Inside Higher Ed: Paying for Performance
Just days after The Wall Street Journal published an in-depth look at the seven-figure compensation package of E. Gordon Gee, chancellor of Vanderbilt University, colleges’ human resources leaders gathered in San Diego. Not surprisingly, there was much chat about the article at the annual meeting of the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, in San Diego.
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Posted in Administration, Salary/Economic Benefits
BCTF Public Education Conference
October 27, 28, 2006
Delta Vancouver Airport Hotel and Conference Centre
The BCTF is pleased to sponsor the public education conference, “What really counts! Rethinking accountability.”
This conference will examine the bureaucratic accountability mandate imposed on BC’s public schools and its impact on learning, teaching, and the principles of public education. The conference will feature keynote speaker, Paul Shaker, Dean of Education at Simon Fraser University, and a wide range of workshop presentations providing delegates with a choice of topics to pursue in detail.
The delegates invited to this conference include parents, teachers, school support staff union reps, trustees, superintendents, MLAs, and representatives from organizations and groups. The BCTF is looking forward to this opportunity to discuss the issues, strategies, and positive alternatives. It’s certainly time to rethink accountability and talk about what really counts in BC’s public schools.
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Posted in Conferences
NarcoNews.com: Oaxaca Teachers Agree to Continue Protest Until Gov. Ulises Ruiz Falls
In a city permeated by tension in the face of widespread rumors of immanent attacks by Institutional Revolutionary Party-aligned “shock troops” and corresponding intervention by federal police, the state teachers’ union agreed to continue its struggle “in a massive and united fashion… until the fall of the tyrant Ulises Ruiz Ortiz is achieved, and only then begin the school year.” Enrique Rueda Pacheco, general secretary of the local Section 22 of the National Union of Education Workers, publicized the agreements through a new consultation with the rank-and-file on the continuation of the strike, which began 129 days ago.
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Posted in International, Strikes & Labor Disputes
EdNews.org: Secretary Spellings’ Database, Automated Essay Scoring, and America’s National 16-Hour Pre-Professional Test
By Robert Oliphant
Secretary Margaret Spellings (EdNews 9/27) has recently called for a “cradle to grad school” database. It will probably include the four pre-professional tests that several million Americans now take each year, namely, the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT), the Law Schools Admissions Test (LSAT), and the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT). As a group these four tests comprise in effect a 16 hour final exam for American college pre-professional graduates, almost four hours of which require traditional essay writing and traditional high-cost essay-scoring by hand. Practically considered, then, a workable automated system for scoring essays is bound to be a major priority for Secretary Spellings and her database experts.
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Posted in Accountability
Akron Beacon-Journal: Ohio professor wants Israel to apology for his detention
An Ohio professor who spent 22 days in an Israeli jail on suspicion of spying for Iran and Hezbollah asked colleagues Friday to help him get an apology from Israel.
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Posted in Faculty
The Chronicle: Universities That Do Background Checks Should Apply Them to All New Hires, Speaker Says
Colleges and universities are requiring background checks of new staff members far more often than of their faculty members, but there are signs that trend may be changing.
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Posted in Employment rights
Kansas City Star: Evangel University theater teacher quits over “The Full Monty”
A theater instructor has resigned from Evangel University after the Protestant school objected to his performance in a local stage production of “The Full Monty,” a comedy about unemployed British steel workers who form a striptease group.
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Posted in Academic freedom
Inside Higher Ed: Paying More for Benefits
Eighty-one percent of colleges reported that they faced increases in medical and dental plan costs during 2005. That figure is slightly higher than last year’s — 78 percent — in the study conducted by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. Selected results were released at CUPA’s annual meeting, in San Diego.
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Posted in Salary/Economic Benefits
Inside Higher Ed: Fighting Back for Black Colleges
Frustrated by what they perceive as federal and state inaction, advocates for public black colleges are planning to try to revive — in spirit if not necessarily name — a landmark desegregation case.
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Posted in Equity
Inside Higher Ed: Battle of the Ivy League gossip blogs
Two new blogs have been competing against one another in Ivy League gossip. IvyGate is currently featuring a contest of “Faculty Studs and Tenured Temptresses,” in which six male and six female professors are vying (almost certainly against their will) for those titles. Two of the male contestants have been teaching at their institutions since the 1960s. IvyLeak meanwhile is featuring analysis of why the Yale-Cornell football game has fallen on either Rosh Hashana or Yom Kippur in three of the last four years, and has suggested that the match be renamed the “High Holiday Bowl.”
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Posted in Faculty
Inside Higher Ed: Faculty Challenge Loyola’s Leaders
Administrators at Loyola University of New Orleans have had the unenviable task of picking up the pieces after Hurricane Katrina, which shut down the campus last fall. The university didn’t sustain as much structural damage as those institutions located on lower ground, but it has seen a 30 percent decrease in this year’s freshman class and finished the fiscal year that ended in July with a $14 million budget shortfall.
