By Steven Mintz. Must reading for anyone interested in the future of public higher education is Jason E. Lane and Dr. Bruce Johnstone’s Higher Education Systems 3.0 (SUNY Press, 2013), which examines the shifting role of multi-campus university systems. Today, 59 multi-campus public university systems operate in 37 states, serving roughly three quarters of all students at four-year public colleges and universities. Read more...
By John Warner. The recent ruling by the Chicago office of the National Labor Relations Board granting Northwestern University football players the right to unionize begins the process of peeling back the convenient fiction that Division I football players are “student athletes,” and are instead, something more like employees. The core of the ruling is that Northwestern players perform work (training for and playing football) for pay, which means they should have the right to unionize and bargain collectively. Read more...
By Eric Stoller. Last week, I was in Baltimore for the NASPA Annual Conference. Attended by more than 5,000 student affairs professionals, the annual NASPA event is one of the premiere student affairs conferences. When asked if I would be attending ACPA's Annual Convention, another prominent student affairs conference, my response was that I would be attending (and speaking at) Pearson's Cite Conference (April 1 - April 3) instead. Read more...
By Emily VanBuren. I’ll just get it out there: I’m a complete grump when it comes to noise in the library. I mean, I’m a really unreasonable, hypercritical, expects-too-much-of-others curmudgeon. My university has a great system where graduate students can sign up for their own study carrels, dispersed throughout the towers that house the stacks. It’s really convenient for when I don’t feel like working from home or toting an armful of books home from campus on the train. Read more...
By Matt Reed. When I think of secession movements in America, I usually think of the South. But the idea is moving North, and not without reason. Several state university campuses in Pennsylvania are trying to secede from the state system, in order to avoid exactly the kind of bill currently being considered in New Jersey for its public colleges. Read more...
Susan Patton set off an uproar and became known as "Princeton Mom" when she last year urged women at Princeton University to focus on landing a husband, lest they be left out by graduating without one. She earned a book deal and is now promoting that book with appearances in which she discusses her controversial views. The Daily Princetonian recently ran a question-and-answer interview with Patton that featured this exchange. Read more...By Colleen Flaherty. Do professors at George Washington University have a bullying problem? The new chair of its Board of Trustees might think so, and he's expressed concern that non-tenure-track faculty members are on the receiving end of that bullying. To address the issue, the chair has said he's taking steps to extend academic freedom and greater access to shared governance to those without tenure. While some faculty applaud the new focus on non-tenure-track faculty concerns, others have questioned the validity of the chair's findings and the board’s involvement in faculty-faculty relations. Read more...
By Melonie Fullick. Recently the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) released a report (PDF) on a study “designed to measure the teaching loads of faculty members in the Ontario university system and the relationship of this variable to others, such as research output and salary.” The study, comprising 10 of Ontario’s 20 publicly funded universities, looked at faculty teaching in three disciplines (economics, chemistry and philosophy). Read more...
By Richard PÉREZ-PEÑA. The ruling this week that Northwestern University must treat scholarship football players as employees defies the way colleges view themselves, and has administrators nationwide wondering if this is the first step toward turning college sports into something unrecognizable. Read more...
By Leigh Jacobson. The college application process has become incredibly rigorous and cutthroat. According to the Independent Educational Consultants Association, the average cost of a private admissions consultant is $4,035, and 26 percent of the high-achieving incoming freshmen at private universities hired a consultant. A lot of these consultants then keep a database of previous clients’ application files for reference, which they use to help future clients who can afford their services. See more...
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