University World News: ISRAEL: Disaster if universities strike: Minister
Addressing the expected strike at Israel’s universities, Education Minister Yuli Tamir told a Knesset Finance Committee meeting last week that “it will be a disaster if the academic year does not open on schedule,” reports Ynetnews.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
FACE: Finally, An Agreement is Reached at Pace University!
Even before Barack Obama and John McCain started running for president, the adjunct faculty at PACE University got together and formed a union, the Union of Adjunct Faculty at Pace (UAFP). Unfortunately, as is often the case in the private sector, the administration didn’t necessarily want to honor that overwhelming decision by its employees and began a long campaign of defer and delay designed to wear down the members of UAFP.
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Posted in Campaigns & Contracts
Inside Higher Ed: Academic Freedom Under Many Assaults
“Academic freedom,” that is, the inalienable right of every college instructor to make a fool of himself and his college by vealy, intemperate, sensational prattle about every subject under heaven, to his classes and to the public, and still keep on the payroll or be reft therefrom only by elaborate process, is cried to all the winds by the organized dons.
NEW YORK CITY — In prefacing his remarks with The New York Times’ response to the American Association of University Professors’ first report on academic freedom, Robert M. O’Neil set up his argument that academic freedom has since — but only relatively recently; hence the Times‘ scathing tone less than a century ago — evolved into a “canonical value.”
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Posted in Academic freedom
The Chronicle News Blog: 3 States Agree to Transform Education, One Small Step at a Time
Washington — Education officials from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Utah announced here today that they were moving, in principle, to adopt a sweeping set of education reforms laid out two years ago by the National Center on Education and the Economy.
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Posted in Government
PolWatchers: Obama effigy found on UK’s campus
University of Kentucky police are investigating who hung an effigy of Democrat Sen. Barack Obama from a tree on the Lexington campus Wednesday morning.
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Posted in Politics
Charlotte Observer: Monroe pledges to end degree controversy
Police chief says he’ll consider going back to college or giving up disputed VCU degree.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Rodney Monroe told a throng of reporters and police officers he would resolve a controversy over his college degree. “I did not accept this job to hurt this community or this department,” he said Monday. “I came here to fight crime and to make our communities safer.”
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Rodney Monroe said Monday he might go back to college or even voluntarily give up his Virginia Commonwealth University degree to address a continuing controversy over his higher education.
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Posted in Academics
AP: Plagiarism alleged by Texas university president
McALLEN, Texas (AP) — The University of Texas System is investigating anonymous claims that the president of a south Texas university plagiarized portions of her dissertation.
A packet sent to the university system and several media outlets identifies the passages being questioned, but the packet’s authors are identified only as faculty members at the University of Texas-Pan American.
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Posted in Administration
The Arizona Republic: ASU making major changes in order to save cash
Some classes could grow from 300 students to 1,000
by Anne Ryman and Lesley Wright – Oct. 28, 2008 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic
Arizona State University is preparing to lay off 200 or more faculty associates and dramatically boost some class sizes beginning this spring as it braces for more state budget cuts.
Some lecture-style classes could jump from about 300 to 1,000 students.
The cuts come as ASU officials anticipate $25 million or more in state budget cuts. That’s on top of the $30 million in cuts the university already has made. State revenues are down again this year because of a sluggish economy.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding, Contingent labor, Faculty, Working conditions
WNEM: CMU, Faculty Reach Contract Agreement
Faculty Currently Working Under Extended Contract
MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. — Weeks ago, the faculty at Central Michigan University hit the picket lines.
But Friday, CMU and the Faculty Association announced that a tentative agreement was reached on a new contract.
Spokesman Steve Smith said both sides have agreed not to discuss the details of the agreement.
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Posted in Campaigns & Contracts
Des Moines Register: University presidents’ bonuses now linked to goals
Iowa City, Ia. – University of Iowa President Sally Mason must lead the school in creating a new process to investigate sexual assaults on campus, complete a search for at least three new top administrators and make headway at restoring flood-damaged buildings to receive a $80,000 bonus in the coming year.
This will be the first time that Mason and the presidents of Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa have had annual bonuses tied to their job performance, according to Iowa Board of Regents Executive Director Robert Donley.
