The Age: Jobs under threat at Melbourne Uni
MELBOURNE University’s troubled arts faculty is bracing itself for more redundancies with some saying further cuts will threaten the university’s controversial US-style teaching model.
Under fire are academics who teach subjects with fewer than 40 students and those who have not met research targets over the past five years, a university draft proposal for voluntary redundancies states.
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Posted in Faculty
WCAX-TV: UNH reaches tentative contract with faculty
DURHAM, N.H. (AP) – The University of New Hampshire and its faculty union have tentatively agreed on a contract, ending nearly two years of negotiations.
Few details will be released before both sides vote, but the proposal calls for annual, across-the-board salary increases totaling 14.5% over the 3-year contract and new salary minimums for each faculty rank. The proposal covers from July 2006 to July 2009.
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Posted in Campaigns & Contracts
Youngstown Vindicator: YSU faculty approves contract
Details are not being released until trustees vote.
YOUNGSTOWN — The faculty members at Youngstown State University have approved a new labor contract.
But neither the faculty union nor the university administration will release any details on it until after the university board of trustees have voted on it.
Nancy White, a psychology professor and president of the 380-member YSU chapter of the Ohio Education Association, the union, said the contract was approved in voting Wednesday and Thursday
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Posted in Campaigns & Contracts
The Record: Laurier, strikers to resume talks
Wilfrid Laurier University and its part-time faculty are set to return to the negotiating table in hopes of ending a strike that began more than a week ago.
The two sides expect to resume talks Thursday. It will be the first meeting between the school administration and its contract academic staff since talks broke down March 19. Nearly 400 part-time faculty and librarians have been off the job in a strike that has divided the campus and left some students worried they will lose their academic year.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Tampa Tribune: Union Pushes USF On Domestic Partner Benefits
TAMPA – Even though budget cuts are aimed directly at their colleagues, faculty union leaders at the University of South Florida say they must pursue a benefit still under debate after two years: a domestic-partner health plan.
Union leaders say the university’s grim financial outlook is no reason to abandon work toward an employee benefit offered at a growing number of Florida schools. Progress, however, remains uncertain.
The Chronicle News Blog: UMass Student Strikers Reach Agreement With Administration
Students who staged a strike in November at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst have reached an agreement with the administration that two student governing bodies will ratify tonight.
The agreement resulted from weekly talks between students and the interim chancellor, Thomas W. Cole Jr., that he agreed to hold after the strike.
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Posted in Technology
Deutsche Welle: German Law Professor Jailed in Doctorates Racket
Man discreetly slipping money into his breast pocket
The professor is said to have pocketed a substantial amount
A law professor in the north-central German city of Hanover has been sentenced to three years in jail for taking money from students wanting to obtain doctorates.
The 53-year-old professor, who taught law at Leibnitz University in the city of Hanover, is said to have pocketed 153,750 euros ($240,719) in bribes in exchange for accepting students as doctoral candidates although they did not meet the necessary academic requirements.
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Posted in Ethics
The Guardian: NUS drops free education doctrine
Students today voted to get rid of the principle that the National Union of Students will only argue for free education.
The newly-elected president, Wes Streeting, said the union would propose alternatives to the current higher education fees system, which is to be reviewed next year.
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Posted in Students
Washington Square News: Merger called off with Paris university
NYU and AUP mutually go separate ways
Talks between NYU and American University of Paris that would have led to NYU’s absorption of the French university have broken down, officials said.
The two universities mutually agreed “not to pursue the option of assimilation,” AUP Board of Trustees chairman Thomas Hardy wrote in an e-mail to the AUP community late last month.
The site was one of NYU’s earliest efforts at creating a degree-granting branch campus abroad, which has since become a central tenant of the university’s aggressive 25-year expansion plan. As recently as last spring, officials had said the deal was close to completion. But by the fall, officials said the merger was not going as well as expected, and since then, both sides have decided to table the merger, NYU spokesman John Beckman said.
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Posted in Administration
Houston Chronicle: UH students march for workers’ rights
Group wants school not to sell sweatshop clothes
Outfitted in homemade masks of the likeness of the new University of Houston president, about two dozen students carried a mock casket through campus Monday before presenting it and a fake gravestone reading “Worker’s Rights R.I.P.” to college officials.
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Posted in Students
Inside Higher Ed: Changing the Tenure Rules — Without Telling Anyone?
