Columbus Dispatch: OU professor leaves post in plagiarism investigation
The chairman of Ohio University’s Mechanical Engineering Department has stepped down after an investigation that concluded that department graduate students had been plagiarizing for 20 years.
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Posted in Ethics
The Patriot News: Colleges, union hold early talks on contract
Professors at the state-owned universities hope that by getting an early start on contract negotiations, a settlement can be reached before the current pact’s June 30, 2007, expiration date.
Representatives from the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties met with State System of Higher Education officials last week to discuss negotiation guidelines and a timetable for talks that will begin this summer.
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Posted in Uncategorized
The Southern: SIUC faculty in contract negotiations yet again
CARBONDALE – Best-case scenario: Faculty members will have a new, agreed-upon contract by the time they return to Southern Illinois University Carbondale this fall.
The worst case – the $20,000 the university spent preparing an amicable system of bargaining goes to pot and negotiations degenerate into a professors’ strike, as nearly happened in 2003.
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Posted in Campaigns & Contracts
Florida Today: Faculty, BCC set to agree on deal
Putting a bitter year of salary negotiations behind them, Brevard Community College and its full-time professors today expect to reach a tentative contract agreement for the coming school year.
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Posted in Campaigns & Contracts
Faculty members at community colleges in Ontario will receive a 15.3 percent raise over four years, 2.7 percentage points more than a previous offer from the province’s colleges, under an arbitrator’s ruling, The Toronto Star reported. The arbitrator also ordered further study of workload and class size issues. In March, the faculty union and the colleges agreed to abide by an arbitrator’s ruling to end a strike by most professors.
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Posted in Campaigns & Contracts
The Chronicle: Colombian Academics and Students Receive Death Threats, Forcing Some Into Hiding
Death threats against professors, students, and employees at two universities in Colombia have driven one professor out of the country and several students into hiding. Academics have long been targets in the country’s 41-year-old civil war, and some are worried that violence against them may be on the rise.
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Posted in International
The Chronicle: Iraq’s Intellectuals Are Marked for Death, Human-Rights Groups Say
Iraqi academics are targets for attacks in a concerted campaign to rid Iraq of its intellectual class, according to several international human-rights groups. The leader of one organization said the killings no longer could be considered political assassinations, but were “simply anti-intellectual and anti-education.”
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Posted in International
The Chronicle: South African University Will Take a Portion of Professors’ Outside Earnings
The University of the Witwatersrand at Johannesburg is about to start requiring its faculty members to hand over 10 percent of the income they earn from independent consulting and other outside work.
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Posted in Administration, International
The Chronicle: Obligatory Retirements at Tehran U. Raise Fears of Political Purge
The University of Tehran announced last week that 40 to 45 faculty members who had reached the age of 65 were being “retired.” The announcement raised concerns that, in some of the cases, professors had been chosen for retirement because of their opposition to Iran’s conservative Islamic authorities.
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Posted in Free speech, Government, International
Inside Higher Ed: Is the Schoolhouse Door Open?
Forty-three years ago this month, George Wallace fulfilled his campaign promise to stand “in the schoolhouse door” to keep black students out of Alabama’s schools and colleges. Wallace made his stand in the doorway of Foster Auditorium of the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa.
Wallace failed to keep black students out, but whether the state’s colleges are desegregated remains an open question, even after all these years. A federal judge on Thursday ordered a new trial to take place this fall on whether the state has sufficiently removed vestiges of the segregated system. Alabama officials say that it has, and that the state no longer needs court supervision. The plaintiffs in the case — black citizens — argue that the state has failed in key ways to bring about equity in higher education.
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Posted in Equity
Inside Higher Ed: A Stinging First Draft
For railroads and steel manufacturers, the best days are past. Do American colleges and universities face the same fate?
That’s the grim prospect laid out in a draft report released Monday by the Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education, which the panel’s chairman, Charles Miller, in a hastily written e-mail note that accompanied the document’s release, described as “very rough.”
The Chronicle: Draft Report From Federal Panel on Higher Education Takes Aim at Academe
A draft report released on Monday by the Commission on the Future of Higher Education calls for overhauling the federal student-aid and accreditation systems, easing the process of transferring credits between institutions, and using testing to measure the “value added” by a college education.
