FACULTY FOR THE RENEWAL OF PUBLIC EDUCATION

For shame!

2011-03-09T03:38:00.000-08:00

Guess who proposed stripping collective-bargaining rights from most public-college faculty members in Ohio? Bruce E. Johnson, aka the president of the state's Inter-University Council! Ohio's Senate recently passed the proposal as part of its evisceration of collective-bargaining rights in the public sector.

His reasoning?

"We are anticipating significant budget cuts, and so we view this as a rational step in terms of moderating our expenses on campus," Mr. Johnson said. "It is a leverage issue. It enables us to have more influence on scheduling issues and faculty-pay issues."

In other words, the bottom line trumps internationally recognized labor rights. The association's advocacy of this position also betrays pledges made by public-university presidents to remain neutral in the legislative debate on collective bargaining rights. The pending legislation classifies most faculty as management and hence bars them from bargaining collectively. Faculty are management, these folks argue, because we serve on powerless faculty senates and vote on things such as hiring, promotion, and tenure.

Ex-lawmakers as Regents

2011-03-08T02:25:00.000-08:00

Still stinging from the last round of Regents' appointments, the DFL is striking back with a bill that would limit the number of ex-lawmakers that can serve as Regents. DFLers are miffed by the selection of two former Republican representatives, Steven Sviggum and Laura Brod. These two appointments bring the total number of lawmakers on the Board of Regents to three, which is one-fourth of the board. What irks me about the Regents is not the number of lawmakers who serve as Regents but the rubber stamping of the administration's lousy proposals. This bill will do nothing to fix that...and it doesn't have a snow ball's chance in hell of passing anyhow.

This week @Minnesota

2011-03-07T03:59:00.000-08:00

More university PR featured on You Tube. So far there have been four installments.

Academic freedom and the corporate university

2011-03-06T03:54:00.000-08:00

Check out Bill Gleason's post on the Chronicle's Brainstorm page. Bill is a faculty member at the University of Minnesota. He draws on some examples from the University of Minnesota to illustrate how corporate money undermines academic freedom and compromises research ethics.

More propaganda...

2011-03-06T02:29:00.000-08:00

As part of its propaganda campaign, the U has released a study about the U's economic impact on the state of Minnesota. Since the U paid for the report, the results are undoubtedly quite satisfactory to administrators. The message: the U is a good economic investment, so give us more money. One can view the equivalent of the executive summary at the link above. Madradprof did not see a link to the full report there. Setting aside the idiocy of contracting the report in the first place, the report strikes me as utterly unconvincing. The main claim is that through the direct money that the U spends, and the indirect spending that results from others who spend that money in turn--the multiplier effect--the U contributes gazillions of dollars to the state's economy and provides lots of jobs. Ok, so what? By this logic using this money for other public services would be just as beneficial in that it would also create jobs and put money into the economy. So why give the money to the U? The case for research money is a little more convincing, since this money comes from outside the state, but they omit that these grants don't cover their costs and are in effect subsidized by bonding bills--needed to build the fancy facilities to carry out the research--and tuition-generating units of the university.

The company that prepared the economic impact report, Tripp Umbach, wrote another report for the U in 2004 to convince legislators to sink money into biomedical venture capitalism. The report claimed that this investment would create over 12,000 jobs. Alas, things have not turned out so well. One expert consulted back in 2004 commented, "One should always be leery of written-to-order studies."

P&As get screwed...again

2011-03-06T00:19:00.000-08:00

The admin has decided once again to place much of the burden of adjustment of budgetary constraints on the backs of P&A employees. The U currently provides P&As with 11 years of service one year of notice before layoffs. The proposal will cut it to six months. This change in policy is less egregious than the long-held practice of simultaneously issuing a non-renewal notice and an appointment letter to P&As. By doing this, the U gains enormous flexibility in controlling the size of the P&A workforce. But this flexibility comes at the price of treating P&A staff as disposable workers. Those who get the boot not only lose their job. Since the window for applying for severance pay is 60 days after the termination notice, many employees could potentially miss the opportunity to claim their severance and extended medical benefits. Madradprof's P&A contacts state that this practice is rife at the U for instructional P&A. Any chance that faculty senate committees would initiate a resolution condemning this practice?

The high cost of college sports

2011-03-06T00:00:00.000-08:00

PBS's Need to Know recently aired a segment on the impact of big athletic spending on higher education. It does a nice job of demonstrating that students are subsidizing lavish spending on Division I athletics through high fees and that universities continue to shovel money into athletics while allowing classroom infrastructure to fall into disrepair and cutting academic programs to the bone.

How the FDA got the Markingson case wrong

2011-03-05T05:29:00.000-08:00

Carl Elliott digs deeper into the U's claim that the FDA's investigation of Markingson's death is sufficient to exonerate the U. He concludes that it is not. Why? The FDA's investigation was shoddy.

Yet another bill to rein in administrators

2011-03-02T18:49:00.000-08:00

State legislators have already proposed legislation that would limit the power of university administrators to raise tuition. Now Senator Jeremy Miller (R-Winona) has introduced legislation to reduce spending on administrative costs by 10% at state universities. Interesting....the devil is in the details. Money is fungible so I worry that academic programs, which are already suffering from years of deep cuts, would take the hit. In spite of reduced funding, the enthusiasm of administrators for new building projects and new reporting requirements for faculty (which of course means that more administrators must be hired to conduct the monitoring) has not waned. Faculty have proven unable (and perhaps unwilling) to act collectively to alter this course. So now the legislature weighs in. Faculty must find a way to open a productive dialogue with these legislators.

Tenure protections weakened at University of Louisiana

2011-03-02T18:40:00.000-08:00

The changes at the University of Louisiana now permit administrators to layoff professors whose programs have been discontinued and reduced the required notice for layoffs.

Proposed cuts to faculty retirement plan

2011-02-26T07:06:00.000-08:00

Many readers have no doubt been following the recent attacks on public sector workers. Republicans have asserted that public sector workers are pampered in comparison to private sector workers, earning higher salaries and benefits. The NYT recently analyzed differences in public and private sector salaries and found that this assertion only holds for public sector workers without college degrees. If you have a college degree and work in the public sector, you are paid less than similarly educated workers in the private sector. (But we knew that already as do most folks who live in a fact-based universe.) Public sector workers have often accepted lower pay in exchange for better benefits packages and greater job security. With strained state budgets, benefits are on the chopping block.

The University of Minnesota is not immune to these forces. We already know that we're not getting raises next year. We're paying more for our health benefits. And now it's time to go after retirement benefits. Madradprof strongly encourages everyone to read the most recent SCFA minutes, which discuss in some depth the plans for changing the faculty retirement plan, which also covers P&A staff. None of the proposals involve leaving the plan as is, although Carol Carrier states that this option is still on the table. On the menu: creating a two-tier system in which new faculty get an inferior plan while existing faculty get to keep what we have. (This is supposedly Prez Bruininks's preferred solution.) This route has the advantage of getting around the pesky tenure code, since if the administration wants to cut faculty compensation, they *might* have to get a vote from the Faculty Senate--the ambiguity here arises from inconsistency across sections in the tenure code with some sections requiring faculty approval for cuts in compensation and others for cuts in salary. Since new faculty would be enrolled in the inferior program from day one of their employment, they would not experience a cut in benefits. This proposal may fly politically since a lot of current faculty will probably be ok with it as long as their retirement benefits aren't cut. (Yes, I'm cynical.) The other two items on the menu are regressive as both entail across the board cuts in the U's contribution, regardless of income--from 13 per cent to 10 per cent, varying in terms of whether the cut is done in one fell swoop or over a period of three years.