When assistant professors talk about the ever more stringent standards for winning tenure, one of the favorite metaphors is of colleges “raising the bar.” At Baylor University, assistant professors who came up for tenure this year believe that not only did they face a higher hurdle, but they were forced to jump while blindfolded.
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Posted in Tenure & Promotion
The Chronicle News Blog: Report Shows Stunning Failures in High-School Graduation Rates
Washington — In 17 of the nation’s 50 largest cities, less than half of the students who entered high school in 2003 ended up graduating. In Detroit, which has the lowest graduation rate of the top 50 cities, not even one in four students finished high school.
Those sobering statistics were compiled in a report released today by the America’s Promise Alliance, which intends to draw attention to poor graduation rates, especially in urban areas.
The alliance hopes to convene summits over the next two years in all 50 states, as well as the country’s 50 largest cities, in an effort to focus on what it is calling a graduation-rate crisis. At a press conference here today announcing the effort, a star-studded lineup of officials linked lagging high-school graduation rates and poor college preparation to America’s economic health, and pressed the need for renewed discussion of ways to graduate more students. The officials included Education Secretary Margaret Spellings and Sen. Richard Burr, a Republican of North Carolina.
“From the home all the way through high school and college, it’s a connected system,” said Colin L. Powell, the former secretary of state and a founder of the alliance. —JJ Hermes
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Posted in K-12 issues
The Boston Globle: Yale student to serve a year in prison on weapons charges
NEW HAVEN, Conn.—A 22-year-old Yale student has begun serving a one-year prison term after pleading no contest to charges of reckless endangerment and the illegal possession of assault weapons.
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Posted in Legal issues
Charleston Gazette: In wake of charges, Sisk keeps Eastern job
Moorefield school hired official in July
Robert Sisk, charged Monday with deleting computer files and petit larceny, is still interim president of Eastern West Virginia Community and Technical College in Moorefield.
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Posted in Administration
AP: Hampshire College students stage walkout
AMHERST, Mass.—Students at Hampshire College have staged a walkout to protest what they say is the administration’s inaction to fighting racism and improving diversity on campus.
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The walkout began at 11 a.m. on Monday after talks between student activists and administrators including President Ralph Hexter failed to yield an agreement on students’ demands.
VANCOUVER/CKNW(AM980): Cutbacks to affect both students and instructors
– Cuts at Vancouver Community College will close the doors to thousands of students.
Cuts planned by the Board will eliminate seven percent of VCC faculty and trim classes for more than one thousand students each year.
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Posted in Government
CNW Group: Concordia University Responds to Part-time Faculty Association (CUPFA) Pressure Tactics
Students are asked to report to all classes during CUPFA work disruption
MONTREAL, March 26 /CNW Telbec/ – The Concordia University Part-Time
Faculty Association (CUPFA) announced today that it has decided to employ
pressure tactics.
On the basis of what CUPFA announced today, the university expects that
the majority of classes will not be affected. It is the university’s
understanding that we will see rotating work stoppage, with a few departments
picketing at different times during the week of March 31. It also appears that
that CUPFA members who are not engaged in the picketing will continue to teach
their classes.
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Posted in Contingent labor
Cord Weekly: Part-time faculty strike: Day 11
Part-time faculty strike: Day 11After stepping away from the bargaining table since the contract academic staff (CAS) decided to strike March 19 at 6:01 am, representatives from the Wilfrid Laurier University Faculty Association (WLUFA) and the university administration have committed to begin negotiations once again.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Boston Herald: Still no agreement in Nashua teacher dispute
NASHUA, N.H. – There still is no agreement in the Nashua teacher contract dispute.
Negotiations between the teachers union and School Board broke off yesterday for a second time this week. Both sides will return to the table tomorrow.
The teachers union has threatened to strike Monday unless an agreement is reached. The union has said the board of aldermen and mayor must also indicate their willingness to sign on to an agreement before a strike could be called off.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Brantford Expositor: Contract talks to resume in Laurier teachers’ strike
Wilfrid Laurier University and the union representing the university’s Contract Academic Staff have agreed to resume contract talks.
Negotiators for the two sides will meet Thursday April 3.
There have been no contract talks since March 19 when the Wilfrid Laurier University Faculty Association, which represents the Part-time Contract Academic Staff and Part-time Librarians, directed the bargaining unit to go on strike. The university invited the union to meet again, and the union has agreed.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
