KDBC: College of Santa Fe bill moves to House floor vote
Associated Press – February 27, 2009 9:45 AM ET
SANTA FE (AP) – Legislation aimed at a state takeover of the private College of Santa Fe is headed to the House floor.
The measure cleared its final House committee yesterday when the House Appropriations and Finance Committee voted 13-4 for it.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding
Tagged Budgets & Funding, Closures
The Chronicle News Blog: George Mason U. Will Close Its Campus in the Persian Gulf
George Mason University has decided to shut down its branch campus in the Persian Gulf emirate of Ras al Khaymah, after its local partners drastically slashed the campus’s operating budget while expecting the university to nearly double the number of students enrolled at the campus, the university’s provost said Thursday.
Inside Higher Ed: Gulf Withdrawal
It’s the kind of story that could have come straight out of Peter Stearns’ new book. Discussing the potential pitfalls of setting up branch campuses in foreign lands, the George Mason University provost strikes a sober tone:
“This is difficult terrain, with a shaky past; caution is abundantly justified,” Stearns writes in Educating Global Citizens in Colleges and Universities: Challenges and Opportunities.
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Posted in Corporate University
Tagged Corporate University
The Chronicle News Blog: U. of New Mexico Faculty Votes No Confidence in President
Faculty members at the University of New Mexico overwhelming voted no confidence today in the university’s president, David J. Schmidly, according to a university news release. The professors also approved similar measures criticizing the leadership of other university officials and called for an audit of university funds.
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Posted in Administration
Tagged Administration, Governance
The Globe and Mail: Storm brews over universities
Canadian universities and colleges are facing a “perfect storm,” as they are battered by ailing endowments and pension funds, rising student demand and cuts in government funding, a new study warns.
Economic hardships will hit campuses across the country if provincial governments follow the pattern of past recessions and cut support to postsecondary institutions, the study predicted. At the same time, the deteriorating job market will prompt many workers to return to school, pushing up demand, especially in college and masters programs that can be completed in one or two years, it said.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding
Tagged Budgets & Funding, Job cuts, Job market
The Chronicle News Blog: French Government Backs Down Amid Protests Over Higher-Education Proposals
The French government has yielded to pressure following weeks of protests and disruptions at universities across the country and announced that a controversial decree governing the hiring and promotion of researchers engaged in teaching would be “entirely rewritten on the basis of discussions conducted by Valérie Pécresse [the higher-education minister] with the organizations in question.”
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Posted in Protests
Tagged France, Job cuts, Job market, Protests, Tenure & Promotion
The Chronicle News Blog: California Legislation Would Tie College Executives’ Pay to Tuition
San Francisco — A California lawmaker is proposing to prohibit raises for executives at the state’s public colleges and universities in years that they raise tuition.
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Posted in Salary/Economic Benefits
Tagged Administration, Budgets & Funding, Salary/Economic Benefits, Tuition
Inside Higher Ed: Private Conversations
Tension is mounting at the University of Toledo, where administrators are exploring a partnership with a private company known for churning out quick and inexpensive degrees.
Toledo officials are considering a deal with Higher Ed Holdings, a Texas-based company that would help deliver online masters-level education courses to students in exchange for a share of tuition revenues. The company, founded by Dallas entrepreneur Randy Best, already has a similar arrangement with Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas.
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Posted in Corporate University
Tagged Academics, Corporate University
AP: Regents suspend search for new chancellor
KNOXVILLE (AP) — The Tennessee Board of Regents has suspended its year-long search for a new chancellor, citing an uncertain economy and potential restructuring of higher education in the state.
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Posted in Administration
Tagged Administration
The Monitor: College professor wins pay discrimination case against UTPA
EDINBURG — Hilda Medrano was demoted from her job as dean of the University of Texas-Pan American’s college of education almost four years ago.
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Posted in Legal issues
Tagged Legal issues, Salary/Economic Benefits
The Chronicle: Iowa Professors Mobilize Against Measure on Teaching Alternatives to Evolution
More than 200 faculty members at 20 Iowa colleges have signed a statement opposing a proposed state law that would give instructors at public colleges and schools a legal right to teach alternatives to evolution.
Ottawa Citizen: Students sue University of Ottawa for barring controversial professor
OTTAWA-Two graduate students and a researcher have filed a lawsuit against the University of Ottawa, claiming “their academic and research careers have been frustrated and/or derailed” after a controversial physics professor was barred from campus.
Denis Rancourt, a tenured professor, has attracted attention for his unconventional methods, including a plan to give all students in a fourth-year and graduate-level course in physics an A-plus. He has been placed on academic suspension.
