The Chronicle News Bloghttp://chronicle.com/news/index.php?id=1599
David Horowitz, the conservative activist, has unveiled a new terrorism-awareness campaign aimed at college campuses. It encourages students to look beyond what Mr. Horowitz calls anti-American teachings by college professors and understand the threat of radical Islam.
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Posted in Diversity
Inside Higher Ed: Blackboard Makes a Pledge
After months of criticism that its patent policies had the potential to squelch important education projects, Blackboard on Thursday announced a “patent pledge” under which it vowed not to assert its patent rights to sue open source projects or home-grown software used by colleges and universities.
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Posted in Intellectual property
Inside Higher Ed: Texans and Their Tests
When the Education Secretary’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education started meeting, many professors and college leaders feared it would push for some sort of mandatory standardized testing of graduating college seniors — a prospect they saw as inconsistent with the values of liberal education. In the end, the Spellings Commission didn’t make such a recommendation. But in Texas — home to the education secretary and the panel’s chair — mandatory standardized testing for graduating seniors may now be on the way.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, on Thursday proposed a major expansion of state support for public higher education and for student aid. He also proposed one of the broadest testing requirements for graduating college students to date. Seniors would be required to take either licensure exams in their fields or Education Testing Service exams for various college majors. While students would not be required to pass the exams to graduate, colleges’ state funds would be linked to students’ scores, so institutions where many students did well on the standardized exams would get more money.
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Posted in Accountability
Hartford Courant: Yale Showers Run Too Hot
Sex is not a taboo subject at Yale, home to Sex Week, a biennial celebration that’s one of the most provocative campus events in the nation.
But a randy couple’s frolic in a shower at one of Yale’s undergraduate residential colleges prompted a professor to issue an e-mail of protest, which in turn has sparked debate on the Internet.
With the subject line “Shower Stalls are for Showering,” the e-mail begins “OK, well THIS is the most awkward college-wide e-mail I’ve ever had to send.”
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Posted in Students
Inside Higher Ed: The New Face of For-Profit Colleges
Given that Harris N. Miller has spent most of his professional life working in high-tech fields, you’d expect him to lean toward metaphors and analogies with a 21st century spin. But when asked why he was interested in heading the country’s main association of for-profit and career-oriented colleges, Miller reaches not for the buzzwords of techspeak but for the lexicon of the industrial world of his western Pennsylvania roots.
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Posted in Corporate University
Inside Higher Ed: Defeat for Same-Sex Benefits
A Michigan appeals court on Friday ruled that public colleges and universities in the state may not offer health insurance or other benefits to the same-sex partners of employees. The ruling said that a state ban on gay marriage, approved by voters in 2004, barred such benefits.
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Posted in Equity
News-Record: Police end role in Guilford fight case
The Greensboro Police Department said in a statement Wednesday they would have no further role in investigating a fight this month at Guilford College.
Since charges were taken out at the magistrate’s office and police were not called to the scene by the alleged victims, the accused or college administrators, police said the matter will have to be handled in the courts.
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Posted in Students
The News-Press: Ex-president leaves FGCU with $811,000
Former FGCU President William “Bill” Merwin’s landing will be softened by more than $811,000 in money from a severance settlement, an annuity and other benefits.
The largest segment of the money will amount to the $398,000 Florida Gulf Coast University trustees OK’d Wednesday to settle Merwin’s contract.
Merwin, who resigned two weeks ago over an affair with a faculty member, told The News-Press he likely will sign the deal.
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Posted in Administration
The Guardian: University goes to war on Bush legacy
In a neighbourhood of Dallas where stone mansions rise out of lush green lawns, there is a corridor of low-slung flats whose demolition, now begun, could soon give way to much greater grandeur. Here, on the eastern edges of Southern Methodist University, may one day stand the George W Bush presidential library, museum and thinktank, a multimillion dollar complex that could become a beacon of conservative thought.
Except that to the considerable embarrassment of the university and the White House, many people, on campus and off, are demanding that Mr Bush take his legacy some place else.
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Posted in Government
Chicago Sun-Times: 27% of top college blacks came from immigrant families
Black students with U.S. ancestry appear to be less represented in college than race-based statistics indicate, as immigrants make up a disproportionate share of admissions, a Princeton University analysis found.