Please share comments about what you think should be done. IMHO it is always a mistake to agree to two-tier systems, since this creates yet more divisions among us. Madradprof also has doubts about the ethics of saving our own asses at the expense of new colleagues. The tenor of the discussion also seems to me to be a bit insincere, i.e. that it is being driven by the political climate rather than by money. As you'll note in the minutes, cuts in contributions for new faculty are discussed in the context of offering higher starting salaries...so it is a bit of a shell game. Let's move the money around so that politicians don't get upset about the retirement plan! Bad idea. Make the conversation about TOTAL COMPENSATION. Faculty salaries at Minnesota are on the low end in comparison to peer institutions. Our total compensation package, however, is more competitive. So leave the retirement plan alone.

Lowering Higher Education

2011-02-25T20:11:00.000-08:00

Inside Higher Ed has published an interview with James E. Côté and Anton L. Allahar, authors of the new book Lowering Higher Education: The Rise of Corporate Universities and the Fall of Liberal Education (University of Toronto Press). Among other things they discuss the expanding links between corporations and institutions of higher ed, the transformation of universities into corporate-like institutions, the vocationalization of higher education, the consumer model of education, and restoring liberal education. Some of the comments are interesting, in particular those that note the complicity of professors in the corporatization of higher education and the expressed desire of many corporations for graduates who can write and think (i.e. many corporations don't want worker bees with just vocational credentials).

Bye-bye Faculty Senate

2011-02-25T19:50:00.000-08:00

The Faculty Senate at Idaho State had the nerve to pass a no-confidence resolution in the president. Their reward? At the urging of the prez, the Idaho State Board of Education voted to suspend the Faculty Senate. The U's prez has been ordered to replace the Faculty Senate with an interim faculty advisory structure. (Hopefully Idaho State faculty will boycott this new advisory body.) Faculty at Idaho State were considered to be obstructing progress because they refused to rubber stamp the administration's reorganization plan and raised doubts about President Vailas's honesty. So instead of firing the prez, the Board of Education fired the Faculty Senate. The AAUP has threatened to investigate. Unfortunately what has happened at Idaho State is yet another illustration of the weaknesses of shared governance in higher education today. Administrator's will consult with faculty, but if faculty are too vocal in their opposition to administrators' plans, these bodies are ignored or disbanded with a stroke of the pen.

MLA counter-conference

2011-02-17T06:09:00.000-08:00

Don't despair if you missed the MLA counter-conference on strategies for defending higher ed. You can watch parts of it here.

Tell MPR how the budget cuts are affecting the U

2011-02-15T16:43:00.000-08:00

Link here to fill out MPR's survey about how the budget cuts are affecting higher education in the state.

University Inc Part II

2011-02-15T15:25:00.000-08:00

For an excellent analysis of what ails the U, see Michael McNabb's recent post on the Periodic Table blog. You can link to part I from this page as well.

Tuition freeze?

2011-02-15T05:57:00.000-08:00

Senator John Carlson, a member of the Senate Committee on Higher Ed, has introduced legislation calling for a temporary tuition freeze and permanent limitations on tuition increases at UM and MNSCU. The first committee hearing on the bill is Wednesday, February 16. Carlson argues that the bill would force higher ed systems "to make true structural reform to push revenue into the classrooms and reduce administrative overhead."

President Bruininks opposes the bill.

The bill has some limitations, but it has the potential to open up a fruitful discussion with legislators about some fundamental problems at the U. Without strong outside pressure, university administrators are unlikely to shift money from administration to instruction. They will also continue to be duplicitous about how tuition is being used to subsidize the expansion of expensive scientific research. Note: this is not an anti-science or anti-research tirade--research is a cornerstone of what we do. But there's no denying that the U has continued to make big investments in science even when facing brutal budget cuts. Administrators are counting on federal grants to fill the flashy new buildings with brilliant scientists at a time when federal grants are becoming harder to get. The grants don't cover the full cost of the research, meaning that the money to cover the rest of it has to come from somewhere. Expanding scientific research therefore means increasing cross-subsidies from other parts of the university. Perhaps this bill will prompt an honest conversation of what it costs to educate students and the true costs of research.

University violates spirit if not letter of open meeting law

2011-02-14T17:52:00.000-08:00

Back in November MPR filed a request under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act for documents related to the scheduling of meetings, interviews, and meals between the regents and Kaler. The documents show that the regents had a "social dinner" with him on November 17th. Social dinners are not covered by the state's open meeting law. As long as they don't talk business, they are kosher. (But how would we know that they didn't talk business?) Additional private meetings were held the day before Kaler was hired. The regents again skirted the open meeting law by scheduling a series of three one hour meetings, each with three regents in attendance. As long as the meetings don’t contain a majority of members, they comply with the letter of the law, even though when combined they do. Read more here.

OIP becomes GPS Alliance - Why you should give a #%&@*

2011-02-13T15:34:00.000-08:00

Back in December madradprof read with some consternation the November 23 minutes of the Committee on Faculty Affairs. One of the guests was Dean McQuaid of the Office of International Programs (OIP). Effective January 1, 2001, OIP was renamed the Global Programs and Strategy Alliance (GPS Alliance). The plan the Dean proposed sounded too ridiculous and I figured it would go nowhere. But a grad student in CLA was recently denied permission to do research in Nigeria because these folks decided it was too dangerous. For some years OIP has limited travel destinations for undergraduate study abroad, but it has not restricted graduate student travel. And they have plans for monitoring faculty as well. So it's time to shed a bit of light on what's going on with the transformation of OIP because something must be done to STOP them!

The concern about "risks and liabilities" when faculty travel abroad is driving the conversation. To avoid risk, faculty (and grad students) must be tracked. Right now faculty apparently go dashing off to all sorts of dangerous places and nobody knows about it. They must be protected by university bureaucrats! Texas A&M is held up as a model--there they deny reimbursement to faculty who do not report their international travel ahead of time. According to the Dean, the policy being developed will require reporting overseas travel but not require faculty to obtain permission. Sanctions for not complying are still under discussion. Apparently grad students are being required to obtain permission, as evidenced by the experience of the CLA student.

What is missing in the Dean's narrative is any evidence whatsoever that faculty have needed rescuing by the U. In other words, there is not really a problem, but there might be one, so the U should erect a vast monitoring (the Dean says it's not monitoring but methinks she doth protest too much) system and require yet more reporting from faculty--on top of the already onerous reporting and permission seeking that we already do. (How many hours did you spend on IRB applications last year?) It will be costly to monitor faculty travel and the benefits of doing so are minimal, so this seems like a ridiculous plan at a time when the U is facing huge budget cuts.