The report, which the panel will consider during a closed meeting on Wednesday, also endorses the creation of a national “unit record” system, which would use students’ Social Security numbers or another identifier to track the educational progress of every college student in the United States.RECOMMENDATIONS IN THE COMMISSION’S DRAFT REPORT
The draft report issued on Monday by the Commission on the Future of Higher Education contains recommendations in four key areas: access, affordability, quality and innovation, and accountability. Following are highlights in each area. When the recommendation addresses a specific party, that is noted in parentheses.
Access
Review and revise standards for transfer of credit among higher-education institutions to improve quality and reduce the amount of time it takes students to reach their educational goal (states and institutions).
Overhaul K-12 teacher preparation with particular emphasis on reforming colleges of education.
Address nonacademic barriers to college access by developing partnerships among schools, colleges, and the private sector to provide early and ongoing college-awareness activities, academic support, and college-planning and financial-aid-application assistance.
Affordability
Overhaul the entire student-financial-aid system in favor of substantial increases in need-based aid. Consolidate programs and restructure the system to increase access and retention and decrease debt burden.
Significantly increase federal funding of need-based financial aid, subject to simplification and restructuring of the system. Give priority to need-based financial aid (state and local governments, private institutions, businesses, and private contributors).
Replace the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as Fafsa, with a postcard-size application form, and analyze student need through the federal tax system.
Create a “bottom line” for college performance that measures institutional costs and performance, and enables parents and policy makers to see institutional results in terms of academic quality, productivity, and efficiency.
Provide financial incentives to institutions to lower costs through technological advances (federal and state policy makers).
Reduce barriers to transfer of credit and unnecessary accrediting constraints on new institutions.
Quality and Innovation
Establish a federal fund to provide incentives for effective teaching and use of the latest research in rapidly growing areas such as neuroscience, cognitive science, and organizational science.
Do more to support and harness the power of distance learning.
Develop a national plan to keep the United States at the forefront of the knowledge revolution (secretary of education).
Establish a nationwide pilot program for Lifelong Learning Accounts (individual asset accounts to finance education and training), to allow workers to continuously upgrade their skills while increasing their earnings. The accounts would be financed through tax incentives to individuals and employees.
Establish a National Innovation Partnership that provides federal matching funds to states to encourage innovations in program formatting, delivery, and transfer of credit.
Develop a comprehensive plan for better integration of policy, planning, and accountability among postsecondary education, adult education, and vocational education (secretary of education).
Accountability
Require institutions to measure student learning using measures such as the National Survey of Student Engagement and the Community College Survey of Student Engagement, as well as the Collegiate Learning Assessment and the Measure of Academic Proficiency and Progress (states). Provide incentives for states, higher-education associations, systems, and institutions to develop outcomes-focused accountability systems (federal government).
Make results of such measures available to students and report them publicly in the aggregate. They should also be included on transcripts and in national databases of accountability data. Institutions should make aggregate results publicly available in a consumer-friendly form.
Administer the National Assessment of Adult Literacy every five years, instead of 10 (Education Department).
Require the National Center for Education Statistics to prepare timely annual public reports on college revenues and expenditures, including analysis of the major changes from year to year, at the sector and state levels (secretary of education).
Develop a national student unit-record tracking system to follow the progress of each student in the country, with appropriate privacy safeguards.
Create a consumer-friendly information database on higher education that includes a search engine that allows parents, policy makers, and others to weigh and rank institutions based on variables of their choosing (Department of Education).
Establish a national accreditation framework that contains a set of comparable performance measures on learning outcomes appropriate to degree levels and institutional missions, and that is suitable for accreditation, public reporting, and consumer profiles; that does not prescribe specific input and process standards; and that requires institutions to report progress relative to their national and international peers.
Make accreditation more transparent as a condition of accreditation. Make the findings of reviews easily accessible to the public, and increase the proportion of public representatives in the governance of accrediting organizations and members of review teams from outside higher education.
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Posted in Government
The New York Times: University of Colorado Chancellor Advises Firing Author of Sept. 11 Essay
DENVER, June 26 — The interim chancellor at the University of Colorado said on Monday that Prof. Ward L. Churchill, whose comments about the victims of Sept. 11 prompted a national debate about the limits of free speech, should be fired for academic misconduct.
