Points Memo Cafe and the Sunday Watch column of the Columbia Journalism Review.

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Providence Journal: Agents investigate former URI official’s work

01:00 AM EDT on Monday, July 21, 2008

Federal agents have visited the University of Rhode Island’s South Kingstown campus at least twice in the past two months as part of an investigation into possible fraud by a former URI official, according to the university’s lawyer.

Robert Felner, former dean of URI’s School of Education, is under investigation for alleged misappropriation of about $500,000 in federal grants while working at the University of Louisville College of Education and Human Development, the post he assumed after he left URI in 2003.

Felner also headed URI’s National Center on Public Education and Social Policy and remained involved with the center until 2004, although he did not receive a salary for the last year, said Louis J. Saccoccio, URI’s general counsel. Felner earned about $174,000 a year at URI, and was responsible for bringing in $6.8 million in grants during his six years at the university.

University officials in Louisville were concerned about a $694,000 federal grant Felner received that apparently never went toward its intended purpose –– to establish a No Child Left Behind center in collaboration with the Kentucky Education Department, according to The Louisville Courier-Journal. University officials alerted federal officials, who launched a criminal investigation. The U.S. Postal Service and Secret Service, which investigates financial crimes involving federal funds, are investigating jointly with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Kentucky.

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The Chronicle Review: Quality Management in South Carolina 1

by Marc Bousquet

cross-posted from howtheuniversityworks.com

When I showed up at my first tenure-track job in a right-to-work, kind of Southern state, adjunct writing faculty were being asked to pay tuition for a summer pedagogy seminar run by the writing director in an illegal “pay-to-work” scheme.

(Unless the prospective adjuncts were spouses of tenure-track faculty, in which case they still had to take the course, but were graciously comped the graft.)

This was 1998, at the University of Louisville. Six-year graduation rates under aggressive “quality management” were around 30 percent (where they remain). And the latest innovation in “enabling access to higher education” was indenturing college hopefuls to UPS and discarding them without a degree, in a scam I’ve previously discussed as Extreme Work-Study.

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Business Day: NUT orders teachers to strike July 1

National Union of Teachers Tuesday directed all primary and secondary school teachers to commence on an indefinite strike from July 1, if government failed to issue the circular needed for the payment of their harmonised salary across all the states.

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China View: Nigerian teachers to go on strike for early salary rise

LAGOS, June 6 (Xinhua) — The Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) has threatened to go ahead with its planned three-day warning strike from June 11 to 13, 2008, according to the Oyo State based Tribune newspaper on Friday.

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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Two West Virginia University professors suspect retaliation for remarks

Two West Virginia University professors have filed a grievance after being told their offices are being relocated, a decision they were informed of the day after one of them called for President Mike Garrison’s resignation.

Judy Sedgeman and Dr. William Pettit of WVU’s Health Sciences Center believe the decision by interim medical school dean Dr. James Brick may be retaliation for comments Ms. Sedgeman made at Wednesday’s rare facultywide meeting, which delivered a 565-39 vote of no confidence in the embattled president.

The faculty also approved a measure to establish an outside panel that would review reports of intimidation against those who speak out against the administration. The measure was sparked by reports that students and faculty who oppose Mr. Garrison are being intimidated, a fear that is particularly strong at the university’s Health Sciences Center, where the medical school dean resigned suddenly April 8 and consultants have been brought in to restructure operations.

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The Chronicle: How It Does It: The RIAA Explains How It Catches Alleged Music Pirates

To catch college students trading copyrighted songs online, the Recording Industry Association of America uses the same file-sharing software that online pirates love, an RIAA representative told The Chronicle at the organization’s offices during a private demonstration of how it catches alleged music pirates. He also said the group does not single out specific colleges in its investigations.

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Maclean’s: Premier Campbell’s university-making magic wand

Are B.C.’s five new universities really “universities”?

When it comes to making universities, B.C. premier Gordon Campbell’s government is productive. With five new university announcements under his belt, Campbell churned out more universities in a week than B.C. was able to do in the previous 50 years.