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Posted in Legal issues
Tagged Legal issues, Students
CantonRep.com: Kent State Stark Campus dean resigns after spray-painting parking sign
The dean of the Kent State University Stark Campus, who resigned abruptly last week, did so after being stopped by security while spray-painting a parking sign on neighboring Stark State College of Technology’s campus.
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Posted in Administration
Tagged Administration, resignations
The Chronicle News Blog: Lab Affiliated With MIT Tops Ranking of Best Places to Work for Postdocs
The Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, an independent lab affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, topped The Scientist’s latest list of the best American job destinations for postdoctoral researchers in the life sciences.
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Posted in Working conditions
Tagged postdocs, Working conditions
howtheuniversityworks.com: This ain’t the New School
Hundreds of students showed up to support the approximately 80 students occupying an NYU cafeteria last week. Organized by the TakeBackNYU coalition of dozens of student organizations, the occupying students asked for increased campus democracy, transparency in operations, and accountability from the administration to faculty and students. Specific demands included tuition stabilization, collective bargaining with student employees, socially responsible investing, fair labor practice on offshore NYU campuses, and thirteen scholarships for students displaced by the bombing of Gaza.
Inside Higher Ed: Not So White Noise About Diversity
A faculty report has stirred some racial tensions at Sonoma State University, following claims from its author that the institution’s administration has deliberately targeted those from higher-income families as potential students for the past decade. In this process, the report claims that the university has become the “whitest” public institution in California, effectively preferring white students to minorities in an admission practice that it deems “reverse affirmative action.”
Announcing the 2nd Annual Education & Labor Collaborative Forum
We welcome your participation in a broad collaboration that hopes to span many universities, schools, unions, and groups in search of positive social and economic change.
The Forum includes a Film Festival on Friday evening, April 24th at Antioch University Los Angeles, (400 Corporate Pointe, Culver City CA) where a special guest is Jono Shaffer, the real organizer whose story is
told in the movie Bread & Roses. Saturday April 25th the Forum moves to the headquarters of United Teachers of Los Angeles, (3303 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles) for a full day of workshops and organizing.
In addition, we are putting together an Education & Labor Collaborative organizing meeting to take place at AERA, date and time to be announced.
To find more information, download a copy of the Forum Flyer, and hopefully register to join us, please visit: http://organizingthecurriculum.org, email me at andisosin@andisosin.com or respond on the website to laboreducator@organizingthecurriculum.org
On behalf of the Forum planning committee
In solidarity,
Adrienne Andi Sosin, Ed.D.
The Chronicle News Blog: Faculty Union at UMass Accepts One-Year Pay Freeze
The union of faculty members and librarians on the University of Massachusetts’ campuses in Amherst and in Boston has reached a tentative agreement on a contract that includes a one-year moratorium on salary increases.
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Posted in Salary/Economic Benefits
The Chronicle News Blog: UConn Hoops Coach’s $12-Million Claim Calls for a Lesson in Math
The top-ranked University of Connecticut men’s basketball team beat the University of South Florida by 14 points on Saturday. But Jim Calhoun, the head coach now in his 23rd season with Connecticut, was hardly in a charitable mood at the postgame press conference.
Mr. Calhoun quickly lost his cool when a freelance reporter, political activist, and law student, Ken Krayeske, questioned him about the propriety of his annual salary, given the state’s $2-billion budget deficit, The Hartford Courant reported.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding
Tagged Athletics, Budgets & Funding, Salary/Economic Benefits
Inside Higher Ed: One Too Many
February 24, 2009
At a moment when the University of Florida is slashing its budget and laying off faculty and staff, administrators thought it was reasonable to ask Florence Babb to increase her teaching load to three courses a year. She doesn’t agree.
Babb, an endowed professor and graduate coordinator of UF’s Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research, has entered into arbitration proceedings to challenge the increased teaching load. Babb was given an appointment letter in 2004 that said her teaching load would be limited to one course each semester, and now says the university isn’t upholding its written agreement.
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Posted in Working conditions
Tagged Faculty, Working conditions
Professors’ Freedoms Under Assault in the Courts
The Chronicle: Professors’ Freedoms Under Assault in the Courts
By PETER SCHMIDT
Balance of Power is a series examining new challenges to faculty influence.
Kevin J. Renken learned the limits of his academic freedom the hard way.
As an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Mr. Renken says he felt obliged to speak out about his belief that administrators there were mishandling a National Science Foundation grant to him and several colleagues. When the university subsequently reduced his pay and returned the grant, he sued, alleging illegal retaliation.
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Posted in Commentary
Tagged Commentary, Faculty