Category Archives: In the media…

“Michigan Democrats developing college grant plan”

Posted on January 13, 2012 by | Leave a comment

In “I’ll believe it when I see it” news, I heard on Michigan Radio this morning this story, “Michigan Democrats developing college grant plan.”  In the nutshell, the proposal would pay for college tuition at a public Michigan university for students who completed their K-12 schooling in Michigan, presumably at public schools.  I think this is obviously a great idea that will never happen.

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Posted in Academics, In the media..., State Government, Student Life

“‘College Tax’ Burdens Students, State”

Posted on January 11, 2012 by | Leave a comment

I actually saw this on Facebook via Geoffrey “Geoff” Larcom but certainly thought it worth a read here:  “‘College Tax’ Burdens Students, State,” via Bridge.  The “college tax” is a little confusing to me.  If I am understanding it correctly, it is the amount more students pay in Michigan to comparable instituions.  I suspect there are a lot of problems with those calculations, but what it boils down to is that the steady decrease in state funding means that Michiganders spend a lot more money on college which amounts to an extra tax, one that is paid by students.

According to the article, “Michigan has slashed about 20 percent of the dollars (adjusted for inflation) for four-year colleges between 2005 and 2010; only Rhode Island and New Mexico cut more.”  With the Snyder administration’s cuts, Michigan is now  in the bottom 10 states for per-capita student funding.  And to simply get “the middle of the pack in per-capita spending on universities, Michigan would need to increase higher education funding by 56 percent.”  But at least the football teams have done better.

Incidentally, the “college tax” at EMU is $9,220 over four years of school.  That means when compared to universities in its peer group (and no, I don’t have any idea how that’s figured out), students at EMU paid just over nine grand more over four years of school compared to other institutions.

 

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Posted in Academics, Budgets, In the media..., Student Life

“The Fall of the Faculty”

Posted on January 9, 2012 by | Leave a comment

It’s been a pretty busy start to the semester for me around here at EMUTalk.org central because of my pesky day job.  But I’m back (sort of), and I wanted to kick off the term with an article an alert reader suggested I post from Inside Higher Ed, “The Fall of the Faculty.”  It’s an interview with Benjamin Ginsberg, David Bernstein Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University, author of  The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters.  Ginsberg is a pretty cranky guy about administrators and he gets much of it wrong, it seems to me.  But he does have a couple of zingers that seem right.  For example, there’s this:

In my 40 years in academics, the number of truly silly courses is very small. But when I look at administrators, I’d argue that the bulk of activities is quite silly, such as the war zones task force which met and concluded that students should be discouraged from entering war zones. More generally, I look at strategic planning that takes enormous energy for no reason. Many of these could just be copied; the end result would be the same. The process of putting these plans together is designed rather like elections in the Soviet Union: the process is designed to give people the impression that people care what they think. I also looked at the minutes and agendas of administrative meetings. When administrators and staff get together, they mostly talk about prior meetings and plans for future meetings.

And there’s this exchange that seems pretty spot-on too:

Q: You recite a litany of administrators who lined their pockets or burnished their own images at the expense of their institutions. Why do you see these examples as reflective of a systemic problem rather than a case of a few bad actors?

A: There are very few controls in place to prevent it. Virtually no university has systems in place to monitor and check the behavior of senior administrators. If some poor student is accused of plagiarism, that’s a federal case. There are all sorts of systems in place. If a faculty or staff member is accused of sexual harassment, there are normal systems in place. If an administrator cheats and steals or presents phony credentials, there’s nothing in place to stop it.

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Posted in Administrator Life, Faculty Life, In the media...

The year that was 2011

Posted on January 1, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Happy New Year, everybody!  I’ve made it back from undisclosed locations and the new year in one piece.  I have a whole series of chores and resolutions to attend to, but I thought I’d start my day looking over the most commented on pieces here at EMUTalk in 2011.  In brief, last year was the year of budget cuts and layoffs.

From February, “Snyder to EMU (and other state supported universities): Drop Dead.”

From April, “Did the Provost quit? Was he fired? What?”

Also from April, “Meanwhile in budget news: think scenarios and not cuts,” which actually turned into a “discussion” about the Bowen parking lot and the expense of sabbaticals and the like.

Then the end of May was pretty busy/popular, with three heavily commented posts right in a row: “Perhaps we can chant “Education First!” at the games…,” Administration asking for unions to give money back during a “fluid” situation,” and “Martin’s budget update, “givebacks,” tuition, and athletics.”

At the end of June there was “Thoughts as the dust settles on lay-offs.” That turned out to be the most commented on post of the year, by the way.

“Glad Ron English is having “fun” with the increased budget,” back in July. It seems to me that the Emus break-even season will save English for another few seasons, though I still don’t think the “fun” he had with the increased budget was worth it.

“EMU planning 9/11 memorial after receiving steel column from World Trade Center” back in early August.

“Pray-Harrold open–sort of,” which wasn’t necessarily the most commented on post of the year but it sure seemed like a big event for me.

“‘Which Core Matters More?’ (featuring Mark Higbee), an October debate on general education.

“Emus beat horses, 14-10″ in November, which kind of turned into a “discussion” about attendance at games.

“Kwame Kilpatrick is coming to EMU, causing controversy already” back in November, though it was pretty much a non-story in the end.

And then sadly (now), there was this post,“Greg O’Dell returns to Eastern Michigan University as executive director of public safety and chief of police.”

Okay, enough with last year and into this year– even though it doesn’t really feel like the new year to me because it’s really just the beginning of the next semester… you get the idea.