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Posted in Administration
Los Angeles Daily News: Iran holds CSUN student prisoner
CSUN student Esha Momeni is being held… (From the Free Esha blog at http://for-esha.blogspot.com/)
A CSUN graduate student was arrested last week in Iran and locked up in a notorious prison, and family and friends worried for her safety have launched an international campaign seeking her release.
Esha Momeni, 28, was working on a documentary about the Iranian women’s movement for her master’s thesis at California State University, Northridge, when she was taken into custody by Iranian authorities Oct. 15.
The American-born Momeni was detained while driving on Moddaress Highway in Tehran, where she was stopped for illegally passing another vehicle, said Hassan Hussein, a friend who is in contact with her family in Iran.
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Posted in Students
Las Vegas Sun: UNLV gives merit pay as it shows others door
While some UNLV employees are taking buyouts or getting laid off, others are getting more money.
A salary roster UNLV released this week shows 1,427 of 1,968 faculty and professional staff members are receiving merit-based raises this fiscal year worth $1,000 to $4,500 annually. That means 72.5 percent of UNLV workers eligible for merit pay were awarded it.
Employees will begin receiving their merit raises Jan. 1.
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Posted in Salary/Economic Benefits
World University News: ZIMBABWE: Universities still closed as students arrested
Writer: Clemence Manyukwe
Date: 26 October 2008
Four student leaders were arrested last week for leading a protest of nearly 500 students against the collapse of higher education in Zimbabwe. No state universities are operating in the new academic year because of serious problems including a lecturer strike, lack of finance and unavailability of learning materials.
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Posted in Protests
World University News: NIGERIA: Students protest against exorbitant exam fees
Writer: Tunde Fatunde
Date: 26 October 2008
Candidates seeking admission into the current 2008-09 academic session in Nigeria are unhappy with high entrance examination fees charged separately by universities and the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board, or JAMB. One newspaper analysis calculated that the amount spent by students sitting both sets of examinations was a whopping US$119 million.
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Posted in Protests
Labor Notes: Puerto Rico’s Teachers Beat SEIU Raid
— Steve Early
When last seen on the picket line, Puerto Rican teachers were fighting their way through police barricades to appeal to fellow workers from the Service Employees (SEIU) at its lavishly funded convention in San Juan in June.
The message of the Federacion de Maestros de Puerto Rico (FMPR) was simple: please stop SEIU President Andy Stern from colluding with the indicted governor of the island to replace FMPR with a “company union.”
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Posted in Unions
Belfast Telegraph: Strike school pupils to miss three weeks as row sours further
The Education Board embroiled in the Movilla High School crisis has revealed that an offer to have the boy at the centre of the dispute assessed by an educational psychologist was rejected as relations with striking teachers soured further yesterday.
The South Eastern Education and Library Board (SEELB) Chief Executive Stanton Sloan hit out at the NASUWT for announcing to the media that strike action is set to continue. However, the union claimed the SEELB had refused to negotiate on proposals they had put forward.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
politics.co.uk: ‘Sustained’ strikes threatened
Public sector workers look set to initiate a day of industrial action over a two per cent pay gap.
Last night the national executive committee of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) agreed the first stages of what it says is a “programme of national industrial action” challenging the government’s anti-inflationary policies.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
AdelaideNow.com: More teacher strikes ‘likely’
THE teachers’ union has warned that a public school strike planned for this Thursday will not be the last, with further industrial action “highly likely”.
Thursday’s half-day strike, which will see primary and secondary schools closed until 12.15pm, is the latest shot from the union in its bitter pay dispute with the Rann Government which has dragged on since February.
The Government will meet with the Industrial Relations Commission tomorrow in a last-ditch bid to prevent the strike.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
San Francisco Chronicle: S.F. State to mark 40th anniversary of strike
For nearly five months in late 1968 and early 1969, near anarchy at San Francisco State played out on national television as police thumped striking students with batons and hundreds of students were arrested after throwing rocks and firebombs.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Public Universities at Risk Abandoning Their Mission
The Chronicle: Public Universities at Risk Abandoning Their Mission
By GENE R. NICHOL
I am an admirer of Unmaking the Public University: The Forty-Year Assault on the Middle Class, a new book by Christopher Newfield, who writes in this issue of The Chronicle about how certain myths exacerbate the financial plight of those institutions. Newfield, a professor of English at the University of California…
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Posted in Commentary