Even if we had loads of money, the plan is paternalistic and just plain dumb. The bureaucrats themselves admit that the liability issues associated with international travel are the same as for domestic travel. Even if we do report our travel, how will they know something bad has happened to us--will we be required to check in every day? Maybe they should just microchip us (GPS-Alliance could GPS us!) so that they know where we are all the time. Perhaps faculty could also be mounted with distress buttons so that we could call out for help. What are they gonna' do if we do get in trouble...send in a private military corporation to save us from the dangerous natives? No, they'd probably just do what our families and friends would do, which is call the State Department.

But the most important issue is that of academic freedom. Will grad students (and perhaps faculty) be barred from doing research in large swathes of the world?

**
EXCERPT from the 11/23/2010 minutes of the Faculty Affairs Committee

1. Faculty Travel Abroad and Possible Policy

Professor Sheets convened the meeting at 2:30 and welcomed Dean McQuaid to discuss issues associated with faculty travel abroad and a possible proposal about registering for such travel.

Dean McQuaid began by noting that she is both Associate Vice President and Dean of the Office of International Programs, a central office that provides service to all campuses. As she had noted earlier for the Senate Research Committee:

OIP is a system office that serves all five campuses; OIP has about 100 employees and a budget of about $22 million (approximately $17 million of which is funding from students studying abroad, which is then redistributed to the providers of the study abroad opportunities). Dean McQuaid talked about the unique nature of her particular decanal role. Much like Wendy Lougee (Dean, University Libraries), her responsibilities reach across the academic units, requiring cooperative, supportive efforts to accomplish goals. She has been in the position for four years and has seen interest in internationalization grow dramatically, particularly with respect to the types and amount of international research by faculty and among graduate students. She has been in a number of meetings with Vice President Mulcahy about what is occurring with respect to international research funding, the risk and liabilities associated with those projects, and which central offices have responsibility for which aspects of this emerging phenomena. This is an evolving and growing field, particularly with respect to the kinds of funding available from around the world, and the types of issues/questions being addressed by the research. OIP has always been responsible for oversight and coordination of international undergraduate student experiences, but over the past 4-5 years there has been more demand on OIP for assistance, support, funding, advice, and coordination from faculty and staff as well. In light of this change, OIP has finalized and adopted a new five-year strategic plan, to better align resources and expectations.

One result of the strategic plan is that the office will change its name, effective January 1, 2011, to Global Programs and Strategy Alliance ("GPS Alliance"). The unit is not really an office, a center, or an institute; it really is an alliance. In order to achieve "comprehensive internationalization," (a term of art in the field), University units, colleges, and campuses must work together, through an alliance of interests and efforts.

When she took this job, she was asked to assess the University's international programs, so she worked with a small committee of key faculty and administrators to consider the range and type of risks and liabilities inherent in this kind of work. One resulting product of that work was a "heat map" charting the risks and liabilities and how well the institution was prepared for harm. For student mobility, the University is well prepared. The question before this Committee today is that of the level of risks and liabilities that arise when faculty travel overseas, Dean McQuaid said. The University often has no idea where faculty members are; faculty MIGHT tell their department head or dean that they are traveling abroad, but the practice varies by department and college. From conversations Dean McQuaid has had with faculty, deans, and administrators and staff around the system, it seems that both policy and enforcement varies widely.

A valid concern, she said, on behalf of the University, is for the safety of faculty members who travel abroad.

The reaction of some faculty to the idea that they need to report international travel is "what do you mean, I have to tell you where I'm going? Mind your own business." With more and more faculty members traveling overseas, however, the risks are increasing. For example, when there were bombings in Uganda, there was good reason to believe that University faculty and students were likely there—but the University had no idea precisely who. There have been incidents in India, Brazil, and Mexico as well (e.g., during the H1N1 outbreak) that put faculty members at risk.

The impact of not knowing ranges from public embarrassment for the University when it does not know who is where (something that also tends to irritate some in the legislature) to a lack of ability to help faculty members who may be in trouble. Things happen; the University wants to be able to help, not monitor. This is NOT "tracking," Dean McQuaid emphasized, because they are not particularly interested in what the individual may be doing or with whom they are meeting when they are overseas. But, she said, their whereabouts are critical to any effort to assist with getting someone home.

One step she has taken in response to the issues raised by assessment of the risks and liabilities is to appoint an international Health, Safety, and Compliance Coordinator, Stacey Tsantir. Ms. Tsantir is doing a lot of work to provide resources to faculty so they can educate themselves about international travel, prior to leaving the country.

The Proposal Routing Form (PRF) has recently been modified for several reasons, and among the modifications is a question that asks whether any of the research work associated with the funding will be conducted over seas, Dean McQuaid said. Her office is apprised of that situation, and can reach out to ask whether OIP can assist with visas, bank accounts, hiring employees, etc.

With respect to purchasing, Cliqbook [http://travel.umn.edu/onlineres.php] is currently the University's only travel-booking site and people can obtain deep discounts if they use it. In the future, Purchasing could be able to assist with identifying who was scheduled to have been in a place that is experiencing crisis because of travel arrangements made through Cliqbook. Texas A&M, for example, plans to require use of a single travel agency beginning early in 2011; currently, the University is only encouraging use of Cliqbook.

The question remains whether the University should require more reporting. Texas A&M has adopted a policy which denies reimbursement to faculty who did not report international travel in advance of the travel. That is a discussion that is being held here and it was an issue when Dean McQuaid visited this Committee a year ago. What happens to the information that is collected? That is a good question. Their thought is that only the travel site collects the information, it is not necessarily distributed to the department—and is later purged.

This is an issue for all major research universities, Dean McQuaid related. None of them have any clear idea where the faculty go or what they are doing, so they cannot effectively tell the broader community what their institution is doing around the world—and it cannot help faculty who encounter problems. The University of Michigan, Michigan State, Duke, and the California system are each at different points in considering policies and enforcement. At some universities, these conversations are non-starters, at others there is more compulsory enforcement of policies, and others (like the University) are still finding their way. But, international crises of all kinds are not waiting for higher education institutions to develop a response.

Professor Kulacki asked whether there is a liability issue; if a faculty member is injured abroad, what is the University's liability? The same as it is for domestic travel, Dean McQuaid said. Ms. Tsantir said that there are employee benefits that cover people who are injured. So there is no downside to receiving support from OIP, Professor Kulacki concluded.

There is also the travel-assistance program Medex, Mr. Chapman reminded the Committee—but that is only helpful if the faculty member can get in touch with it. If they are being held incommunicado, it can't help. And if someone does not show up when expected, it may be only the spouse or partner who knows that a person is in trouble somewhere, Dean McQuaid added, and the University would be unable to help.

Professor Miksch reported that she has to fill out a form indicating when and where she will travel. That practice varies by college, Dean McQuaid said, as does the disposition of the form once it is filled out. It may end up in a paper file in an office and it could be that no one knows where it is; the information may be inaccessible to the office or unit that could help someone. Professor Hanna asked if there are units that provide a good model that could be adopted more broadly. Dean McQuaid said that she understands that the School of Nursing ties reimbursement to completion of a travel form. Her concept is that of a travel registry; the college would not own the data, and when the traveler returns, the data would be purged. Some faculty members are unwilling to have their department or chair know of their travel—something it is difficult to cannot understand—and may make arrangements for their classes and so on, and just go.

