There have been several articles of likely interest to DFA members recently. First, Ian Kennedy points out an article in the Los Angeles Times about proposals to change how tenure is awarded. Here is an excerpt:
“The leader of the country’s largest university thinks it’s time to re-examine how professors are awarded tenure, a type of job-for-life protection virtually unknown outside academia. Ohio State University President Gordon Gee says the traditional formula that rewards publishing in scholarly journals over excellence in teaching and other contributions is outdated and too often favors the quantity of a professor’s output over quality.”
Full article at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-taking-on-tenure,0,4377636.story
Also, Sunday’s Sacramento Bee had an article about UC’s funding that quoted from the FA sponsored KeepCaliforniasPromise.org website. Again, an excerpt:
“Should higher education be treated as a public good,” asks Stanton Glantz, a University of California, San Francisco, professor of medicine, in a position paper posted on a faculty association Web site last August, “or should it be viewed as a private good to be paid for by its customers (students and their families) and voluntary private donors?” In Sacramento, it’s not so much an ideological issue as a financial one. The budget share of every other education system that the state (i.e., taxpayers) helps pay for, from kindergarten to community colleges, is in large part assured by Proposition 98. The 1998 voter-approved measure guarantees K-14 schools a set slice of the state’s fiscal pie. Similarly, the federal government mandates minimum state spending levels on many health and welfare programs. But the 10-campus University of California and the 23-campus California State University system have no such protection.
And the link to the full Sac Bee article:
http://www.sacbee.com/education/story/2518995.html
Stories such as these are frequently updated at http://keepcaliforniaspromise.org/view-news-clips