The Chronicle of Higher Education | American Federation of Teachers New Jersey, AFL-CIO

Proposed Realigning of New Jersey Campuses Spurs Protests and Charges of Cronyism

February 03, 2012

By Eric Kelderman

New Jersey is joining the list of states considering merging and consolidating public universities—with a distinctly Garden State twist.

An advisory committee, formed originally to consider what to do with the troubled University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, has recommended shifting control of several campuses around the state.

The panel’s final report, which Gov. Christopher J. Christie endorsed last month, includes a recommendation to give control of Rutgers University’s Camden campus, including its law and business schools, to Rowan University, a midsize public regional institution located nearly 20 miles away in Glassboro.

Controversy erupted almost immediately over the recommendations, with charges that the Republican governor is trying to reward a powerful political ally at the expense of the state’s top-tier public research university.

The panel explained its recommendation as a way to enhance higher-education offerings in southern New Jersey and spur economic development. But students, faculty, and administrators at the Camden branch of Rutgers are all protesting a merger with Rowan, arguing that the move would diminish the reputation of the Rutgers campus solely to improve the future prospects of Rowan’s medical school, set to open later this year.

And even some legislators are criticizing the recommendations as short-sighted. Lawmakers have already scheduled hearings on the matter.

“I don’t think the task force did a half-ass job,” said the State Senator Raymond J. Lesniak, who opposes many of the proposed changes. “They did three-quarters-ass job.”

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Obama Highlights Education’s Role in Reaching National Policy Goals

January 25, 2012

By Kelly Field, Washington

With the presidential election less than a year away, President Obama focused his third State of the Union address Tuesday on the struggles of the nation’s middle class, urging Congress to invest in worker retraining and make college more affordable for the average American family.

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Kean U. Board Investigates President Over Alleged Spurious Credentials

January 10, 2012

Kean University’s Board of Trustees is looking into assertions by the institution’s faculty union that Kean’s president falsified his résumé. According to The Wall Street Journal, the university’s board chairwoman wrote a letter to the Kean Federation of Teachers saying that the board’s executive committee was examining “serious issues” raised by the union. The union has contended that the president, Dawood Farahi, falsely claimed to have published more than 50 articles in “major publications” and lied when he claimed to have served as acting dean at Avila University before taking over as president of Kean, in 2003.

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4 Years After Suspension, Faculty Senate Will Return to Rensselaer Polytechnic

December 19, 2011

More than four years after Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute suspended its Faculty Senate, faculty members on the New York campus will soon once more have a voice in the institution’s governance.

The faculty approved a new senate constitution on Friday—in at least its fourth attempt to rebuild shared governance since 2007—after talks with the university’s board, provost, and president. It was the senate’s near vote of no confidence in the president, Shirley Ann Jackson, that some said had prompted the suspension in 2007.

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Faculty Letter Calls on College Presidents to Protect Nonviolent Public Protest

November 22, 2011

An open letter assailing the violence against campus protesters this fall has been signed by hundreds of college and university faculty members across the country, according to Matthew N. Smith, an associate professor of philosophy at Yale University, who wrote the letter and has been publicizing it since Sunday.

Citing this month’s crackdowns on peaceful faculty and student protesters at the University of California’s Berkeley and Davis campuses, the letter condemns the “astonishing escalation of the violence” and threats of violence to stifle dissent. It declares that academe’s tradition of peaceful protest “is being threatened by the use of violence by university officials against their own students and faculty.”

And the letter calls on college presidents to state publicly that their campuses are “Safe Protest Zones, where nonviolent, public political dissent and protest will be protected by university police and will never be attacked by the university police.”

Deficit Supercommittee’s Failure Triggers Steep Cuts for Education and Research

November 22, 2011

By Kelly Field
Washington

The Congressional supercommittee charged with cutting $1.2-trillion from the federal budget conceded defeat Monday, after its members reached an impasse over taxes and entitlement spending.

