My erstwhile Massachusetts colleague Lane Glenn, president of Northern Essex Community College, posted a thought-provoking piece about public higher ed funding over the weekend. Some of it is state-specific, such as the reference to “9C” cuts (midyear cuts to appropriated allocations). But the conclusion strikes me as applicable, and challenging, across the country. Glenn writes: So, rather than spend more time haggling over how to allocate diminishing resources through a formula that will never work effectively; the best way forward for our campuses and our students lies in creating a new social compact for community colleges in the Commonwealth that relies on partnering with policymakers, employers, and supportive organizations like the Boston Foundation and the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation to help us transition into our new role as public-private colleges with increased attention to fundraising, employer sponsorships, return on investment, entrepreneurial business model...
A friend in grad school once commented that she and I followed the Supreme Court the same way that normal people follow baseball. So yes, I’ve been mulling over the Janus v AFSCME case for months. Longer, in fact, if you count the version that didn’t get decided when Scalia died. I’ve been working in unionized public higher education since 2003. At all three community colleges, and in both states, representation fees were part of the order of the day. I’ve known faculty who swear that the union is the only thing standing between them and penury, and I’ve known faculty who wanted absolutely nothing to do with their union. Having also worked in a decidedly non-union setting -- DeVry -- I’ve seen the differences. But here I’ll focus instead on possible long-term fallout. Assuming the ruling stands for a while, what’s likely to happen? The obvious immediate impact will be that the folks who only pay representation fees because they’re compelled to, will sto...
I was surprised to see the headline “Why Teaching Engineering Costs More than Teaching English,” but not because the content was surprising. I was surprised that it was news. The recent piece summarizes a report from the National Bureau of Economic Research. It makes the point that classes in some fields are more expensive to run than others, with the more STEM or vocational classes generally running more expensive (with the notable exception of math). Faithful readers may remember this paragraph from a post this summer entitled “Things That Seem Obvious:” “Hard” vocational programs are more expensive to run than “soft” academic ones. The least expensive classes to run are the ones that can run well with thirty students per section, and without any specialized equipment. That tends to describe the Intro to Psychs of the world. Hands-on classes in vocational areas require more equipment, more people to tend the equipment, and more instructors per student...
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