First- or second-generation immigrants made up 27 percent of black freshmen entering 28 top-ranked colleges in 1999, according to the study released Tuesday. Such immigrants accounted for only 13 percent of all U.S. blacks aged 18 or 19 that year, the researchers found.
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Posted in Students
The Guardian: Minister urges universities to woo part-time students
The government has appealed to universities to make a culture shift and embrace more courses led and funded by employers.
Changes to the traditional academic year, the kind of students enrolled, the curriculum and where courses are taught would all have to be considered, higher education minister Bill Rammell told a Guardian conference of higher education leaders in London yesterday.
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Posted in International
The New York Times: Michigan: Affirmative Action Suit Settled
A lawsuit that prompted a 2003 Supreme Court decision over affirmative action admissions policies at the University of Michigan has been settled, concluding a nearly decade-long battle. The university will pay $10,000 each to the lead plaintiffs, Jennifer Gratz and Patrick Hamacher, to cover miscellaneous costs, both sides said. In exchange, the two agreed to drop all claims under a nearly 40,000-member class-action lawsuit against the university over its former affirmative action admissions policies. In June 2003, the Supreme Court upheld a general affirmative action policy at Michigan’s law school but struck down its undergraduate formula, which awarded admission points based on race. Ms. Gratz and Mr. Hamacher had sued over the undergraduate formula. In November, Michigan voters approved a ban on the use of race and gender preferences in university admissions and government hiring.
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Posted in Diversity
Christian Science Monitor: Bush’s double standard on race in schools
The White House opposes considering race in school admissions, but supports it for evaluating schools’ performance.
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Posted in Equity
Dallas Morning News: SMU pressed to fight Bush’s secrecy
Archivists and historians are urging Southern Methodist University to reject the Bush presidential library unless the administration reverses an executive order that gives former presidents and their heirs the right to keep White House papers secret in perpetuity.
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Posted in Governance
The Guardian: Universities warned not to outsource services
Lecturers are urging vice-chancellors to rule out private sector involvement in “key university functions”, such as IT and English lessons for international students.
In a letter sent today to Universities UK (UUK), the group representing vice-chancellors, the joint general secretary of the University and College Union (UCU), Sally Hunt, said lecturers were “particularly disturbed” about private companies such as Study Group International, Kaplan and Into University Partnerships setting up on UK campuses.
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Posted in Corporate University
Fresno Bee : Fresno State faculty members picket
Contract talks between the California Faculty Association and CSU have gone to the fact-finding stage, part of a legal process to try to resolve contract …
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
The State Hornet: Systemwide strike could hit CSU
California Faculty Association is hard at work to send a message to the CSU system: that its 23,000 members throughout the state don’t want to strike – but are prepared to do so.
The union, which has more than 1,000 members at Sacramento State, has been encouraging faculty members to sign commitment cards pledging that they would support a union decision to strike.
The union would need the support of at least 70 percent of its members at Sac State in order for its faculty members to participate in a strike, California Faculty Association officials said at a meeting today that followed President Alexander Gonzalez’s spring address.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
London Free Press: UWO faculty ratifies contract
The University of Western Ontario’s board of governors and the school’s faculty association have ratified a four-year contract.
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Posted in Campaigns & Contracts
The campaign to organize part-time Ontario college workers
Toronto (30 Jan. 2007) – Ontario colleges exploit over 17,000 part-time workers, both faculty and support staff, as a source of cheap labour. Part-timers are paid less than full-timers. They have no job security. They have few or no benefits. Sometimes they even have to work for free.
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Posted in Campaigns & Contracts
Students left behind
San Francisco Chronicle: Students left behind
IT’S LIKE inviting someone to dinner — and then only serving them a salad.
California is extraordinarily generous in welcoming students to community colleges, but does a lousy job helping many of them satisfy their educational aspirations.
A core part of the California mythology is that the doors to public higher education are open to anyone who wants to enter them. Community colleges fees especially have been kept very low — a mere $20 per unit. Nearly one-third of students get waivers, so they don’t pay any fees at all. Virtually anyone can enroll, even those who don’t have a high school diploma.
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Posted in Commentary