August 31, 2010, 6:31 am
We have negotiations today. Two negotiations “packages” are pending, compensation and evaluation. The first includes annual salary adjustments and workload. The second, evaluation, addresses retention, evaluation, termination and sanction.
The Chronicle reports that the state has nearly repaid the higher education bill for 2009-2010 and then speculates about the borrowing that may lie in our financial future.
Illinois’s Public Universities Won’t Have to Borrow — for Now
By Eric Kelderman
The State of Illinois has repaid nearly all of the $464-million it owed to its public universities from the 2009-10 fiscal year, which ended on June 30.
Read more at the Chronicle…
August 31, 2010, 6:10 am
Read the Directions
August 31, 2010
By Laurence Musgrove
I’d like to nominate the term “faculty-driven” as a candidate for disinvestment and elimination.
After serving as a director of composition and as the coordinator of a general education program at universities in the Midwest, I am beginning my second year as department head here at a university in West Texas. At our first all-faculty meeting of the year, it was announced that we are on the verge of two major academic initiatives that will require a substantial commitment of institutional time and energy. The first is a program review process, and the second is a quality enhancement project required by our accreditor.
Both of these efforts are necessary and, I suspect, will result in needed improvements. I have faith in the best practices upon which we will model our efforts. I also believe in the goodwill and good intentions of our academic leadership.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed…
August 27, 2010, 10:53 am
The Higher Education Finance Study Commission will be meeting at Harper College to discuss the option of funding higher education based on performance measures (i.e., retention, graduation) rather than enrollment. UPI has several representatives attending these meetings and a former UPI chapter president, Charles Delman, from EIU serving as a member of the committee.
Performance-based funding for public colleges gets a look
By Kimberly Pohl | Daily Herald Staff
A small contingent of public college educators and politicians are convinced of two things: the system in place isn’t working and more money won’t be available.
That’s why they’re exploring the idea of implementing a funding model for community colleges and public universities based not on enrollment, but rather on performance.
Two of the key players involved in the movement are first-year Harper College President Ken Ender and state Rep. Fred Crespo. They are well aware of the monumental task they face in winning over colleagues in their respective fields.
Read more at the Daily Herald…
August 25, 2010, 6:57 am
NEIU has long cited its #1 rank for being the most ethnically diverse university in the midwest but we’ve gained two more rankings from U.S. News and World Reports: #1 in Midwest for students graduating with the least amount of debt and a similar ranking for the lowest percentage of students graduating with debt.
The third ranking was reported by the Washington Monthly: NEIU is #50 with the lowest graduation rates. This excludes the “for-profit” sector of higher education. The list is accompanied by an article titled “College Drop Out Factories.” Chicago State is featured in the article…
August 25, 2010, 6:44 am
A summary of what faculty (tenured and untenured) have experienced at NEIU. We are not alone.
More Pressure on Faculty Members, From Every Direction
By Margaret A. Miller
Changes in the American professoriate’s employment patterns and types, demographics, and work life are the greatest we have seen in over half a century. The model of the white, male, tenured teacher-scholar that emerged during the great expansion of higher education in the post-World War II decades has given way to an increasingly diverse, splintered, specialized, and transitory work force.
These changes are spurred in part by fiscal pressures. Underneath the difficulties caused by the recession are structural deficits in state budgets, the result of a demand for social services that cannot be met by current tax structures. Meanwhile, higher education’s costs have risen faster than even those of health care. States—and, increasingly, debt-ridden students—are struggling to meet those costs.
Read more at the Chronicle…
