Month: June 2015

In Much of the World, Academic Freedom Is a Value for Which Faculty, Students, and Administrators Are Suffering and Dying

The AAUP focuses on academic freedom issues within the United States. Scholars at Risk, an organization based at New York University, focuses on attacks on academic freedom elsewhere in the world—most of which involve actual physical attacks.

According to Free to Think, a new report issued by Scholars at Risk as part of its Academic Freedom Monitoring Project, “violent attacks on higher education students, staff and institutions around the world are occurring with ‘alarming frequency.’” The report “documents 485 killings in 18 countries in the past four and a half years.”

Its authors have drawn upon “data collected between January 2011 and May 2015 and [they cite] 333 attacks arising from 247 verified incidents in 65 countries. However, . . . the data reflects ‘only a small subset of all attacks on higher education during that time,’ due to the limited resources available to monitor such attacks.”

“The 333 [cited]…

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Education, Inc.

ACADEME BLOG

Education, Inc., is a forthcoming documentary film about how money and politics are changing our schools. It will premiere on Friday, August 14, 2015.

Here is the promotional description from the website for the documentary:

“American public education is in controversy. As public schools across the country struggle for funding, complicated by the impact of poverty and politics, some question the future and effectiveness of public schools in the U.S.

“For free-market reformers, private investors and large education corporations, this controversy spells opportunity in turning public schools over to private interests. Education, Inc. examines the free-market and for-profit interests that have been quietly and systematically privatizing America’s public education system under the banner of “school choice.”

“Education, Inc. is told through the eyes of parent and filmmaker Brian Malone, as he travels cross-country in search of the answers and sources behind the privatizing of American public education, and what…

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An Addendum to John Wilson’s Post on Provocative Comedy and Campus Culture

ACADEME BLOG

John Wilson’s post on comedians who have been critical of college audiences is a terrific essay–one of the most incisively perceptive pieces on any topic that I have read this year.

I would humbly add just a couple of observations of my own to the discussion that John’s essay should provoke.

Provocative figures, including provocative comedians, have to evolve as the reactions that they provoke actually have an impact. This is part of what has happened with the use of the “n” word by African American comedians. When many people were using the word in a racially charged way, claiming the word in order to give it some very different associations made a certain sense. But once the use of the word began to be socially and culturally stigmatized except on the racist lunatic fringe, the use of the “n” word by African American comedians and singers started to seem…

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Administrative Staffing 1987-2011, A Statistical Profile by Institution, Part 11: Colorado

ACADEME BLOG

The federal data that will be presented in this series of posts was analyzed by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting (NCIR) in collaboration with the American Institutes for Research. The NECIR story on the data and its implications, written by Jon Marcus, who is currently an editor at the Hechinger Report, is available at: http://necir.org/2014/02/06/new-analysis-shows-problematic-boom-in-higher-ed-administrators/.

NECIR is one of a number of foundation-supported nonprofits that produce journalism in collaboration with other media, in this case the Boston NPR station and the Huffington Post, where this story also ran.

The data is being re-posted here with the permission of Jon Marcus.

I believe that it is worth presenting the data state by state because, in its totality, the material is so extensive as to be overwhelming. I also hope that presenting it state by state may encourage some further use of it by our chapters and conferences…

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2015 Ohio Higher Education Report: Part 6

ACADEME BLOG

2015 Ohio Higher Education Report: Part 6

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Previous Posts in This Series:

2015 Ohio Higher Education Report, Part 1: http://academeblog.org/2015/06/20/2015-ohio-higher-education-report-part-1/

2015 Ohio Higher Education Report, Part 2: http://academeblog.org/2015/06/20/2015-ohio-higher-education-report-part-2/

2015 Ohio Higher Education Report, Part 3: http://academeblog.org/2015/06/21/2015-ohio-higher-education-report-part-3/

2015 Ohio Higher Education Report, Part 4: http://academeblog.org/2015/06/21/2015-ohio-higher-education-report-part-4/

2015 Ohio Higher Education Report, Part 5: http://academeblog.org/2015/06/24/2015-ohio-higher-education-report-part-5/

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A(n Incremental) Case for the Economic Benefits of Reducing Student Debt

ACADEME BLOG

In a guest editorial for the Concord Monitor, demographer Peter Franchese argues persuasively that the future of New Hampshire’s economy requires a much larger state investment in public higher education, in particular in its community colleges.

After framing the issues with reference to his own family history, Franchese focuses on the following “paradoxes” and “projections”:

“Perhaps the central paradox of our time is why this generation of young people has been asked to do something no previous generation was ever required to do: heavily mortgage their future with student debt in order to obtain the job skills required to compete in an economy so fundamentally changed from that of their parents.

“This paradox is particularly troublesome for a small state such as New Hampshire that needs to maintain economic growth and a competitive advantage in the global marketplace. Without the oil assets of North Dakota or high population growth…

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Miscalculations of Student Living Costs, Their Impact on Financial Aid, and What They Suggest about Our Institutional Priorities

ACADEME BLOG

The following paragraphs are taken from an article that Jill Barshay contributed to the Hechinger Report on June 1:

“A team of academic researchers found that one third of colleges and universities underestimated actual living expenses by more than $3,000. Another 11 percent of schools overestimated by more than $3,000. In other words, almost half get it wrong by a big margin. . . .

“The research is part of an ongoing series of papers, the most recent one delivered on May 27, 2015 at the Association for Institutional Research Annual Forum in Denver, Colorado. An earlier version of this research, titled “The Costs of College Attendance: Trends, Variation, and Accuracy in Institutional Living Cost Allowances,” was presented at the annual meeting of the Association of Public Policy and Management in October 2014.

“Calculating living costs properly is more than a matter of academic debate. Students who go to schools with higher…

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