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Inside Higher Ed: New Group Seeks Resignation at WVU

The pressure continues to build on West Virginia University President Mike Garrison to resign in the wake of a scandal over the granting of an unearned degree to the governor’s daughter and a no-confidence vote from the Faculty Senate. A new faculty-led group, Mountaineers for Integrity and Responsibility, formed Wednesday with a set of goals: to encourage the removal of President Garrison, work toward the installation of a qualified successor, and influence the enactment of legislation to change the selection process for new presidents and members of the Board of Governors, according to Boyd Edwards, a West Virginia professor of physics and the group’s chair. “When I saw President Garrison’s response to the no-confidence vote by the Faculty [in which he indicated plans to retain his post] I thought that we really need to organize ourselves and do everything that we can to restore the good name and the integrity of the university,” Edwards said. The group had between 25 and 30 people at its inaugural meeting, he estimated. Members are planning an all-faculty meeting for Wednesday.

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Washington Times: School strikes cage fights

WISE, Va. (AP) — The University of Virginia-Wise has stopped mixed martial arts events, following a recent cage fight in which several people were injured.

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Teachers College Record: Pruning the Ivy: The Overdue Reform of Higher Education

reviewed by Elaine El-Khawas — April 25, 2008

Title: Pruning the Ivy: The Overdue Reform of Higher Education
Author(s): Milton Leontiades
Publisher: Information Age Publishing, Charlotte
ISBN: 159311740X, Pages: 127, Year: 2007

Milton Leontiades tells us that he served as dean of a business school at a prestigious public research university (not named) for 15 years, following a career in business and government. In this book, he describes the numerous ways that universities do not act like businesses, and he urges fundamental reform. In eight chapters, he reviews the problems needing reform, from high costs and low productivity to ineffective governance and threats of increasing competition from foreign universities and for-profit online companies. Despite the sweeping title, he does explain (p. 31) that research universities are the focus of this book.

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Salem-News.com: Faculty at Portland State University Declare Impasse

Both parties now have 7 days to submit their final offers in writing to the state mediator, who will make them public.

(PORTLAND, Ore.) – After more than one year of contract negotiations, the Portland State University Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (PSU-AAUP) has declared impasse.

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Bellingham Herald: WWU faculty protests lack of contract

Pact has been at bargaining table since March ’07

About 150 Western Washington University faculty members picketed outside the school’s board of trustees meeting Friday morning, protesting the lack of a contract after more than a year of negotiations.

Holding signs reading “Faculty Deserve Respect” and “Fair Contract Now!” faculty members packed the board room and hallway of Old Main.

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The Ubyssey: On campus demonstration turns ugly; 20 students arrested

Updated Tuesday, April 8, 2008—Twenty UBC students were arrested Friday night as Knoll Aid 2.0, a student-organized demonstration, turned ugly.

The demonstration, billed as a “peaceful celebration in defence of public space” by organizers, began to escalate at around 6pm after students listening to music and dancing in the area between the old bus loop and the grassy knoll decided to light a large bonfire on the sidewalk.

Approximately one hour later campus RCMP and firefighters arrived, to the dismay of those in attendance. Students responded by trying to obstruct the firefighters’ access to the bonfire.

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The News Journal: North Central State College faculty selects bargaining agent

MANSFIELD — North Central State College faculty have selected an agent to negotiate their first contract with the school.

The NCSC Faculty Association, a chapter of the American Association of University Professors, was selected by 61 percent of voters in the 60-member bargaining unit. Thirty-nine percent voted for no representative.

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The Globe and Mail: Nearly half of PhDs in Canada are immigrants: census

Newcomers to Canada are accounting for an increasing proportion of the population with university and advanced degrees, new census numbers show.

The new numbers, released Tuesday by Statistics Canada, show that about one-third of the population born outside Canada hold a university degree, compared with about one-quarter of the general working aged population. The numbers also show a huge jump in qualifications of the newest arrivals with more than half of those who came to Canada between 2001 and 2006 holding a university degree.

Immigrants also account for close to half – 49 per cent – of all those in Canada who hold a PhD and 40 per cent of those who have a masters.

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