News & Observer: Gov. Mike Easley is calling on the state’s community colleges to continue admitting illegal immigrants.
Easley issued a statement today in the wake of advice from the state Attorney General’s Office, which recommended against allowing illegal immigrants to attend community colleges.
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Posted in Government
The Chronicle News Blog: Universities in Lebanon Close Due to Fighting
All universities in Lebanon were ordered to cancel classes today by the Ministry of Higher Education, following an outbreak of fighting in Beirut on Thursday between Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group, and Sunni government forces.
Among the institutions that suspended classes are the American University of Beirut, Lebanese American University, Lebanese University, and Beirut Arab University.
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Posted in International
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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Posted in Uncategorized
A Resounding Win for Adjuncts at Henry Ford
Sometimes the loudest voice of all is the one that makes hardly a sound. Like the rustle of ballots piling up for the Henry Ford Community College Adjunct Faculty Organization (AFO) when the Michigan Employment Relations Commission counted them up May 7. The vote was a resounding 334 to 41 in a unit of 580.
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Posted in Organizing, Unions
Inside Higher Ed: Michigan Ruling Bars Domestic Partner Benefits
Michigan’s Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the state’s ban on gay marriage makes it illegal for public universities and other entities of state government to provide domestic partner benefits to the partners of gay employees.
The ruling came in a case that has been closely watched because many states in which some public universities offer domestic partner benefits also have bans on gay marriage. The impact in Michigan itself is unclear. After a lower court ruled that the gay marriage ban applies to benefits, some universities switched their benefits programs so that they were available not to domestic partners but to “other eligible individuals,” a category that would include many gay partners, but would also include others who live with but are not legally related to university employees. For example, the University of Michigan’s criteria include joint residence for at least six months, some joint financial ties such as checking accounts, and no legal relationship or marriage between the individuals involved.
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Posted in Equity, Working conditions
Inside Higher Ed: New Salvo in Fight on Immigrants
Many states have debated the legality of extending in-state tuition rates to students living in the United States illegally.
In North Carolina, the debate over the legality of a more fundamental matter — admitting undocumented students at all — has only just begun.
The North Carolina Community College System set off a firestorm in November when it issued a directive indicating that all 58 colleges must begin admitting undocumented students under the open admissions policy. But the state attorney general’s office has now called for reversing course. The office sent out an advisory letter Tuesday suggesting a return to an earlier system policy, propagated in 2001, which limited enrollment of illegal immigrants on the basis that federal law restricts their eligibility for most state and local public benefits. “Postsecondary education is one of those benefits that undocumented or illegal aliens are not eligible to receive,” the 2001 policy reads.
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Posted in Students
The Chronicle News Blog: Ward Connerly’s Point Man in Missouri Loses Lawsuit Against College
It has been a rough week for Timothy P. Asher, executive director of a campaign to get Missouri voters to ban the use of affirmative-action preferences by public colleges and other state and local agencies.
On Sunday, Mr. Asher’s campaign organization missed a deadline for gathering enough signatures to get its measure on the November ballot.
On Tuesday, the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Western District handed him more bad news. It upheld a lower court’s ruling against him in his lawsuit against North Central Missouri College, which he had accused of firing him from his job as admissions director in 2004 because he complained that one of its scholarship programs discriminated against white students.
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Posted in Diversity
The Chronicle: A New College Challenges Canada’s Public Model
The first private, secular, liberal-arts institution in the country promises a different approach to teaching
Squamish, British Columbia
David J. Helfand, chairman of the astronomy department at Columbia University, dashes around the classroom as students fire questions at him from all sides.
In this freshman physics-and-astronomy course, he has asked his small group to tackle a big project: design a solar system.
“You’ve got the science,” he tells them. “Now here’s the fiction part.”
The students seem eager for the challenge. Not surprising, perhaps, for an Ivy League undergraduate course. But Mr. Helfand isn’t at Columbia. He’s about 3,000 miles northwest, in the midst of snow-topped Canadian mountains, at a brand-new liberal-arts university. It is, in fact, the first private, nonprofit, secular college in the country.
That a scholar in the prime of his career would be teaching at such an institution illustrates the enthusiasm that pervades Quest University, which opened its doors last August. It has attracted professors with stellar credentials. And its student body isn’t too shabby, either. Of its 79 freshmen, most are graduates of the rigorous International Baccalaureate high-school program, and half come from outside Canada.