Professor Sheets said he was puzzled why this would be controversial. If that could be ascertained, the problem could be overcome. Several Committee members expressed incredulity that faculty members would travel without notifying their department. Professor Sirc commented that perhaps if one is traveling to interview for another job, one might not want the department to know, but otherwise he was flabbergasted that faculty members would travel without letting anyone know. Mr. Orlic said that there could be a problem if the faculty member skips class, but perhaps has the TA teach. That would also be doing something wrong, Professor Sheets responded.

What reasons do faculty members give for not indicating travel plans, Ms. Stenhjem asked? It is not the University's business, they are fulfilling job responsibilities, and the like, Dean McQuaid said. They are doing so on the University's dime, Professor Sirc commented. Dean McQuaid reported that some faculty members said they would not report unless required to do so, but the tenor of the times is more persuasive than a worry about academic jealousy or some such reaction, because more faculty members now know about others who were sick or stuck abroad. A central repository of information would take the matter out of college hands.

Professor Sheets asked if it would be helpful for the Committee to take a position on the issue. Dean McQuaid said that the University must decide what it wants. It is a big issue and the University needs to figure out its response. She has been invited to talk to the senior executives about oversight; she will draft a policy and see if the institution feels strongly enough to take a position. There could be multiple responses: the institution should not adopt a policy, it must adopt a policy, it should further investigate such a policy. But for the four years she's been in this position, the question she is asked most often is "how come you don't know where people are?"

Dean McQuaid said that any policy proposed would go through the normal process, which would include review by appropriate Senate committees. The proposal being developed provides that faculty and staff travel overseas must be reported in advance; she said that no decision had been made regarding repercussions for not following the policy, including but not limited to denying reimbursement if the reporting does not occur. She emphasized that the policy would not call for obtaining permission, only for reporting.

Professor Cline said he supported the idea of a policy but noted that there is a great deal of reimbursement that comes from outside the University. He suggested that people should notify both their college and Dean McQuaid's office. What about when traveling on University and personal business, Professor Bornsztein asked? Dean McQuaid said the policy would cover travel on University business.

The sanction need not be either/or, Professor Sheets suggested. If one is negligent in reporting the first time, expenses could still be covered.

Professor Sirc asked about the 35% figure for UMTC students who have a study-abroad experience. Is that between the time they come to the University and the time they graduate? Or is it per year? In any given academic year 35% of students will be outside the U.S., Dean McQuaid said. Many go without earning credit; the number would be higher if those students were counted. That would be useful information for the University to project, Professor Sheets said; does University Relations know that our study abroad numbers are this high? They do, Dean McQuaid said, as do the President and vice presidents, and they often use the fact in public remarks. Dean McQuaid reported that her office also has great websites that her staff has developed that are known nationally, and they are asked to provide training nationally on both study abroad procedures and programs, as well as on international recruitment, orientation, enrollment and support. OIP websites can be accessed throughwww.international.umn.edu.

Professor Bornsztein asked what the policies at other Big Ten schools are. Dean McQuaid said that Michigan State has a voluntary registry (which her counterpart said does not work very well; there generally needs to be either a carrot or a stick approach). The University of Michigan also requires reporting and, for the first year of the policy, there will be no repercussions for failing to report, though that may be added later. She said she does not favor unnecessary or ineffective policies and forms, which is why she wants to keep it simple and clean and have the data destroyed after the travel is complete.

Professor Sheets thanked Dean McQuaid for her report and for bringing the proposal up for discussion

The Myth of Charter Schools

2011-02-11T15:55:00.000-08:00

Madradprof is catching up on back issues of The New York Review of Books and came across this gem by Diane Ravitch. It's a review of the film Waiting for Superman. She does a nice job of trashing the argument that teachers are to blame for the failure of the nation's public school system. She also demonstrates quite convincingly that privatizing education has not (and will not) produce the positive results that its advocates claim.

U still clueless on conflict of interest

2011-02-08T05:58:00.000-08:00

Very disappointing...

And the reason...the Regents deem that since the FDA and Minnesota Board of Medical Practice said everything was hunky dory, the U should not expend resources on it.

Perhaps instead of spending millions of dollars on the Driven to Distraction/Because propaganda campaign the U should concentrate its efforts on strengthening its conflict of interest policy. Fat chance of that happening though, because it would mean FOREGOING CORPORATE $$$$ and upsetting RAINMAKERS, who might leave Minnesota for another institution where they can feed unhindered at the trough of big pharma.

Leigh Turner nicely sums things up: the response simply says “people have looked at this, so there’s nothing left to look at.”

Nevermind that the state legislature was so disturbed by the case that it passed a law barring patients under civil commitments from consenting to medical research. Or that Minnesota's mental health ombudsman questioned the recruiting practice. It doesn't take much in the way of critical thinking ability to figure out that getting paid by pharmaceutical companies to recruit subjects for clinical trials creates incentives for people to do bad stuff.

As far as the Regents and top administrators are concerned, however, if it ain't illegal, then the U is in the clear and there's no need for introspection about how the U's lax conflict of interest policy contributed to a tragic outcome. (And no, the new conflict of interest policy does not fix this problem!)

Revenue trumps research

2011-02-08T05:46:00.000-08:00

Nice article in the Daily about turning research land in UMore Park into a gravel mine and housing community. One researcher, Dr. DiCostanzo, was reprimanded for publicly criticizing the U's plans for UMore land. Wait a minute...Doesn't the U's academic freedom statement protect such speech??? The Senate's AFT Committee should look into this. Other faculty are also upset about it and complain that the U did not consult with them sufficiently before moving forward with the plan.

You will be assimilated

2011-02-06T04:40:00.001-08:00

The U's omnipresent branding campaign makes madradprof think about the Borg episodes of Star Trek Next Generation. The Borg, a race with a collective consciousness, are bent on assimilating all sentient beings into their collective. "Resistance is futile...you will assimilate," they told the Enterprise's captain, Jean Luc Picard.

The branding campaign has expanded beyond "Driven to Discover" (or to Distraction, or to Disaster, or to Dismay...pick your Dis!) to incorporate the "Because..." slogan. Before entering the legislative briefing in January, attendees were required to have a mug shot taken with a "Because..." slogan of their choice. Michael McNabb kindly shared his mug shot with me. (What a good sport, look at that big smile!)

To spread the brand, the U has set up a branding home page. Here one can access logos, pre-made brochures, etc. There are even Because logos for downloading. Tempting to produce some of our own Because messages. A friend suggested "Because the financial crisis requires the elimination of the extravagant compensation paid to administrators" or (2) "Because the University can no longer afford multi-million dollar subsidies to the athletic department each year." But upon reflection we thought that the U's branding police might come after us...

If you haven't already, watch the vomit-inducing ad for which the U probably spent hundreds of thousands of dollars Since 2007, the U has paid the Olson & Co. advertising firm over $6 million for its assistance with the branding/marketing campaign. Evidently this ad along with the Because and Driven to Disaster mumbo-jumbo are supposed to make the citizens of Minnesota love the U and support giving it a bigger budget.

