Tag Archives: India

India: University teachers plan hunger strike on Tuesday

TImes of India: University teachers plan hunger strike on Tuesday
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MUMBAI: A section of teachers from the Mumbai University and its affiliated colleges are planning to go on a day-long hunger strike on Tuesday.

“We are protesting the fact that around 25 teachers with MPhil degrees appointed between 2006 and 2008 on contract are yet to be regularised. This despite a UGC letter to the state government clarifying that such candidates should be approved,” said University senate member Madhu Paranjape

India’s Ivy League Protests Lack of Public Funding

Wall Street Journal: India’s Ivy League Protests Lack of Public Funding

Faculty of the Indian Institutes of Technology Stages a Hunger Strike to Demand Higher Pay as Schools Face Staffing Shortage

NEW DELHI — The Indian Institutes of Technology, the subcontinent’s Ivy League, are in danger of losing their prestige, professors and alumni contend, because of faculty salaries starting as low as $6,000 a year.

Union updates

Philadelphia Inquirer: Temple says faculty stalling contract talks
Temple University has filed an unfair-labor-practice complaint against the faculty union, accusing it of failing to continue negotiating a contract because of disagreement over union membership fees.

Socialist Worker: Contract fight at Manhattan School of Music
NEW YORK–After winning a hotly contested union certification battle in May, some 150 teachers of the Manhattan School of Music’s Pre-college Division–all of whom are trained as classical or jazz musicians–will enter into collective bargaining negotiations with the administration this fall.

South Coast Today: Faculty union and administration not on same page at UMass Dartmouth
When the fall semester begins at UMass Dartmouth next week, it won’t just be the physics students who will be getting a lesson in friction. The university’s administration and largest professional union aren’t seeing eye to eye over the most recent round of budget cuts and consolidations and, almost to a person, faculty and staff describe the situation as “tense” and “confusing.”

Hartford Courant: UConn Rattled By Union Drive For Doctors
Doctors are getting nervous about changes in health care, too, especially the ones at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington. Everybody’s on edge as the health center administration adopted a dangerous strategy against the doctors when it distributed an e-mail Thursday seeking to impede a movement by doctors to form a union.

Sudbury Star: LU reaches deal with non-faculty staff union
Laurentian University reached a tentative agreement with the union representing about 250 non-faculty staff on Sunday morning.

Sun Journal: Union, USM may have agreement
LEWISTON – One of four unions working without a contract for the University of Maine System has reached a tentative agreement on a new deal.

Sun-Sentinel: Brogan, FAU faculty union duke it out to governor
Florida Atlantic University President Frank Brogan’s relationship with the faculty union isn’t improving much in his final weeks in office. Brogan, who plans to leave FAU by mid-September to become chancellor of the state university system, sent a letter to Gov. Charlie Crist saying he’s “disappointed by the level of vitriol,” that United Faculty of Florida has expressed on its blog.

India Express: IIT, IIM faculty to get better pay
The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved the revision of pay scales of faculty, design, scientific and other academic staff of the centrally funded institutions including IITs and IIMs with retrospective effect from January 1, 2006.

Indiana Daily Student: IU officials decide to continue with employee bonus plan
IU will continue with its plan to distribute up to $500 per person to faculty and staff making less than $30,000 a year despite a meeting between IU officials and union leaders July 31.

San Diego News Network: California Budget Crisis Diaries: Lawsuit targets Schwarzenegger
Legislative leaders may be out for summer session but their vacation can’t be too sunny. The cuts throughout the budget – which was signed into law July 28 – are gradually sinking in. Some agencies still don’t understand the impacts, while others continue to receive IOUs, and now, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is facing a lawsuit.

San Francisco Chronicle: Execs still get raises as UC cuts staffing, pay
On the same July day that the UC Board of Regents cut $813 million from UC budgets – setting in motion pay cuts, layoffs and campus cutbacks – the board quietly approved pay raises, stipends and other benefits for more than two dozen executives.

The Crimson: FAS Cuts Janitor Hours
School officials say the moves save jobs, but union calls reductions ‘drastic,’ ‘unnecessary’
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences implemented work hours reductions for over 100 janitors in July—a move that FAS officials say will help cut costs while avoiding layoffs, but union representatives say will devastate worker living standards.

Anti-Indian racism rampant in Australian unis

Sydney Morning Herald: India is losing interest in our universities, say agents

AUSTRALIA’S elite universities are set to pay a high price for the Indian student crisis as middle-class parents, concerned for their children’s safety, opt for degree courses in Britain, New Zealand, the United States and Canada.

Two months of media reports about attacks on young Indians and allegations of rampant racism in Australian suburbs are having a serious impact, Indian education agents say.

Mumbai teachers’ strike

Mid-Day: Teachers’ strike in Mumbai

An indefinite strike has been called for on August 4, by the Mumbai Region Junior College Teachers’ Union, general secretary Sudhir Parajpe confirmed. The strike is against the Sixth Pay Commission which primary, secondary and junior college professors claim hasn’t fulfilled their demands. A total of 12 lakh teachers are going on strike of which 4 lakh are primary school teachers, 3 lakh are secondary teachers while junior college professors and non-teaching staff account for around 40,000 each.

India: Teachers’ strike: Talks fall through

Times of India: Teachers’ strike: Talks fall through
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MUMBAI: Even after three days of intense discussion between the government and college and university teachers, the two sides seem to have failed to reach a common ground. The strike, which began on Tuesday, is set to continue.

India: Education official, middleman arrested

Hindustan Times: Education official, middleman arrested

In the first move to clean up higher education, a senior official of India’s technical-education regulator was arrested on Thursday in New Delhi and several others charged with accepting bribes from private-college managements, after raids in Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bhopal.

INDIA: Ministry may allow private universities

The Economic Times: Sibal spells doom for deemed universities, bats for private ones

NEW DELHI: The human resource development (HRD) ministry may allow private players to set up universities instead of going through the “deemed to
be university” route. The ministry will also push for firm regulations which would demand transparency and accountability of the players in the education sector.

India: Students, faculty support FTII staff’s demand

The Times of India: Students, faculty support FTII staff’s demand

Members of the staff association of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), students and faculty all stood in solidarity demanding the resignation of FTII registrar S K Thakur on Saturday. The peaceful protest was held after the registrar failed to clear the arrears of the FTII staff following the sixth pay commission hike in August 2008. “Since September we have been asking the registrar to clear our due4s, but all along we have been given no concrete answer. The registrar kept saying the money hasn’t arrived yet,” said P A Mahajan, president of FTII’s staff association.

India: Teachers’ union demands suspended DAV professors be reinstated

IndianExpress.com: Teachers’ union demands suspended DAV professors be reinstated

Chandigarh: The Chandigarh District Council of Punjab and Chandigarh College Teachers’ Union (PCCTU) organised a dharna in Sector 17 on Saturday in support of the suspended office-bearers of the DAV College Teachers’ Union: president A Taneja, secretary Anil Sarwal and staff secretary Avanindra Chopra.

Higher-Education Reform Panel in India Says Universities Need More Autonomy

The Times of India: Higher education panel slams ‘mindless’ HRD

MUMBAI: Early last month, the Yash Pal committee was informed that the Union HRD ministry had whittled down its position to an advisory body, but members stuck to their recommendations and the original terms of reference.

India Plans Big Budget Increase to Finance Higher-Education Expansion

The Telegraph: Funds fillip for varsity dream

New Delhi, Feb. 16: The interim budget has armed the government with a funds booster to fuel the Prime Minister’s vision for an unprecedented expansion in higher education institutions, as it races to meet promises ahead of the general election.