Month: June 2015

What’s Wrong with Performance Based Funding?

ACADEME BLOG

This is a post by Rudy Fichtenbaum, President of the AAUP.

_______________

The Chronicle of Higher Education just had an article about performance based funding in Florida. Performance based funding has been adopted in 30 states in one form or another and provides funding to universities and colleges if they meet certain metrics.

Performance based funding is being pushed by both the Lumina Foundation and the Gates Foundation. President Obama has called for performance based funding as part of his free community college initiative. The problem is that there is no evidence that performance based funding works.

In Florida, one of the ten metrics used to distribute performance based funding is the average wages of graduates employed in Florida. Make a $1 million but you are not employed in Florida and you don’t count. If the institution can’t find someone, they don’t count.

Each metric is scored on a 1…

View original post 523 more words

Why Selecting a College Major Primarily Because of the Employment Outlook in That Field Is a Terrible Idea

ACADEME BLOG

Peter Cappelli, a Professor of Management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, has specialized in studies of employment patterns and, more specifically, shifts in the American economy that have made some jobs obsolete and that have created demand for new specialties.

His most recent book is Will College Pay Off?, and as his interview with Bourree Lam for The Atlantic makes clear, Cappelli argues persuasively in the book against the notion that the value of a college education should be measured by the immediate employability of and compensation received by new graduates. The value of a college education much exceeds that of vocational or job training.

What follows is perhaps the most thought-provoking sections of Bourree Lam’s interview with Peter Cappelli:

“Lam: One of the pieces of this that I found so interesting is when you talk in your book about the futility of students trying to…

View original post 470 more words

Scams of Immense Proportions, Redux

ACADEME BLOG

In a recent article for the Washington Post, Lisa Rein has reported the following troubling details about the way in which VA hospitals have been purchasing prosthetics for veterans:

“Employees in the purchasing department of a VA hospital in the Bronx had used government purchase cards like credit cards at least 2,000 times to buy prosthetic legs and arms for veterans.

“Each time they swiped the cards, it was for $24,999. That was precisely one dollar below VA’s charging limit for purchase cards.

“When word reached Congress about the $54,435,743 worth of prosthetics bought under such odd circumstances over two years—the subject of an inspector general investigation announced Monday—lawmakers demanded details. But they were told there was no documentation.

“VA officials had prepared to tell Congress that the records had been destroyed by Hurricane Sandy, according to previously undisclosed records, until a senior adviser in the Secretary’s office pointed out that the timing was…

View original post 372 more words

Increasingly Demanding Mandates Tied to Minimal Funding

ACADEME BLOG

In an article for the Detroit Free-Press titled “Tough Choice? EMU Hikes Tuition, Forgoes $1M in State Aid,” David Jesse reports:

“Here’s the choice Eastern Michigan University administrators and board members say they faced as they worked to put together a budget for the upcoming school year–-get $1 million in extra state aid by staying within a tuition cap of 3.2%, or hike tuition by 7.8% and get up to $10 million in additional funds.

“On Tuesday, the Board of Regents delivered its verdict in an unanimous vote. It will cost 7.8% more to go to Eastern next school year than the year before. That’s about $25 a credit hour.”

Later in the article, Jesse notes that, “despite the increase, Eastern’s tuition would remain 13th highest out of 15 Michigan public university if the other universities didn’t go over the tuition cap.” It is a confusing sentence because it seems…

View original post 338 more words

Administrative Staffing 1987-2011, A Statistical Profile by Institution, Part 9: California (Part 5)

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…

View original post 143 more words

The Problem with Tenure Isn’t Tenure Itself—Or a Lengthening List of Other Things Being Attributed to Tenure

ACADEME BLOG

We Are All Badgers Now [L]

On June 6, Tamar Lewis wrote an article for the New York Times titled “Colleges Re-Evaluate the Concept of Tenure.” I came across the article, however, in the Seattle Times, where it had been republished.

The premise of the article is expressed succinctly in the teaser: “In an era of rapid change, long life spans, economic strains and a dwindling college-age population, there is a high cost to awarding professors lifetime job guarantees.” But the impetus for the article was very clearly the radical attack on tenure by Scott Walker and Far Right legislators in Wisconsin.

Although Lewis is very right to consider whether Walker’s action may be replicated elsewhere, she distorts the discussion by accepting as a baseline the arguments against tenure offered  by such ideologues who wish to eliminate academic freedom and by administrators who wish to reduce and even eliminate shared governance.

Less than 30% of…

View original post 808 more words

Scams of Immense Proportions

ACADEME BLOG

Almost a year ago, the following brief item, written by Daniel Wilco, appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

“Two men have been indicted on charges they defrauded Delta and Northwest Airlines of $22 million between 2004 and 2013.

“Michael Yedor and Paul Anderson have been charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and 96 counts of mail fraud.

“Anderson, 57, of Apple Valley, Minn., had worked for Northwest since 1979. When Delta and Northwest merged in 2009, Anderson became an employee of Delta.

“According to the indictment, Anderson and Yedor, 62, of Los Angeles, engaged in a scheme to defraud Northwest and, later, Delta, by submitting false invoices on behalf of a company that Yedor purportedly owned, named Airborne Voice and Data.

“The invoices sought payment from Delta and Northwest for services provided by Airborne Voice and Data that the pair knew the company had never provided.

“Yedor sent the…

View original post 522 more words