Inside Higher Ed: Colorado Moves to Fire Churchill
It’s possible that Ward Churchill may never again teach a class at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The interim chancellor at Boulder on Monday issued a “notice of intent to dismiss” the controversial professor, citing findings of serious and repeated research misconduct. Churchill still has appeal rights — and has 10 days to take his case to a faculty review committee. After any appeal, a final decision rests with the president of the University of Colorado System and the Board of Regents. And Churchill has vowed to sue the university to block any firing.
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Posted in Academic freedom, Free speech
Inside Higher Ed:
A federal appeals court announced last week that it is vacating a decision made last month that would have made it easier for clergy and other religious officials to sue religious colleges for employment discrimination. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit did not indicate its rationale in ordering a new hearing in the case, which involves a lawsuit against Gannon University, in Erie, Pa. The ruling against Gannon surprised many legal experts as religious colleges typically have considerable leeway in employment choices involving people performing religious duties.
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Posted in Employment rights
Detroit Free Press New Lawsuit Seeks to Block Michigan Vote on Affirmative Action
After losing in the state courts, opponents of a ballot proposal to ban affirmative action took their argument to federal court Thursday.
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick joined local labor groups, several African-American voters and Operation King’s Dream, an affiliate of the organization By Any Means Necessary, in the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Detroit asking that the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI) be removed from the Nov. 7 ballot.
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Posted in Equity
Chicago Sun-Times: Faculty rip Triton College chief
A high-stakes war of words is brewing at a River Grove community college between the faculty and president.
The faculty association unanimously voted “no confidence” in the college president last week and called for her resignation. Faculty say President Patricia Granados shuts them out of important college decisions and regularly scapegoats administrators, including a dean who says he was recently asked to resign.
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Posted in Administration
The Chronicle: Poll Finds Increasing Concern Over Public Schools, Especially Among Professors
Americans are increasingly worried about the quality of elementary and secondary schools and students’ preparedness to compete in the global economy, and college faculty members are among the public-education system’s greatest critics, according to findings released on Wednesday from the latest in a series of annual surveys.
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Posted in K-12 issues
Inside Higher Ed: Saluting the Flag
Arizona legislators want Old Glory and the Constitution in every classroom at public colleges and universitie
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Posted in Government
Inside Higher Ed: Recruit a Student, Help Your Paycheck
Faculty and staff members at Daytona Beach Community College might be a little friendlier to current students and potential ones this summer. That’s because their salary depends on them.
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Posted in Corporate University
The Houston Chronicle: UTMB to cut work force
The University of Texas Medical Branch plans to lay off up to 10 percent of its work force to cut costs, the institution’s president, John Stobo, said Tuesday.
The pink slips will be delivered by Sept. 1 as part of the branch’s three-year strategy to cut expenses and generate revenue, after a review by an outside consulting group.
“Given the fact that salaries and benefits account for 70 percent of our expenses, there’s no doubt that faculty and staff positions will be affected,” Stobo told employees at a town hall meeting Tuesday.
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Posted in Corporate University, Working conditions
TRADE UNION STRATEGIES FOR THE 21ST CENTURY:
AN INTERNATIONAL DISCUSSION
In the age of globalization, outsourcing and the ‘race for the bottom’ what strategies make sense for unions? How can falling union density in the private sector be reversed? What is social unionism and how can both public and private sector workers build alliances with their communities? How should unions relate to ‘progressive’ governments?
These questions and many more will be tackled by an outstanding international panel:
Willy Madisha President, Congress of South African Trade Unions
Cristina ErcoliWomen’s Secretary of CTERATeachers union in Argentina
George HeymanPresident, British Columbia Government and Service Employees’ Union
Moderator, David Chudnovsky, MLA Vancouver-Kensington, former president BCTF
When? Saturday, June 24, 7 PM
Where? 550 W 6th Avenue, Vancouver (BCTF Building)
Sponsored by Vancouver and District Labour Council and British Columbia Teachers’ Federation
Contacts: Mabel Elmore (604-254-0703), Larry Kuehn (604-871-2255)
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Posted in Events