Conflict of interest redux

2011-02-06T00:31:00.000-08:00

City Pages digs deeper on the potential role of conflict of interest in UofM clinical trials in the death of Dan Markingson...Dr. Schulz does not come off well in this story...co-authoring with drug company researchers, questionable presentation of data in this co-authored work, and accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from drug companies for research, consulting fees, and other compensation . But perhaps most distressing:

In a separate deposition, Barden (note: a lawyer deposing Schulz) read an excerpt from a bioethics book arguing for the importance of informing patients about a doctor's financial ties to drug companies.

"Do you agree or disagree with that statement?" asked Barden

"I don't agree with that statement," replied Schulz, arguing that disclosing this information could "confuse" the situation.

Higher Ed discussions on Midmorning

2011-01-27T01:59:00.000-08:00

Two interesting discussions this week on MPR's Midmorning show:

Richard Arum and Mark Taylor, "Is Higher Ed Losing Its Meaning?"

Philip Babcock and Andrew Perrin, "A's for Everyone: The Problem of Grade Inflation on College Campuses"

The Prez’s Budget Update

2011-01-21T03:08:00.000-08:00

The budget outlook is gloomy. The state’s projected budget shortfall is $6 billion. The U’s forecast base for 2011-12 is $642.2 million, which is $51.1 million per year higher than this year’s state allocation. The U has asked that this forecast base be maintained, but there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that will happen given the political map and the state’s budgetary constraints. So brace yourself for another round of cuts, which the prez anticipates will hit hardest in 2011-12 academic year. Bruininks announced that there will be no raises in 2011-12 and all units will be asked to model 5 per cent cuts, and as in the past two years, the actual cuts will vary among units. Two-thirds of the budget gap will be closed with cuts and the remaining third with additional revenue. (Translation: tuition will increase, but the higher tuition will be taxed by central via cost pools, then reallocated away from instruction to feed the administration’s other priorities, and students will get screwed again…i.e. they will pay more but get less…) Read the entire message here.

Higher ed committees

2011-01-21T03:07:00.000-08:00

Useful profiles of the members of the state legislative committees...

Poverty wages for adjuncts

2011-01-21T03:06:00.000-08:00

A new study confirms what we already knew…adjuncts get screwed when it comes to pay and benefits. My guess is that the data would show even sharper differences if the measure used was the number of students taught rather than just number of classes taught. (This might be in the full report, which you can link to from the article…)

Academically Adrift

2011-01-20T17:03:00.000-08:00

Richard Arum, professor of sociology and education at New York University, and Josipa Roksa, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, have generated a lot of buzz with their new book, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (University of Chicago Press).

The argument: students are not learning very much in college

The evidence: the authors track 2,300 students enrolled at a range of four-year colleges and universities, assessing their progress with the Collegiate Learning Assessment. The test assesses gains in critical thinking, analytic reasoning, and other “high level” skills—it is NOT a subject matter test. Almost half of students demonstrated no significant improvement in learning in the first two years of college, and after four years of college over one-third (36 per cent) still had not learned much. Even students who did improve showed only modest gains.

The explanation: lack of rigor – student surveys show that about a third of students avoid classes with more than 40 pages of reading and more than 20 pages of writing, and students only spend about 12-14 hours/week studying, often studying with other students rather than on their own. (So about 2-3 hours per course/week.) They found that students who took demanding courses and studied more actually learned more than students who took less demanding courses and studied less. (Shocker!) Notably, students majoring in the liberal arts demonstrated "significantly higher gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills over time than students in other fields of study," although the authors were uncertain whether this is caused by greater rigor or the subject matter in the liberal arts. Another interesting finding is that students who received grant-based financial aid learned more than those who had student loans. There are also some disturbing findings about ethnic and racial disparities in learning.

Implications: There are a bunch, some that the authors stress, others that they don’t, but here are some obvious ones

- Courses need to be more rigorous (esp. more reading and writing)

- Reduce class size – grading writing is more time consuming than grading multiple choice tests

- Reduce teaching load/pay adjuncts more! – at schools where faculty have crushing teaching loads, and for most adjuncts, there are not enough hours in the day to do the grading for writing-intensive courses. Adjuncts are paid so little that they must teach many courses to make ends meet—if they were better compensated they could teach fewer courses.

- Grade harder – are 40-60% of the students in your course really doing A-level work? When students receive As for mediocre (or worse) work, they leave the classroom thinking, “I totally rocked on that assignment!” So why strive to do the reading or put more time into your essay when you’re getting As without doing the reading and half-assing the written work? Of course, the elephant in the room is student evals, which are the main tool for evaluating teaching effectiveness. It’s well known that the anticipated grade affects how students evaluate a course/instructor. Are assistant profs and adjuncts going to turn the screws on students if the outcome could be losing their jobs? Another issue is that some faculty, jealous of protecting their research time, may prefer to assign less work.

- The obsession with 4-year graduation rates must end – we should be more worried about the quality of the education that students receive and less concerned that they don’t finish in four years. Many of my students work 20-30 hours/week—few of them can manage a full course load of rigorous courses. They would get a better education if they took more time to complete their degree.

- High student debt impairs learning – students taking out huge loans work more and have less time to study. Ever-rising tuition means more debt. Tuition hikes need to be kept under control if we expect our students to be able to concentrate on their studies.

- Back to basics – stop flushing millions of dollars down the toilet on fancy facilities, sports, and administrative overhead. Shift the money to instruction.

Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle have nice summaries and discussion of the book, and an excerpt from the book.

Regent candidates

2011-01-20T06:05:00.000-08:00

The Daily just published a nice piece with profiles of the regent finalists.

Some highlights:

Steve Sviggum, candidate for the 2nd Congressional District “stressed the importance of reform and diversity.”

Laura Brod, the only female candidate, is also up for the 2^nd Congressional District. She gushed about the positive impact of a good education. Maybe she’ll advocate for shifting money from administration to instruction? Oppose disproportionate cuts to units that teach undergrads?

Tom Devine, also for the 2^nd District, is an insurance executive who likes to hang out with frat boys. He was praised for his knowledge of student life.

My money is on Brod…

Norm Rickeman, a candidate for the 3rd Congressional District, focused on diversity and equity. “Equity doesn’t mean treating everyone the same. You’ve got to recognize everyone needs an equal opportunity to succeed.”

Dr. Roby Thompson Jr, also for the 3^rd District, used to be on the faculty of the Medical School. Unclear what substantive views he has—from the article it seems that he decided to run on a whim.

David Larson, up for reappointment as a Regent from the 3^rd District, stated that he didn’t do enough during his first term and considers himself to be a “change agent.” As a former Cargill exec, he wants the University to be run more like a private business, for example, by adopting a new “policy ensuring every employee receives ‘candid, written, annual reviews,’ and the coaching they need to be fully engaged at the University.” He also wants to keep tuition affordable (Failed big time on that one last time around, buddy…)

Prediction: Larson will be reappointed…

Robert Ostlund is a candidate in the 8th Congressional District. He boasted about his “calming influence” on others. He’s served as a superintendent at schools across the metro area.

William Burns, also up for the 8^th District regent post, seemed to be unsure whether he had enough time to be a Regent. Not much in the way of specifics about his stances on higher ed, other than his desire to make the U LESS reliant on state funding while remaining affordable to students. (Um, how will you do that?)

