Nicholas Kristoff, NY Times Teaching is unusual among the professions in that it pays poorly but has strong union protections and lockstep wage increases. It’s a factory model of compensation, and critics are right to fault it. But the bottom line is that we should pay teachers more, not less �[...]
Posts Tagged ‘Public Schools’
April 6th, 2011 - 7:28 am § in Misc.
UPDATE: Bad Investment: Enrollment Plummets at University of Phoenix, Implications for Washington’s Layoff of Higher Ed faculty
Updated from original post on 25 Feb 2011 : As we struggle with the soaring demand for higher ed, how will we meet it if we fire faculty? Last month’s news release about the fall in sales by the Univ. Of Phoenix needs to be paired with the severe cuts being made in faculty in […][...]
Jeb Bush style school reform
The salesman is not the 43rd president, George W. Bush, but the 43rd governor of Florida, his brother Jeb. At the core of the Jeb Bush agenda are ideas drawn from his Florida playbook: Give every public school a grade from A to F. Offer students vouchers to help pay for private school. Don’t l[...]
The Wedge: A Chilling Tale of a Possible Future
The sun shone on another day of Summer Session on campus in a small college town. In a large yet somewhat stuffy lecture hall in one of the oldest buildings, the professor had reached a favorite part of his lecture on this period in European history. His voice didn’t drone on—it rose as [...]
March 23rd, 2011 - 8:45 am § in Schools & Colleges
More on WGU: Will WA vote to lower standards of higher ed.?
The bill to make Western Governors University an official state university will probably pass. Johann Neem from United Faculty of Washington Blog. This blog has been against it for all the right reasons—that it denigrates the value and meaning of a college education, reducing college to a set of s[...]
March 22nd, 2011 - 1:55 pm § in Schools & Colleges
Computer Science at an Online University, Western Governors University,
Ed. Michael Stiber, a UW professor on Computer Science at Western Governors University,” has written a brief review of the offerings in Computer Science at WGU. This is important because Comp Sci, Nursing and K-12 teacher education are the three areas where WGU claims to have considerable stre[...]
March 21st, 2011 - 1:09 pm § in Schools & Colleges
Follow up: Is the loss of faculty jobs justified by magical new technology?
Academic Salaries? Not so Golden! Earlier today, I posted on the $700,000 salary of the President of an online only, no faculty university called Western Governors University. How does President Mendenhall justify such a salary? His website suggests he can do this because he claims not to ne[...]
March 19th, 2011 - 7:15 am § in Schools & Colleges
Does everyone need a college degree?
A new report, released by Harvard, states in some of the strongest terms that “college for all” emphasis may harm many American students – keeping them from having a smooth transition from adolescence to adulthood and a viable career. “The American system for preparing young people to lead p[...]
March 18th, 2011 - 10:18 am § in Schools & Colleges, UW
WERITAS: In 2008, before the cuts, did the UW receive the second highest appropriation per student in the country?
Ed. The issue of privatizing the “public ivies” .. flagship state universities that rank with the Ivy League … is VERY real. Berkeley and the Univ. of Wisconsin are already well along that path. The debate places the commitment of faculty and, often the business community, agai[...]
March 17th, 2011 - 3:19 pm § in America, Schools & Colleges
UTexas Extraordinary Alum Decries Efforts to Downgrade Academic Quality of UT
UT Regent: There’s nothing wrong with a Chevy education. Ed. I wonder if this guy actually thinks everyone in Texas is getting a Cadillac? Maybe there are even some kids there who deserve a BMW or Infiniti? Read the letter written to Regent Chairman Gene Powell by Gordon Appleman, ranked as [...]