The panel’s failure to produce a deficit-reduction plan triggers across-the-board cuts of roughly $1-trillion in discretionary spending over nine years, starting in the 2013 fiscal year. Unless Congress finds a way around the process, the Education Department’s budget will be slashed by $3.54-billion in 2013, according to the Committee for Education Funding, an advocacy group.

While the Pell Grant program is exempt from cuts in the first year, the other student-aid programs will lose $134-million, reducing aid to at least 1.3 million students. Career, technical, and adult education will lose $136-million, affecting 1.4 million students, says the committee.

Research programs will suffer as well.

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UC-Davis Chancellor Apologizes as Outrage Builds Over Pepper-Spray Use on Peaceful Protesters

November 22, 2011

Noah Berger for The Chronicle

Linda P.B. Katehi, chancellor of the U. of California at Davis, promised to earn back the trust of students at a rally on the campus on Monday.

By Goldie Blumenstyk

The outrage over a police pepper-spraying of peacefully protesting students at the University of California at Davis—a chilling scene captured in videos that have been viewed around the world since Friday—has put the institution at the center of a growing storm that includes demands for Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi’s resignation, condemnations from political leaders, and at least four investigations, including one by the Yolo County District Attorney.

It has also spawned a nationwide faculty petition drive calling on all university presidents and chancellors to pledge to protect nonviolent campus protesters from police attacks, as “Occupy” college protests continue to sprout up.

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Researchers Rate RateMyProfessors, and Find It Useful, if Not Chili-Pepper Hot

November 21, 2011

By Marc Parry

The Web site RateMyProfessors evokes skepticism among faculty members. Some view the anonymous evaluation site as a haven for rants and odd remarks (“He will crush you like an academic ninja!”), or a place where students go to grade instructors based on easiness or attractiveness (a chili-pepper icon distinguishes professors that are “hot” over those that are “not”).

But new research out of the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire suggests the popular service is a more useful barometer of instructor quality than you might think, at least in the aggregate. And the study, the latest of several indicating RateMyProfessors should not be dismissed, raises questions about how universities should deal with a site whose ratings have been factored into Forbes magazine’s college rankings and apparently even into some universities’ personnel evaluations.

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Unions Confront the Fault Lines Between Adjuncts and Full-Timers

November 20, 2011

Some look beyond the big unions for real improvement in working conditions
Unions Begin to Confront Fault Lines Between Adjunct and Full-Time Faculty

David Vitoff, Illinois Education Association—NEA At Southern Illinois U. at Carbondale, adjuncts and full-time faculty march together, even though they have separate unions. They've joined a coalition with other employees, including graduate assistants.

By Peter Schmidt

The largest organizers of college faculty unions—the American Association of University Professors, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association—have made big strides in recruiting adjunct instructors and helping them gain representation through collective bargaining.

But the three groups have a long way to go before their membership and their leadership reflect the dominant role that adjunct instructors play in the higher-education work force, a Chronicle survey of the organizations reveals. Such instructors now account for about two-thirds of all faculty members employed by public and private colleges.

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Rise in Sticker Price at Public Colleges Outpaces That at Private Colleges for 5th Year in a Row

October 26, 2011

By Beckie Supiano

The State of California enrolls about 10 percent of the country’s full-time students attending public four-year colleges, and about 15 percent of those at public two-year colleges. So when the state’s public colleges have a big tuition hike—as they did this year—it has a big impact on the average tuition increase at public colleges across the country, says a new report from the College Board.

For the fifth year in a row, the percentage increase in average published tuition and fees at public four-year colleges was higher than it was at private ones, according to the report, “Trends in College Pricing 2011.” The report, released on Wednesday, examines annual changes in colleges’ sticker prices, as well as the net prices students pay after grant aid and tax benefits are considered. A companion report, “Trends in Student Aid 2011,” looks at the money that helps students meet those growing prices. (The pricing report looks at data through this academic year, while the student-aid report has information through 2010-11.)

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