Robert Kennedy, the outgoing prez of the University of Maine, is also a candidate for the 8^th District spot. The Committee focused on his budget cutting savvy, efforts to increase research, and experience commercializing the products of university research. (He also admitted that he was an applicant for the U’s presidency.)

The final candidate for the post, David McMillan, used to chair the MN Chamber of Commerce. He thinks the U should endeavor to commercialize more of its research by partnering with the private sector. Wait…Do I hear the motor for the state’s economy cliché coming? Vroooom!

If Kennedy meets the residency requirement, I think he’ll be the pick…

For the At-Large seat, there’s Allen Anderson (ag background, volunteers at the MN Agri-Growth Council, unclear what his stance is on higher ed issues), Steven Hunter (reappointment, AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer, he stressed the pain the U will endure with the budget cuts and emphasized the need to “rightsize”—i.e. cutting programs, reducing admin costs via staff reductions, and focusing on areas of strength—and of keeping tuition affordable). Given the anti-union sentiment of the Republican majority, my bet is that Anderson will be selected.

Weapon of the weak?

2011-01-16T05:16:00.000-08:00

A clever University of Colorado undergrad recently paid his tuition in one dollar bills. Guess how much $14,309 in dollar bills weighed? It took three people nearly an hour to count the money. Imagine if UofM students collectively protested tuition hikes by paying their tuition in $1 bills!?!

For shame!

2011-01-14T04:04:00.000-08:00

Thirty-six highly paid executives in the UC system have heralded the new year with a threat to sue UC unless it increases their retirement benefits. The cost of the added benefits would be about $5.5 million/year plus another $50 million or so to make the changes retroactive to 2007. With the UC ship sinking, and the pension system underfunded to the tune of over $20 billion, these overpaid execs decide to add more water to the boat...which just goes to show that highly paid execs care more about the almighty buck than the public institutions where they work. Tuition increases, layoffs, increased class size - no matter, they want their pound of flesh and then some! The public reaction has been...well...pretty darn angry. See the cloudminder blog for more coverage.

Faculty unionize, get kicked out of governance

2010-12-23T07:52:00.000-08:00

Faculty at Bowling State unionized this fall. In retaliation, the administration has eliminated numerous faculty committees and faculty evaluations of deans, directors and chairs. The administration also eliminated the faculty's role in determining financial exigency, a necessary step in dismissing tenured professors. The powers of the Undergraduate Council, which previously had to approve reorganizations, were diminished so that it may only advise the administration. According to the president,

the changes to the charter were merely an acknowledgment that the union is now the “exclusive representative” of the full-time faculty for all matters related to wages, working conditions and grievances. That necessarily means that Faculty Senate committees shouldn’t be in the business of addressing those issues, she said. “It was to draw a sharper distinction between management responsibilities and faculty responsibilities,” Cartwright said. “Nothing has changed in the charter with respect to the faculty’s governance responsibilities for academic matters.”

The actions clearly express the administration's hostility to faculty unionization. Many faculty are up in arms about the weakening of faculty governance institutions, and the elimination of the faculty role in declaring financial exigency and reconfiguring programs is disturbing. But most faculty governance institutions are purely consultative. Their elimination merely lays bare the power relations of the university. Now the administration does not even pretend that the faculty have a say in how the university is governed.

Rankings based on educational quality

2010-12-23T07:38:00.001-08:00

Interesting post by Bob Samuels on the Changing Universities blog. Basically, he argues that the academic arms race has done nothing to improve the quality of education but has resulted in the flushing of tons of money down the toilet on star professors and administrators, fancy buildings, etc. in a mad attempt to place highly in the rankings. If universities were ranked on a real assessment of educational quality, they would invest more money into instruction. He's not advocating standardized tests but rather an evaluation system that generates comparable data on the quality of instruction (unclear what that would be though from this post). (Samuels has a forthcoming book, The Tuition Trap: Why Costs Go Up and Quality Goes Down at American Universities.)

East-West adjuncts victory

2010-12-23T07:27:00.000-08:00

Last summer, East-West University denied contract renewal to five adjunct faculty members involved in a union drive...the faculty filed a complaint with the NLRB, and the University surrendered, signing an agreement to provide back pay and new job protections to the faculty members and to post notices that the administration will not retaliate against adjuncts that support a union drive. (The University admitted no fault in the agreement and denied that the nonrenewals were retaliatory.) Another union drive will begin in January. Avanti!

Incentive pay for online teaching

2010-12-23T07:12:00.000-08:00

The model developed at the University of Kentucky will probably spread as more and more universities turn to online courses to generate revenue. Rather than force faculty to teach online courses, the university will pay faculty who adapt a course $5,000 and share tuition revenues with the colleges and departments that offer them. It's a better system than at MNSCU, which was basically to force departments to increase enrollments (by going online) or face cuts. And it sounds like it's better than what the U does--I'm hearing that departments get nada for the online courses that they offer. But it could also lead departments to push online courses for revenue purposes without considering the (negative) pedagogical consequences. This scheme also looks ripe for the classic administrator bait and switch--provide incentives for departments and faculty to do something and then once the resources are committed, remove the incentive and recentralize any revenue generated. (Or just raise the cost pool charges...again!)

The death of universities

2010-12-21T18:59:00.000-08:00

Check out Terry Eagleton's provocative essay in the Guardian.

On the humanities:

The quickest way of devaluing these subjects – short of disposing of them altogether – is to reduce them to an agreeable bonus. Real men study law and engineering, while ideas and values are for sissies. The humanities should constitute the core of any university worth the name. The study of history and philosophy, accompanied by some acquaintance with art and literature, should be for lawyers and engineers as well as for those who study in arts faculties. If the humanities are not under such dire threat in the United States, it is, among other things, because they are seen as being an integral part of higher education as such.

(I guess we have something to be thankful for--could be worse!)

He has some harsh words for academia...wish he'd had more space to develop this point (i.e. what is at the root of academia becoming the servant of the status quo?):

What we have witnessed in our own time is the death of universities as centres of critique. Since Margaret Thatcher, the role of academia has been to service the status quo, not challenge it in the name of justice, tradition, imagination, human welfare, the free play of the mind or alternative visions of the future. We will not change this simply by increasing state funding of the humanities as opposed to slashing it to nothing. We will change it by insisting that a critical reflection on human values and principles should be central to everything that goes on in universities, not just to the study of Rembrandt or Rimbaud.

And the final paragraph:

Might not too much investment in teaching Shelley mean falling behind our economic competitors? But there is no university without humane inquiry, which means that universities and advanced capitalism are fundamentally incompatible. And the political implications of that run far deeper than the question of student fees.

In other words, saving the university requires...a revolution! I'm unsure that I'd go this far, but I'd agree that capitalism in its neoliberal mode is incompatible with the survival of the university. But as Karl Polanyi has argued, markets gone wild invite counter-movements that constrain markets. We have a lot of work to do to convince the public that universities are worth saving and that doing so requires shielding them from market forces.

Athletic bloat

2010-12-11T17:48:00.000-08:00

ESPN weighs in again, criticizing the madness in college sports. Gregg Easterbrook observes that only 14 Football Bowl Subdivision programs earn a profit and that no athletic department, not even powerhouses like Alabama and Auburn, have athletic departments that pay their own way. The median subsidy is a shocking $1o million. In 2008-9, colleges charged students $795 million to support athletics...and they are sneaky about it, burying the cost in fees.

