Australia: Editorial: Time to reform higher education

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The Australian: Editorial: Time to reform higher education
Central planning is depriving us of quality universities

WHEN the winds of micro-economic reform began to blow the cobwebs away in the Australian public sector two decades ago, it was unfortunate that higher education was walled off from change. Yet as Australia struggles to meet the shortage of skilled labour, it is time to address the rigidities in the tertiary sector that have rendered it incapable of responding flexibly to meet the demands of the labour market.

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Posted in Commentary, International

Massachusetts State’s higher ed $alaries sky-high

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Boston Herald: State’s higher ed $alaries sky-high

As Gov. Deval Patrick makes free community colleges the cornerstone of his education strategy, he’ll be wading into a system laden with six-figure salaries, sky-high administrative costs and perk jobs for cops, pols and judges.

The state’s 15 community colleges have an overall payroll of roughly $315 million, including 126 employees who made more than $100,000 in 2006, including every school president, a Herald review of payroll records found.

Presidents’ pay ranged from $140,400 for Berkshire Community College President Paul Raverta to $207,166 for Holyoke Community College President William Messner.

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Posted in Salary/Economic Benefits

Corruption in education: breaking the taboo

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UNESCO: Corruption in education: breaking the taboo

“Corrupt Schools, Corrupt Universities: What can be done?”, a report published by UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) will be launched on 6 June. Read the interview with authors Jacques Hallak and Muriel Poisson.

The IIEP will hold its first international Summer School on “Transparency, accountability and anti-corruption measures in education” from 6 to 15 June 2007.

Bribery in teacher recruitment, embezzlement of funds destined for education, faked calls for tender, illegal registration fees, academic fraud – the list goes on and on.

Based on six years of research and the experience of over 60 countries, “Corrupt Schools, Corrupt Universities” analyses the problem, points the way forward and outlines anti-corruption strategies, illustrated by success stories.

The IIEP Summer School on “Transparency, accountability and anti-corruption measures in education” will use the findings of the report.

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Posted in Publications

Venezuela students keep pressure on Chavez

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MSNBC: Venezuela students keep pressure on Chavez

It could be the birth of a new opposition movement in Venezuela: Thousands of university students — their hands painted white as a symbol of nonviolence — returned to the streets Monday, keeping up a week of protests against President Hugo Chavez’s decision to force a popular TV station off the air.

Unlike earlier protests by opposition parties, the student marches have been dominated by a new generation of Venezuelans taking to the streets for the first time by the thousands in a coordinated challenge to Chavez.

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Posted in International

Alabama: Two year college administrators to get ethics instruction

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Birmingham News: Byrne slates ethics instruction
Ethics chief to teach system administrators

MONTGOMERY – The man who once equated the state’s two-year college system with a Mafia family will be teaching ethics to the system’s presidents and senior administrators.

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Posted in Administration, Ethics

Mississippi: 2 profs critical of leader lose jobs

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Clarion Ledger: 2 profs critical of leader lose jobs

Two Mississippi Valley State University professors were fired weeks after they served on a faculty committee pressing for the ouster of President Lester Newman.

Losing their jobs effective immediately were professors Vickie Curry and Orian Cathey, who were among 10 on the panel slamming Newman’s “micromanagement” leadership style.

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Posted in Governance, Tenure & Promotion

Sharing Ideas About Sharing Files

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Inside Higher Ed: Sharing Ideas About Sharing Files

To use one of several metaphors to come out of Tuesday’s Congressional hearing on efforts to combat illegal downloading, colleges are finding themselves in the middle of a high-tech “arms race” between the recording and movie industries on one side and computer users, using increasingly clever methods to download copyrighted works for free, on the other.

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Posted in Open access

Wisconsin: Panel supports fixes for affirmative action

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Panel supports fixes for affirmative action

A committee of Wisconsin legislators and citizens formed to review the state’s affirmative action policies approved at least two reform measures Monday night as members fought viciously over whether race and ethnicity should be considered in government contracting and university admissions.

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Posted in Diversity

Massachusetts Governor Proposes Free Community Colleges

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The New York Times: Massachusetts Governor Proposes Free Community Colleges

Community colleges in Massachusetts would be free to all students within 10 years under a proposal by Gov. Deval Patrick.

The plan would make Massachusetts the only state with no-cost community college. California’s system was free until 1984.

The plan is part of a broader 10-year proposal Mr. Patrick, a Democrat, unveiled Friday in a commencement address at the University of Massachusetts Boston. It calls for universal prekindergarten, full-day kindergarten and extending the school day and school year.

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Posted in Economics

Professor at MIT Resigns, Criticizing Its Dealings With a Colleague Who Was Denied Tenure

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The Chronicle: Professor at MIT Resigns, Criticizing Its Dealings With a Colleague Who Was Denied Tenure

A prominent professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has resigned, saying the university breached an agreement to reconsider allegations that racism played a role in the decision to deny tenure to his colleague, James L. Sherley.

“I leave because I would neither be able to advise young blacks about their prospects of flourishing in the current environment, nor about avenues available to effect change when agreements or promises are transgressed,” Frank L. Douglas, executive director of the university’s Center for Biomedical Innovation, wrote in an e-mail message on Friday to MIT’s president and provost, among other officials. Mr. Douglas and Mr. Sherley are both black.

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Posted in Tenure & Promotion

UMass-Boston faculty pass no-confidence vote against system president

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The Boston Globe: UMass-Boston faculty pass no-confidence vote against system president

Faculty leaders at the University of Massachusetts at Boston today voted overwhelmingly to approve a no-confidence measure against UMass president Jack Wilson, handing him his second rebuke for a proposal to restructure the five-campus system.

