Philadelphia Inquirer: Two more Temple officials exit
Temple University is undergoing a major change in leadership, nearly six months into the tenure of its new president. Two of the top four administrators under the president at Temple announced their departure within a week of each other, both for jobs at prestigious private universities. A third resigned shortly before Ann Weaver Hart assumed the presidency on July 1.
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Posted in Administration
World Tribune: Al Qaida demands closing of all Baghdad universities
l Qaida announced plans to force the closure of universities in the Iraqi capital.
A video by an Al Qaida-aligned group said all institutions of higher education would be closed for the current academic year. Jaysh Ansar Al Sunni, or the Army of the Supporters of Al Sunna, said colleges in Baghdad would be shut for the 2006-2007 school year.
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Posted in International
Toronto Star: Boom lowered on higher ed
Canada is training too few workers — from plumbers to PhDs — for today’s smart economy and, unless we set a national plan for higher education, other countries are going to “eat our lunch,” warns a federal report released yesterday.
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Posted in International
The Chronicle: Law School in Michigan Revises Admissions Policy to Comply With New Ban on Racial Preferences
In response to Michigan voters’ approval last month of a constitutional amendment that prohibits state and local government agencies, including colleges, from granting preferences based on race, color, ethnicity, national origin, or gender, Wayne State University has adopted a new law-school admissions policy that removes such considerations from the evaluation of applicants.
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Posted in Diversity
The Chronicle: Employee at a New York Community College Is Charged in Pay-for-Grades Scheme
State prosecutors have accused a computer-laboratory technician at LaGuardia Community College, in Long Island City, N.Y., of taking alcohol and cash — including at least one $2,500 payment — from students in exchange for altering their grades.
In a 137-count indictment, the technician, Elvin Escano, has been charged with, among other things, grand larceny, falsifying business records, computer tampering, and forgery, according to a statement issued on Wednesday by Richard A. Brown, district attorney for Queens County. Mr. Escano has also been charged with tampering with a witness who was called to testify before a grand jury investigating the case.
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Posted in Legal issues
The Chronicle: Former Chairman of Apollo Group Sees Challenges and Opportunities Ahead for For-Profit Education
Todd S. Nelson, the former chairman and chief executive of the Apollo Group, predicted a bright future for for-profit colleges in remarks at a gathering in Washington on Thursday, but also warned his audience of “a few challenges.”
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Posted in Corporate University
The Chronicle: In Long-Awaited Report, MLA Outlines Problems and Solutions for Humanities Scholars
THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION today released the long-awaited report of its Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion. The report, which describes a series of problems affecting the humanities profession and recommends broad solutions to the problems, is available on the MLA’s Web site.
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Posted in Tenure & Promotion
CBC News: Carleton students council bans ‘anti-choice’ activity
Student groups at Ottawa’s Carleton University that want to question abortion rights will not be able to receive money or recognition from the students council.
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Posted in Free speech, Students
Los Angeles Times: Conservative Jews OK gays for seminaries
Judaism’s much-divided Conservative Movement voted Wednesday to allow seminaries to enroll homosexuals as rabbinical students and to let rabbis perform blessings for same-sex couples, but kept in place a restriction on sexual activity.
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Posted in Diversity
Inside Higher Ed: No Risk, No Reward
Educators and venture capitalists who circulate in the ever-expanding for-profit education circles set their sights broadly Wednesday on an emerging market — the world, the whole world.
Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration – because, as panelists at a Washington-based summit on the education industry pointed out, some countries offer richer opportunities for investment than others, and while the projected growth in student enrollments internationally is staggering, significant regulatory, cultural and political challenges abound.
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Posted in Corporate University
The New York Times: Bricks or Professors? A University’s Choice
For much of its history, the institution that is now Florida State University here has struggled against an academic inferiority complex. The State Legislature dictated in 1905 that it serve only as a college for women, while men went to the full-fledged University of Florida in Gainesville. After going coed and achieving university status in 1947, Florida State became most famous for its football program. And even the team’s recent championships have been marred by players’ off-the-field crimes.