On booster funds:

Booster funds not only fail to make collegiate sports self-sustaining, they may harm the colleges overall -- since many alumni and boosters who might donate to the general endowment or the scholarship campaign of Maryland or Miami or Wisconsin donate instead to the booster organizations. Over the years, billionaire T. Boone Pickens has donated nearly $500 million to Oklahoma State, his alma mater -- but most of the money has gone to athletics, not academics. The donation that UNC-Charlotte requires, in addition to the PSL fee? It goes to the booster fund, not to academics. At many colleges and universities, athletic programs cannibalize donations that might have gone to education.

So why do sports programs need huge subsidies? One reason: big bucks for coaches!

Big-deal college sports programs need subsidies in part because coaches of FBS and FCS football and Division I men's basketball teams are overpaid. There are nearly 100 big-sports college coaches earning at least $2 million annually, most at public universities. More than 200 assistant football coaches in the college ranks earn at least $250,000 annually, with Monte Kiffin of USC, the defensive coordinator, earning $1.5 million plus lavish perks. When Pete Carroll was head coach of USC, he was paid $4 million annually -- and in return, left the school's football program a flaming wreckage. Forbes estimates that Nick Saban is paid $4 million at Alabama.

Another reason...overstaffing:

In an era when budget stress is causing classes to be cut and core academic missions to be scaled back, many collegiate athletic departments are the most overstaffed organizations this side of a Monty Python sketch. Because sports is viewed as sacrosanct, the athletic department can get away with having far more people than needed -- then sending the bill to average students and to taxpayers. Ohio State lists 458 people in its athletic department. Included are the athletic director (who's also a vice president of the university), four people with the title senior associate athletic director, 12 associate athletic directors, an associate vice president, a "senior associate legal counsel for athletics" and plus a nine-person NCAA compliance office. NCAA rules are complex, to be sure, but does Ohio State really needs nine people who do nothing but push NCAA paperwork? The Ohio State NCAA compliance staff is lean and mean compared to the football staff, which includes 13 football coaches, a director of football operations, three associate directors of football operations, a "director of football performance" and three football-only trainers.

How do these numbers compare to academic departments at the school? There are 192 faculty members in Ohio State's English department, with a support staff of about 50. Thus the Ohio State athletic department has roughly twice as many people as the Ohio State English department. Sports receive more staffing than English though nearly all Ohio State students at some juncture take a course through the English department, while few participate in NCAA athletics. And sports receive more staffing than English, though there is a widespread feeling that many Americans are inadequately educated in subjects such as English, while not one single person in the entire United States believes there isn't enough emphasis on sports.

Now factor in the size of Ohio State's student body compared to the football roster. All those coaches and mysterious "associate directors of football operations" mean that in football, Ohio State has a 1-to-5 ratio of staff to students: while in English, the staff-to-student ratio is 1-to-280. Divide the latter by the former. In staffing terms, Ohio State treats football as 56 times more important than it does English.

He notes, by the way, that such overstaffing plagues not only big athletic schools but even the University of California at Berkeley. "In staffing terms, Cal treats football as 74 times more important than English." And the featherbedding continues in spite of the cuts that academic units are taking across the nation. Perhaps an enterprising Daily reporter will investigate the bloat in our athletics program...and don't forget to look into all the new facilities that are being built!

Call for a national union of adjuncts

2010-12-11T17:18:00.000-08:00

In a recent opinion piece in Inside Higher Ed, Keith Hoeller calls for the formation of a national adjunct union. He argues that existing faculty unions usually prioritize the concerns of tenured faculty over that of adjuncts and that the ultimate goal of a national union of adjuncts should be to abolish the two-track system and to complete equality for adjuncts. Existing organizations are dominated by tenure stream faculty. He asks:

Imagine if the civil rights movement had been led by white people, or the women's movement had been led by men, or the gay movement had been led by heterosexuals. Of course any social movement for the oppressed needs allies, but where would these movements be today if their primary leaders had not come from the oppressed class?

He adds:

There can be no solidarity in any union that adopts and supports a two-tiered system. Virtually all faculty unions in the U.S. have bargained — and continue to bargain — entirely separate and completely unequal contracts for their tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty. For decades the teachers unions have been following the practices of the Sheriff of Nottingham instead of Robin Hood...the three faculty unions have numerous chapters where adjunct faculty are in the same unions with the tenured faculty who serve as their direct supervisors. Everyone knows that people are loath to bite the hand that feeds them, even more so when that hand is protected by tenure. In their 100 years of existence, the NEA, AFT, and AAUP have failed to negotiate meaningful job security for nearly all of their adjuncts. Their monomaniacal devotion to tenure as an all-or-nothing idea has caused them to fail to seriously develop other forms of job security for adjuncts. Even now, in the midst of the Great Recession, with the wholesale massacre of thousands of adjunct faculty, the three unions are focused on protecting and increasing the number of tenured faculty.

It should be obvious why all three national faculty unions want adjuncts in the same unions, and why they fear an independent adjunct union. As long as adjuncts are in the same unions as the full-timers, they will be powerless and easy to control. The unions will not have to compete with them at the bargaining table. And union leaders know all too well that the adjuncts — who have no job security and are completely dependent on the full-time faculty — will not be willing or able to organize enough brave souls to take over the unions. The adjuncts will continue to beg the full-timers to represent them and to push their agenda for them.

Harsh words, but there's more than a grain of truth to them. Another advantage to forming an all adjunct union is that it could conceivably organize adjuncts across multiple campuses and collectively force colleges and universities in a geographic territory to offer better pay, benefits, and working conditions. Given that adjuncts often hold jobs at multiple institutions, organizing on just one campus doesn't do them much good. I value tenure and think that it's worth defending, but the new faculty majority is adjuncts, not tenured faculty. Universities and colleges across the nation will use the latest budget crunch to replace more tenured faculty with adjuncts. We need a solidaristic organizing model to confront this challenge, one that is based on the empowerment of all faculty, not a siege model that defends the benefits of the ever shrinking tenured faculty but leaves the adjuncts to work like slaves in order to maintain the benefits that tenured faculty enjoy. What would such a model look like?

FRPE's letter supporting call for independent panel to investigate Markingson suicide

2010-12-07T20:21:00.000-08:00

Dear Board of Regents Members:

We write in support of the call made by faculty members affiliated with the university’s Center for Bioethics for the Board of Regents to establish an independent panel of experts to investigate the suicide of Dan Markingson. We are particularly concerned that possible ethical violations at the University of Minnesota may have contributed to his death.