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Posted in Academics
The Chronicle: Record Industry Says Spike in Piracy Notices Is Not Part of Lobbying Strategy
A recent spike in online-piracy notifications from the Recording Industry Association of America has mystified college officials. Some say they wonder whether the increase is part of a strategy to persuade Congress to make colleges crack down on students who download music illegally.
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Posted in Legal issues
The Chronicle News Blog: Professors Fight ‘Academic Freedom’ Bills That Question Science in 4 States
University professors have joined other science advocates to battle so-called “academic freedom” bills under consideration in Alabama, Louisiana, Michigan, and Missouri. The bills, along with similar ones that failed to win passage last week in Florida, ask teachers to promote “critical thinking,” especially on topics such as evolution, global warming, and stem-cell research.
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Posted in Government
Fresno Bee: Fresno State professor suspended
2 students allege shooting threat; others deny it.
Fresno State has suspended a tenured professor after two students charged that he threatened to bring a gun to class and start shooting.
Other students say he didn’t threaten the class. But the incident sparked a police investigation at California State University, Fresno, where officials now must decide whether to discipline a veteran professor who last year received letters from top campus officials praising his performance and contributions.
Joe Parks, a professor of education, denies making the threats, but admits he can be controversial.
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Posted in Faculty
Detroit Free Press: New WSU contract may give part-timers a raise
Hundreds of part-time faculty members would get a raise and increased job security under a proposed contract with Wayne State University, according to the group’s union.
Wednesday’s agreement on the tentative contract, the union’s first with the university, followed a 21-hour bargaining session.
“The people at the bottom are getting the biggest bump,” Amanda Hiber, a part-time faculty member in the university’s English department and a union spokeswoman, said of the proposed raises in the four-year deal.
The proposal also creates a three-tiered seniority system that “recognizes years of service to the university,” Hiber said.
The union’s leadership plans to meet today to decide when to present the contract to members for a vote, Hiber said.
Wayne State employs 700-900 part-time faculty members, although the number varies by semester, she said.
A university spokeswoman said she could not offer an immediate comment.
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Posted in Campaigns & Contracts, Contingent labor
Akron Beacon Journal: KSU faculty rejects contract extension
Deal providing domestic partner benefits, raise of 3 percent voted down 63 percent to 37 percent
The Kent State University faculty union has voted down a one-year contract extension that would have included domestic partner benefits.
The union voted 63 percent to 37 percent against the proposal, which also would have included a 3 percent raise and maintenance of health-care costs and benefits at current levels.
Lee Fox, president of the KSU chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said many faculty wanted a higher salary increase. She declined to say how much.
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Posted in Campaigns & Contracts
Vancouver Courier: Union targets ESL schools
Cites poor pay, unpaid prep time for teachers
A little known union has launched an ambitious drive to unionize some of Vancouver’s huge number of private schools teaching English as a second language.
Lorraine Rehnby, spokesperson for the Education and Training Employees’ Association, said English as a second language teachers are often underpaid and have little job security.
While some schools are well managed, she maintains many others are fly-by-night organizations that treat staff badly through overwork, poor salaries or by firing at will. They can also shut down without notice or compensation to teachers. The ETEA is the largest faculty union in the B.C. private adult school system and is a member of the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators.
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Posted in Organizing, Unions
Times Herald-Record: Culinary Institute faculty wants board to step in
HYDE PARK — Relations between the faculty and the administration at the Culinary Institute of America have turned bitter.
There appears no end in sight unless the college’s board of trustees step in, according to a source familiar with the situation.
Early last month, the Culinary Teachers Association took the radical step of voting “no confidence” in college President Tim Ryan, a CIA graduate who has been president since 2001.
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Posted in Administration
The Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies
ISSN 1740-2743
An e-journal published by The Institute for Education Policy Studies
The Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies is published by IEPS, the Institute for Education Policy Studies, an independent Radical Left/ Socialist/ Marxist institute for developing analysis of education policy. It is at www.ieps.org.uk The Journal JCEPS seeks to develop Marxist analysis of policy, theory, ideology and policy development.
The Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies seeks and publishes articles that critique global, national, neo-liberal, neo-conservative, New Labour, Third Way, and postmodernist analyses and policy, together with articles that attempt to report on, analyse and develop socialist/Marxist transformative policy for schooling and education from a number of Radical Left perspectives, including Freirean perspectives. JCEPS also addresses issues of Social Class, ‘Race’, Gender and Capital/ism; Critical Pedagogy; New Public Managerialism and Academic / non-Academic labour, and Empowerment/ Disempowerment. The journal therefore welcomes articles from academics and activists throughout the globe. It is a refereed / peer juried international journal.
Volume 6, Number 1:
May 2008
Ravi Kumar(Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi, India)Against Neoliberal Assault on Education in India: A Counternarrative of Resistance
Richard A. Brosio (University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, USA) Marxist Thought: Still Primus Inter Pares for Understanding and Opposing the Capitalist System
Alex Means (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada) Neoliberalism and the Politics of Disposability: Education, Urbanization, and Displacement in the New Chicago
Adam Davidson-Harden (Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada) Re-branding Neoliberalism and Systemic Dilemmas in Social Development: The Case of Education and School Fees in Latin American HIPCs
Philip Kovacs (University of Alabama in Huntsville, Alabama, USA) Neointellectuals: Willing Tools on a Veritable Crusade
Raquel Goulart Barreto (Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ)-CNPq, Brazil) Recontextualizing Information and Communication Technologies: The Discourse of Educational Policies in Brazil (1995-2007)
Isaac N. Obasi (University of Botswana, Gaborone) World University Rankings in a Market-driven Knowledge Society: Implications for African Universities
İlker C.Bıçakçı (Yıldız Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey) The capitalistic function of education-directed social responsibility projects in Turkey within the context of relationships between the private sector and NGOs
Kariane Westrheim (University of Bergen, Norway) Prison as Site for Political Education: Educational experiences from prison narrated by members and sympathisers of the PKK
Sima Sadeghi (Medical Science University of Bandar Abass, Iran) Critical Pedagogy in an EFL Teaching context :An ignis fatuus or an Alternative Approach?
Martin Power (University of Limerick, Ireland) “Crossing the Sahara without water”: experiencing class inequality through the Back to Education Allowance Welfare to Education programme
Elaine Hampton (University of Texas at El Paso, USA) U.S. Economic Influences on Mexican Curriculum in Maquiladora Communities: Crossing the Colonization Line?
Richard D. Lakes (Georgia State University, Atlanta, USA) The Neoliberal Rhetoric of Workforce Readiness
Michael Corbett (Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada) The Edumometer: The commodification of learning from Galton to the PISA
Liz Jackson (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA) Reconsidering Affirmative Action in Education as a Good for the Disadvantaged
Julia Hall (D’Youville College, Buffalo, New York, USA) Kelvin McQueen (University of New England, New South Wales, Australia)
Review Symposium: Mike Cole Marxism and Educational Theory: Origins and issues (2008, London: Routledge)
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Posted in Publications
AP: UF cutting staff, students to deal with 6 percent budget cut
GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — The University of Florida is laying off 20 faculty members and 118 staff members, leaving 290 empty positions unfilled, reducing research, eliminating degrees and cutting student enrollment as it deals with a $47 million budget cut.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding
The Chronicle: West Virginia U.’s Faculty Senate Calls for President’s Ouster
West Virginia University’s Faculty Senate issued a stinging rebuke to Michael S. Garrison, the university’s president, on Monday by overwhelmingly passing a no-confidence measure that calls on him to resign “for the good of the institution.”
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Posted in Administration
Inside Higher Ed: The University of Florida, facing state budget cuts, on Monday announced a plan to reduce spending by $47 million and to eliminate 430 positions. While many positions are already empty, the plan includes layoffs of 20 non-tenured faculty members and 118 staff members.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding
Inside Higher Ed: The Buck Stops Where?
The West Virginia University Faculty Senate voted 77 to 19 Monday, with one abstention, to voice no confidence in President Mike Garrison and call for his resignation.
The university’s provost and business school dean both have announced their resignations in the aftermath of an April report finding that the university wrongly awarded an unearned executive master of business administration degree to the West Virginia governor’s daughter. The independent committee’s report found failures of academic leadership stemming from the senior levels of the institution. Garrison, who was appointed amid faculty concerns that he lacked enough of an academic background, has repeatedly said that he accepts responsibility for the scandal, but that there is no need for him to quit.
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Posted in Faculty