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Posted in Administrator Life, Blogosphere, Budgets, EMU Events, EMUtalk.org News, Faculty Life, In the media..., Staff Life, Student Life

Horrible news

Posted on December 23, 2011 by | 6 Comments

From annarbor.com, “EMU Police Chief Greg O’Dell mourned after his death at age 54.”

So unbelievable. My sympathies to his family and friends.

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Posted in Administrator Life, In the media..., Security and Safety

Two bits of extra credit reading

Posted on December 16, 2011 by | 1 Comment

I’m not procrastinating from finishing up my fall term– honestly, I’m not!  Well, maybe a little.  In any event, I thought I’d pass along two links to things that I thought would be of interest here.

First, there’s  ”Bowling for Chumps,” by Pete Kotz in The Village Voice.  Alert EMUTalk reader Dick Schwarze posted this in the comments and I thought it deserved a promotion to the main part of the site.  Kind of a long piece, but an extremely detailed account of the highly dubious world of college bowl games.  Makes me glad that the Emus didn’t quite get there this year.

Second, there’s “What is College For?” a column in the “opinionator” part of the New York Times by Gary Gutting.  It simply puts out there an answer to the question at hand that is a useful reminder that college is about more than job training and that both faculty and students have an obligation to remember that.  I found it an inspiring way to get to that pile of grading.

Speaking of which….

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Posted in Academics, Blogosphere, Faculty Life, In the media..., Sports, Student Life

“EMU union says several lecturers went without pay for more than a month”

Posted on December 15, 2011 by | 11 Comments

This from annarbor.com.  Here’s a quote:

Sonya Alvarado and Lisa Laverty, president and grievance officer respectively of the EMU Federation of Teachers, the school’s union for part- and full-time non-tenure tract faculty, said that dozens of adjunct lecturers did not get paid on time.

“It varied,” Laverty said of the late payments. “Some people only missed a paycheck or two, other people weren’t paid until the end of October or early November and at that point they’d taught almost until the end of the semester already.”

According to EMU’s Office of Academic Human Resources, paychecks have been late in previous years as well. In a statement, the office said the number of late paychecks “in fall 2011 was less than any year in recent history.”

The office did not say how late paychecks from previous years were.

And, as Alvarado pointed out, a lot of folks who are teaching part-time need that money to do stuff like, you know, buy food and pay rent.  So obviously, this is a problem.

I’ve actually experienced some payroll problems firsthand this school year– minor inconveniences compared to what’s going on with these folks, but still problems.  I don’t know if it is the staff who cut the checks, the suits along the way who have to process the forms, or some combination of both, but it is definitely a part of the bureaucracy around here that could use some improvement.

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Posted in Administrator Life, EMUFT, Faculty Life, In the media...

“Women defeat U of M, James sets EMU record”

Posted on December 12, 2011 by | 2 Comments

I haven’t been following basketball too closely yet, but as the Echo reported, it would appear the women’s team is doing pretty well– at least they just beat Michigan and they’re 6-3 right now.  I have no idea if U of M’s women’s basketball team is any good this year– and guessing from this game, I’d guess not– but it’s still always good to see the Emus come out on top of that other university in town.

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Posted in College Fun, In the media..., Sports

“At Forum on the Future, Leaders Dissect What Ails Higher Education Today”

Posted on December 12, 2011 by | Leave a comment

One of the things that I notice about the end of the fall semester is that everyone seems pretty tense and often a little depressed, I suppose because of the stress and pressures of ending the term well combined with stress and pressures of the holidaze, too. So in that sense, it doesn’t surprise me that a bunch of education wonks are dwelling on the negative, according to this CHE piece,  ”At Forum on the Future, Leaders Dissect What Ails Higher Education Today.”

There are two (related, I suppose) issues that came up here that I do think that many of us faculty-types are not of aware of as we should be:  the cost of tuition and the general “economic crisis” that is going on in the world.  Higher Ed needs to respond.  And (to quote):

And James J. Duderstadt, a former president of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, suggested that many in academe may not see a need to do things differently. In a time of cultural and economic turmoil, universities may be “out to sea as a tsunami of change comes through, destroying everything on land.”

The upheaval is felt on campus, he said, as merely “a few ripples.”

I see Duderstadt’s point.  Frankly, I have colleagues who lament a work schedule that requires them (because of meetings and such) to be on campus four days a week, and at the same time, I just heard a story on “Morning Edition” just now about the ridiculously high percentage of Americans who can’t find anything but part-time work.  There’s a disconnect there, right?

But like I said, everyone is a little stressed out….

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Posted in Administrator Life, Faculty Life, In the media..., Student Life, The Market Crash of 2008

Shots fired at Virginia Tech, campus on lockdown

Posted on December 8, 2011 by | 1 Comment

This is a quickly evolving story (it was on CNN as I was leaving the house today), but the short version is there is a shooting incident going on at Virginia Tech.  Here’s a link to an article from MSNBC article and a quote:

 

A police officer was shot at Virginia Tech on Thursday morning and officials warned everyone to seek shelter while an armed suspect was at large on the campus where 33 people died in 2007 in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

The campus newspaper and a local television station reported the officer was dead.

A possible second victim was reported at a campus parking lot, CBS television station WDBJ reported.

“We don’t know if the suspect fled or the extent of the injuries to the suspect or to the officer,” NBC News’ Pete Williams told msnbc cable TV earlier.

“This was a traffic stop on campus,” Williams said. “It was not someone walking around firing shots.”

I’m sure there will be more coming out about all this.

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Posted in In the media..., Security and Safety