The Telegraph: Tougher screening for PhDs
– Centre to introduce quality checks for student research
New Delhi, Dec. 23: Doing a PhD in India will soon get tougher: the Centre is set to introduce stricter screening to regulate the quality of research produced by students.
The new regulations will be unveiled in a notification on the revised pay regime for college and university teachers the government plans to publish soon, The Telegraph has learnt.
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Posted in Academics
The Chronicle News Blog: Music Industry Will Stop Mass Lawsuits Against Students Over Illegal Trading
In a major shift in strategy, the Recording Industry Association of America will cease suing groups of students for illegally sharing copyrighted music on college networks.
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Posted in Open access
Jakarta Post: Protests mar passage of education entity bill
Thu, 12/18/2008 7:38 AM
EDUCATION FOR SALE: Students from various universities stage a boisterous rally outside the House of Representatives in Jakarta on Wednesday in protest at an education bill that will turn universities into legal business entities. Despite the protests, the House passed the bill later in the day. (JP/Arief Suhardiman)EDUCATION FOR SALE: Students from various universities stage a boisterous rally outside the House of Representatives in Jakarta on Wednesday in protest at an education bill that will turn universities into legal business entities. Despite the protests, the House passed the bill later in the day. (JP/Arief Suhardiman)
Critics and education experts are up in arms after the House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a bill on educational legal entities, which detractors say will lead to the commercialization of education in the country.
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Posted in Protests
AP: Sarkozy acts for ethnic diversity
Dec 17, 2008
PALAISEAU, France (AP) — President Nicolas Sarkozy, impatient with what he said was the slow pace of promoting diversity in France, announced measures Wednesday to put more ethnic minorities on TV screens, in political parties and in elite schools.
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Posted in Diversity
The Chronicle News Blog: India’s Cabinet Approves Huge Increase in Faculty Salaries
New Delhi — In a bid to combat faculty shortages of up to 50 percent at some universities, India’s cabinet, which includes the government’s top ministers, has approved a hefty pay raise for the 500,000 academics who teach in the public-university system.
The increases, which average 70 percent, could end up nearly tripling some faculty members’ salaries. If approved, as expected, by Parliament in the coming weeks, the raises will be retroactive to January 1, 2006. Professors will see minimum monthly salaries increase from 16,400 rupees, or $344, to 37,400 rupees, or $786.
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Posted in Salary/Economic Benefits
The Chronicle News Blog: Opponents of British Faculty Union’s Israeli Boycott Say Legal Threat Has Blocked It
Opponents of longstanding efforts by some members of Britain’s main faculty union to call for an academic boycott of Israel now say that such efforts have been defeated and that they will sue the union to prevent similar actions in the future.
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Posted in Legal issues
Santa Cruz Sentinel: UC Santa Cruz tree-sit demonstration ends peacefully
SANTA CRUZ — The 13-month-old tree-sit demonstration at UC Santa Cruz ended peacefully Saturday morning after protesters voluntarily abandoned redwood platforms above Science Hill just days after mediation designed to dissolve the demonstration ended without resolution.
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Posted in Protests
The Chronicle News Blog: Free-Speech Group Says Most Colleges Violate the First Amendment
Nearly three-quarters of colleges and universities maintain unconstitutional speech codes, according to a report released today by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. The group, known as FIRE, gave 270 of 364 institutions a “red light” for having “at least one policy that both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech.” In last year’s report, FIRE gave 259 of 346 colleges and universities that designation: 74.9 percent, compared with 74.2 percent this year.
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Posted in Free speech
Inside Higher Ed: MLA’s Middle East Moves
SAN FRANCISCO — How political should the Modern Language Association be?
That question was center stage at Monday’s meeting of the MLA’s Delegate Assembly — a four-hour plus endurance test of association business and resolution writing. The Delegate Assembly tends to take a while to come to conclusion on most matters — even when there is general consensus about the issue. So it took numerous votes and modifications before the group approved a measure calling for the creation of a standing committee on adjuncts — a panel on which adjuncts would be most of the members and try to develop plans to improve the way they are treated.
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Posted in Politics
Inside Higher Ed: David Horowitz Does the MLA
SAN FRANCISCO — It’s not standard practice at meetings of the Modern Language Association to have visible security or a roped-off divide between the dais for speakers and the audience. But it’s not every MLA meeting that features David Horowitz, who has spent years attacking the group.
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Posted in Academic freedom
The Olympian: ISU faculty billed for bad news
POCATELLO, Idaho – It must have been bad enough for some Idaho State University faculty members to open a letter informing them that they could be laid off. But then the bill came.