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Posted in Faculty
BoingBoing: Video: apparently-baked biz school prof who was soon fired
He does ramble, but he’s far more entertaining than any of the business school professors I ever sat through.
Toronto Star: Pot-smoking prof lights up a room
For years, University of Toronto Professor Doug Hutchinson smoked pot in his office.
Sometimes he’d hide behind garbage dumpsters or even climb trees to use the drug, which he said he needs to alleviate the pain from an undisclosed medical condition.
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Posted in Faculty
The Chronicle News Blog: Charles Miller Assails Private and Research Universities in ‘Personal’ Letter
When Charles Miller, chairman of the federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education, submitted the panel’s report last week to the U.S. secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, he included a cover letter that was not part of the official document posted on the Education Department’s Web site.
In the letter, Mr. Miller shares what he calls “strictly personal observations,” calling the system of financing higher education “dysfunctional.” He writes that “in addition to the lack of transparency regarding pricing, which severely limits the price signals found in a market-based system, there is a lack of the incentives necessary to affect institutional behavior so as to reward innovation and improvement in productivity. Financial systems of higher education instead focus on and reward increasing revenues—a top line structure with no real bottom line.”
In keeping with previous comments he has made, Mr. Miller singled out private colleges for the most criticism, writing that they resist being held accountable, as shown by their opposition to a unit-record system to track students. “What elevates this concern,” he writes, “is the fact that so-called ‘private’ colleges and universities receive a large amount of support from the public, that is, the taxpayer.”
He also takes aim at a group he hasn’t to this point: research universities. “Research expenditures are a major ‘cost driver’ in higher education and need the same intense examination and skeptical analysis other financial issues require, especially since most of these are public funds,” he writes.
He concludes by saying that the time has come for “an examination of the whole system, with no special rights for any recipient of public funds and no free pass for any type of institution, no exception for those ranking high in the ‘top tier,’ or no exception for those bearing the arbitrary and often inaccurate label as a ‘private’ institution.”
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Posted in Government
The Chronicle: China Reduces Imprisoned Scholar’s Sentence, Raising Hopes of Early Parole
A Chinese court has approved a nine-month reduction in the sentence for a Western-educated academic convicted of stealing state secrets, a human-rights foundation announced on Tuesday. Xu Zerong, who was sentenced to 13 years in prison in 2001, could have his eligibility for parole considered as early as December.
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Posted in International
The Arizona Republic: Worker bias suit targets University of Phoenix
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has sued the University of Phoenix, alleging religious discrimination against non-Mormon enrollment counselors.
The federal lawsuit, announced a day after the country’s largest private university signed on as the naming sponsor of Cardinals Stadium, says the company treated employees who were not members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints less favorably when it came to sharing recruiting leads on new students, tuition waivers and reprimands.
The Chronicle: Federal Agency Sues U. of Phoenix, Alleging Discrimination Against Non-Mormon Employees
A federal agency that enforces U.S. civil-rights laws sued the University of Phoenix this week, accusing the mammoth for-profit university of religious discrimination against non-Mormon employees who work as student recruiters.
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Posted in Equity
Christian Science Monitor: Panel urges higher-ed overhaul
When today’s babies grow up and head to college around 2025, will they look back at 2006 as a radical turning point in American higher education? That’s the hope of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education, a prestigious 19-member panel that presented its findings this month after a year of hearings and deliberations. On Tuesday, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, who had appointed the group, outlined what she would do to address the keynotes of affordability and accountability in higher education.
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Posted in Accountability
The National Review: Deflating Grade Inflation
Is there anything the general public can do about the politically correct academy? In a word, yes. It’s easy to write off the academy as hopeless. Take the Larry Summers affair. Although the public, and Harvard’s own students, overwhelmingly supported Summers, the tenured faculty won that battle. The professors held the power, and by definition, tenured faculty cannot be dislodged.
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Posted in Accountability
Houston Chronicle: Let’s really throw open doors to higher education
American colleges and universities have long been incubators of great ideas, birthplaces of great inventions and testing grounds of great individuals. And — as never before — they are the key to the American Dream.
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Posted in Accountability, Government
The News Star: Alumni suit challenges GSU’s leadership
A new federal lawsuit from the Grambling University National Alumni Association, the Grambling mayor and others is targeting Grambling State University’s leadership and much of the state’s higher education structure.
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Posted in Administration
FIU to bring custodial jobs in-house with 50% higher pay, full benefits
For a number of men and women who keep Florida International University clean, an initiative announced today will mean higher-paying jobs and full state benefits, including health insurance.
The university administration is putting in place a plan that converts approximately 150 currently outsourced custodial positions into jobs to be filled by university employees. This plan is the latest of several human resources initiatives adopted by the university in recent months that have already resulted in higher pay and better benefits for FIU employees.
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Posted in Contingent labor, Working conditions