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Posted in Uncategorized
IndyStar.com: IU’s outgoing president will stay on as consultant
Indiana University is to pay President Adam Herbert $300,000 for 10 years of consulting work after he leaves office under a deal he reached with the school’s trustees more than three years ago.
University trustees have started their search for Herbert’s replacement; he plans to step down by the time his contract expires in June 2008 after a rocky relationship with faculty members at the main campus in Bloomington.
The consultant agreement will pay Herbert $30,000 a year, which he and IU trustees President Steve Ferguson said was negotiated soon after Herbert became president in 2003, to help offset retirement benefits that he lost by leaving his job in Florida’s higher education system.
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Posted in Administration, Salary/Economic Benefits
Post-Gazette: University of Pittsburgh passes out pay raise
The University of Pittsburgh has increased the salaries of seven officials, including Chancellor Mark Nordenberg, whose base salary for 2006-07 was set at $442,500, a 3.5 percent increase.
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Posted in Administration, Salary/Economic Benefits
The Chronicle News Blog: University Says It Will Cease Court Action to Invalidate Union Election
In an move that probably signals an end to two years of litigation, George Washington University announced late yesterday that it would not pursue further court action to invalidate a union election held in 2004. In that election, which was certified by the National Labor Relations Board, a slim majority of part-time professors at George Washington voted to a form a union. However, rather than recognize the election, the university filed appeals, first with the Labor Board and then with a federal court. The university lost its last appeal — to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — just last week.
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Posted in Campaigns & Contracts
Washington Post: Gallaudet Accrediting Decision Put Off
A decision on Gallaudet University’s accreditation has been postponed, with an oversight group expressing serious concerns about recent developments at the school for the deaf.
The university is still accredited while the decision is delayed.
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Posted in Administration
Iowa City Press-Citizen: Prez search starts over; faculty upset
After stopping and starting again, the search for a new University of Iowa president is back to the drawing board — again.
After rejecting four finalists for the post recommended by a search committee, the Iowa state Board of Regents agreed — at the behest of Gov. Tom Vilsack and the University of Iowa community — to reconsider the four finalists.
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Posted in Governance
The Chronicle: Campus Speech Codes Often Violate Constitutional Rights, Watchdog Group Says
Most college and university speech codes would not survive a legal challenge, according to a report released on Wednesday by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a watchdog group for free speech on campuses.
The group examined publicly available policies at more than 300 institutions — those highly ranked in U.S. News & World Report, as well as other big public universities — and concluded that 93 percent of them prohibit speech that is protected by the First Amendment.
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Posted in Uncategorized
The Chronicle: Iraq’s National Library and Archive, Caught on the Front Line of Sectarian Fighting, Is Closed
After months of determined efforts to keep going amid Iraq’s deepening violence and chaos, the National Library and Archive, the country’s largest depository of books and documents, has closed.
Saad Bashir Eskander, the library’s director-general, said in an e-mail message to The Chronicle on Wednesday that he had reluctantly decided to shutter the institution on November 21 after several staff members were killed and the building had increasingly come under fire.
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Posted in International
Inside Higher Ed: Appeals Court Backs Adjunct Union
A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld the legitimacy of a vote by adjuncts at George Washington University to unionize.
In a brief ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously rejected the university’s attempt to raise questions about who was permitted and not permitted to vote in the election. The court found that the university did not raise these issues earlier in the legal process, when they could have been considered, and that the university could not do so now.
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Posted in Contingent labor
The death of school diversity
Seattle Times: The death of school diversity
A week ago, I pondered whether public-school integration was dead.
I got my answer Monday as I sat in the audience listening as the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court probed and prodded on the matter of race.
Diversity, as a tool of public education, is dead as a doornail.
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Posted in Commentary, Diversity