University spokesman Graham Garner said the postage due bills were the result of an error by the U.S. Post Office, the Idaho State Journal reported.
ISU, like other state schools, has to make cuts recently due to mandatory state budget holdbacks. It’s required by law to notify its adjunct professors of any potential layoffs – which it did in a letter sent to faculty members’ mailing addresses, Garner said.
The U.S. Post Office was supposed to charge the certified mail processing fee – about $5 per letter – to ISU’s mailing account. But Garner said the post office instead mistakenly billed the school the cheaper first-class postage rate, and then billed the professors for the extra cost. The university intended to cover the difference, Garner said.
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Posted in Contingent labor
Albany Times Union: For RPI, priorities an issue
Layoffs spark questions about school’s spending on construction, salaries
RPI administrators refused to release details about the cuts, but a state labor official said the school is laying off 98 of its roughly 1,800 employees. Numerous interviews with current and former RPI employees painted a picture of the people affected: janitors and secretaries, groundskeepers and librarians, techies and publicists.
Employees who lost their jobs and others who didn’t are questioning RPI’s lavish spending on executive compensation and new buildings like the just-opened $200 million Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding
SUNY Canton Moves to Four-Day Academic Schedule
December 22, 2008
Courses offered Monday through Thursday next semester
SUNY Canton will be switching to a four-day academic schedule beginning in Spring 2009 in an effort to cut operating costs and increase sustainability across campus.
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Posted in Working conditions
Calgary Herald: Students are becoming frightening speech stiflers
What a bunch of wimps a large number of university students are these days. They’re about as far removed from the heady era of Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement in the ’60s and ’70s as Jerry Rubin was from his firebrand days as a socialist Yippie, after he knotted his necktie, grabbed a briefcase and headed for Wall Street. The Free Speech Movement was launched when students –many of whom had gone south to sign up black voters during the Freedom Summer of 1964–set up booths on the Berkeley campus to raise money for various civil rights projects. The university objected because its rules forbade political fundraising unless it was done by the Republican and Democratic student clubs.
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Posted in Free speech
Inside Higher Ed: Speech Restrictions Draw Fire
A proposed policy at Northeastern Illinois University would require protesters to submit copies of fliers and signs to administrators two weeks before bringing them on the campus, sparking criticism from free speech advocates.
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Posted in Free speech
Journal Star: Self-described witch claims UNL fired her unfairly
Saturday, Dec 13, 2008 – 12:18:59 am CST
A woman hired by the University of Nebraska to direct a youth program says in a lawsuit filed Dec. 5 that she was unfairly dismissed from her job.
“Plaintiff is a witch and the Reclaiming Tradition of Witchcraft is her religion,” the suit says.
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Posted in Legal issues
Inside Higher Ed: New School Sit-In Ends
December 22
Early Friday morning, student protesters at the New School vacated the dining hall they had occupied for more than 30 hours after President Bob Kerrey agreed to an updated list of demands. Kerrey and other top administrators do not, however, plan to resign, as the protesters had initially sought. Instead, among a handful of concessions, the university agreed to give students representation in the selection of a new provost and to establish a “socially responsible investing” committee for its endowment.
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Posted in Administration, Protests
The Charleston Gazette: Third woman alleges sexual harassment at community college
A third woman has come forward with allegations of sexual harassment against the vice president of student services at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A third woman has come forward with allegations of sexual harassment against the vice president of student services at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College.
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Posted in Working conditions
New York Times: Protest at the New School Turns Unruly
Updated, Dec. 19 | Protests at The New School, where a student uprising over the leadership of the university’s president, Bob Kerrey, led to clashes with the police and at least one arrest on Thursday morning, took another wild turn later on Thursday evening.
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Posted in Administration, Protests
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Opinion: Where’s the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?
The Chronicle News Blog: Opinion: Where’s the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?
By Neve Gordon and Jeff Halper
Not one of the nearly 450 presidents of American colleges and universities who prominently denounced an effort by British academics to boycott Israeli universities in September 2007 have raised their voice in opposition to Israel’s bombardment of the Islamic University of Gaza earlier this week. Lee C. Bollinger, president of Columbia University, who organized the petition, has been silent, as have his co-signatories from Princeton, Northwestern, and Cornell Universities, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Most others who signed similar petitions, like the 11,000 professors from nearly 1,000 universities around the world, have also refrained from expressing their outrage at Israel’s attack on the leading university in Gaza. The artfully named Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, which organized the latter appeal, has said nothing about the assault.
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Posted in Commentary