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Posted in Administration

New Front for Antiwar Movement

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Inside Higher Ed: New Front for Antiwar Movement

There’s nothing like a fresh Defense Department contract to inject a little controversy into a flagging antiwar movement.

Not long ago, a Stanford Daily article asked, “Where have all the anti-war protests gone?” The answer may have come in the form of an April announcement that the university had won a five-year, $105 million military computing research contract.

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Posted in Faculty

UK: The move to boycott Israel will damage research and, ultimately, efforts to foster peace in the region.

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The Guardian: Divide and rule?

The move to boycott Israel will damage research and, ultimately, efforts to foster peace in the region. Colin Shindler reports

As reader in Israeli studies at Soas, University of London, I teach the Israel-Palestine conflict to large classes that include Palestinians, Israelis, Jews and Muslims. I do this without any difficulties in the multicultural environment at Soas, and I work hard for all my students. I am also a loyal trade unionist. While my union, the University and College Union (UCU), does not directly call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions – presumably for fear of legal action – the spirit of last week’s motion is just that.

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Posted in Commentary, International, Protests

Fence could leave part of Texas university on Mexico’s side

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Houston Chronicle: Fence could leave part of Texas university on Mexico’s side

A proposed fence along the Mexico-U.S. border could leave a portion of the University of Texas at Brownsville and a Texas Southmost College campus on the Mexican side of the fence, a university official said Monday.

“I don’t think it would be appropriate to fence off the university on the Mexican side of the fence,” Antonio D. Zavaleta, UTB-TSC vice president for external affairs, said he told a government official. “I told him I wanted to go on the record pointing out a couple of things that are important that (he) may not have thought of,” he said in a story in today’s editions of the Brownsville Herald.

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Posted in Government

Cheated of Future, Iraqi Graduates Want to Flee

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The New York Times: Cheated of Future, Iraqi Graduates Want to Flee

They started college just before or after the American invasion with dreams of new friends and parties, brilliant teachers and advanced degrees that would lead to stellar jobs, marriage and children. Success seemed well within their grasp.

Four years later, Iraq’s college graduates are ending their studies shattered and eager to leave the country. In interviews with more than 30 students from seven universities, all but four said they hoped to flee immediately after receiving their degrees. Many said they did not expect Iraq to stabilize for at least a decade.

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Posted in International

British Columbia: Union Padlocks a Union

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The Tyee: Union Padlocks a Union

The labour dispute between the BC Teachers Federation and its unionized administrative staff escalated last week as picket lines sprung up, doors were padlocked, and an Asian airline’s lawyer landed in the middle of the whole thing.

BCTF staffers began picketing outside offices of teachers’ unions in Burnaby, Surrey, Prince George and in the Okanagan-Similkameen. And at BCTF headquarters in Vancouver, picketers upped their efforts by placing a chain and padlock on the building’s front door.

The administrative staff, which is represented by the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers (CEP) local 464, has been locked out by the BCTF since May 2, although BCTF spokespeople insist the lockout was prompted by the administrative staff effectively conducting a strike inside the building.

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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes, Unions

MIT center director resigns in protest of tenure decision

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The Boston Globe: MIT center director resigns in protest of tenure decision

A prominent Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and pharmaceutical researcher has resigned in protest over the case of James L. Sherley , an MIT colleague who held a 12-day hunger strike in February after he did not receive tenure, faculty members and school officials said.

Frank L. Douglas , executive director of the MIT Center for Biomedical Innovation , wrote in an e-mail obtained by the Globe that he will leave the university at the end of the month because of MIT’s refusal to reconsider its decision not to grant Sherley tenure.

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Posted in Tenure & Promotion

Kentucky: Stumbo calls partner benefits illegal

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Courier-Journal: Stumbo calls partner benefits illegal

The universities of Louisville and Kentucky are violating the state constitution by offering health insurance to domestic partners of their employees, the state attorney general’s office said in an opinion yesterday.

But the opinion also said there are ways that such benefits can be offered legally.

In an interview, Attorney General Greg Stumbo said the universities could provide coverage for domestic partners simply by giving such benefits to anyone who lives with an employee.

“There is a way for (the universities) to accomplish their goals by expanding the class, rather than trying to be so constrictive about it,” he said.

Yesterday’s 17-page opinion is advisory and does not carry the force of law. But Stumbo said that if the universities don’t change their benefit plans, he would file suit against them.

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Posted in Salary/Economic Benefits

Limits on free speech

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Inside Higher Ed: Limits on Free Speech

Public universities have the right to set limits on spending in student government elections, even though the U.S. Supreme Court has barred such limits in federal and state elections as infringements on free speech, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued the unanimous ruling in a case involving a challenge to a $100 spending limit set by the University of Montana. The court found that the university’s educational mission — and the relationship between the rules on election spending and that spending — gave the university the right to limit the speech encompassed by campaign spending.

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Posted in Free speech

Oregon: UO rejects challenge of recruitment plan

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The Oregonian: UO rejects challenge of recruitment plan

he University of Oregon is taking issue with an economics professor’s claim that a program developed to recruit more minority faculty members is illegal.

Provost Linda Brady and general counsel Melinda Grier said the program, which helps new minority faculty set up an office or lab, is legal and needed to help attract minority faculty in a competitive market.

Economics professor Bill Harbaugh has challenged the program, known as the Underrepresented Minority Recruitment Program, in e-mails to UO President Dave Frohnmayer. He calls it an “obvious violation” of the Constitution and Civil Rights Act.

Harbaugh declined to comment further.

The program provides as much as $30,000 a year for three years to reimburse departments and colleges for the cost of “startup packages” used attract new minority faculty members.

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Posted in Diversity