Dan Markingson committed suicide on May 8, 2004, while in a psychiatric study at the University of Minnesota, sponsored by the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. Articles in the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Mother Jones suggest that ethical violations contributed to Mr. Markingson’s death. These violations may have included the following:

1. The recruitment of a mentally ill subject into a research study while he was under an involuntary commitment order

2. Financial conflicts of interest on the part of the university researchers conducting the study

3. A payment structure which included financial incentives to recruit and retain subjects rather than provide them with standard therapy

4. A study design aimed at generating positive results for AstraZeneca rather than investigating a genuine scientific question

5. The failure of university researchers to address concerns of Mr. Markingson’s mother, who warned that Mr. Markingson was suicidal and who attempted for months to have him removed from the study

6. The development of a specialized unit in Fairview Hospital designed to identify severely mentally ill subjects for recruitment into research studies

7. A failure of the institutional oversight system for protecting human subjects of research.

These are all serious charges. If true, they suggest systemic problems in the way that clinical research is conducted and overseen at the university. Moreover, they erode confidence in research at the University of Minnesota, both within and beyond its medical school. It is essential that patients participating in research studies at the University of Minnesota, the university community at large, and the wider public, be confident that the university is doing everything it can to protect research subjects from harm.

We believe that an inquiry by an independent panel of experts in research ethics and the conduct of medical research is both warranted and necessary in order for the university to respond adequately to Dan Markingson’s death and take measures to ensure that research conducted here does not again result in a like tragedy. Transparency and accountability in conduct should be the touchstones of a public university.

Sincerely,

Bruce Braun, Department of Geography

Gil Rodman, Department of Communication Studies

Karen-Sue Taussig, Department of Anthropology

Antonio Vazquez-Arroyo, Department of Political Science

for Faculty for the Renewal of Public Education (FRPE).

Dan Markingson and conflicts of interest at the U

2010-12-06T17:15:00.000-08:00

A group of faculty affiliated with the U's Center for Bioethics has asked the Board of Regents to appoint an independent body of impartial experts to investigate the death of Dan Markingson, who died while participating in a clinical trial at the U. Seems like these folks think that the U's new conflict of interest policy isn't up to snuff. Read more about this tragic death in Carl Elliott's Mother Jones article, as well as here and here.

Student protests in the UK

2010-12-05T17:23:00.000-08:00

Michael Meranze has a great post up on the Remaking the University blog about the student protests in the UK. Looking forward to part II...

Also see NYT coverage...The students aren't just protesting about fee hikes but also about the structure of future increases and their impact on the curriculum: "Under the latest proposals tuition fees, now capped at £3,290, or $5,150, a year, would be allowed to rise as high as £9,000. Universities, which currently have their teaching budgets financed largely by the government, would see 80 percent of that subsidy removed — the only exceptions being courses in science, technology, medicine, nursing and “strategically important languages.”" In other words, students who want to study useless things like the humanities and social sciences would have to pay more...or universities, unable to sustain these programs with sharply reduced government funding might have to cut them entirely.

Hang onto your sabbatical!

2010-12-05T13:50:00.000-08:00

CLA's sabbatical policy stinks--sure, you can take one if you're willing to get hit with a 50% cut in pay. (Small liberal arts colleges have better programs than CLA--it's disgraceful that an R1 institution does not guarantee one semester of sabbatical at full pay.) But at least it seems that this stingy policy will not be cut further...although the sabbatical supplements may well be. In Iowa, legislators are threatening to take sabbaticals away from faculty in its institutions of higher education. Apparently they think that the state can save big bucks by preventing faculty from take a semester or year of "vacation." However, as John Curtis of the AAUP observed, the potential savings are tiny while the loss is huge: "the whole purpose of sabbatical is...to allow faculty members to do research, to engage in understanding new developments in their discipline and then to bring all of that back to their teaching." Faculty Senate President Edwin Dove noted that in 2009, University of Iowa professors wrote 26 books, published 147 research articles, created and updated nearly 100 classes, and submitted 50 grant applications during their sabbaticals. Eliminating sabbaticals, he said, "seems to me to be an unwise thing to do." UI professor of communication sciences and disorders Karla McGregor added that sabbaticals are essential to our intellectual growth: "If you don't have a chance to study and stretch yourself in new ways, you are not bringing those new ideas back to the students, back to the university, back to the state of Iowa."

Med schools only in it for the money

2010-12-05T13:33:00.000-08:00

A recent survey of medical faculty reveals that a large proportion of them think that medical schools only care about faculty to the extent that they are revenue generating machines. While it is hardly a shocking revelation that med schools have a large appetite for revenue, the medical faculty's disgust with the situation is newsworthy. Over half disagreed with the statement that their own values are aligned with those of the institution. One reason we have not heard louder complaints from our colleagues in medical schools is that about a third them are afraid to speak critically. (Thanks to Periodic Table for bringing our attention to this study.)

Blowing the whistle on the arms race in athletics

2010-12-05T13:10:00.000-08:00

You know spending on sports is getting out of control when ESPN writers blow the whistle. Jim Caple notes that die-hard fans of college athletics seldom donate to their alma mater's academic funds and that most athletics programs don't cover their costs. (Note: While success in athletics does bring in more donations to universities, these donations flow into athletics, not academics. See Weisbrod et al., Mission and Money (Cambridge 2008).) He laments the arms race in athletics, with ever escalating salaries for coaches and what seems to be the constant building of plush new facilities. His solution:

For every dollar spent on building or remodeling an athletic facility, the department must donate the same amount to the university's academics, either for the construction of needed buildings or for tuition subsidies. Every dollar spent on a revenue coach's contract must be matched by a fund for faculty, preferably for the low-paid graduate assistants who do most of the actual teaching at large schools. For every dollar a shoe or apparel company pays the athletic department to wear its product, it must pay the academic department.

How about it, prez-elect Kaler?

More big bonuses for administrators

2010-12-05T12:56:00.000-08:00

MNSCU is not alone in awarding big bonuses to administrators. At Duke, the chancellor of the health system received a bonus of almost $1 million. Total bonuses for highly paid administrators total $7-8m. Some clever students have drawn attention to the hypocrisy of asking everyone else to cut back while the administrators roll in the dough by holding a bake sale for billionaires and a toast for billionaires. As Margaret Soltan observes on her excellent blog, University Diaries, "At a time of real fiscal distress, Duke remains foursquare in its defense of its executive reward system. Its executives themselves are equally remarkable for their fidelity, through thick and thin, to the principle of unlimited personal enrichment."

Overpaid and underworked...I don't think so!

2010-12-03T16:34:00.000-08:00

William Reville, a professor of biochemistry at University College Cork in Ireland, has vented his anger about the public's perception of academic workloads and salaries. He does a nice job of exploding some common myths about academic labor. I anticipate that the workload survey will show that academics at the U also routinely work 50+ hour weeks, and that most of us on 9-month salaries spend the bulk of the summer doing unpaid work--writing those papers and chapters that we could not concentrate on during the semester due to our teaching and service responsibilities, updating our courses, and reading the backlog of recently-published scholarship pertinent to our research.

Restructuring at UCLA

2010-11-29T08:30:00.001-08:00

Bob Samuels has an interesting post up on the Changing Universities blog about the key components of the restructuring plan at UCLA. Some of it will sound familiar to well-informed people at the U. There's not much for students to like in the plan, leading Samuels to conclude: "Currently, undergraduate students subsidize virtually everything universities do, and it is time for schools to recognize this by making sure that vital undergraduate programs are supported."

Kaler on Midday

2010-11-28T13:16:00.000-08:00

Kaler appeared on Midday on November 24. For those who attended the public forum, there's not much new in the interview, but he fielded a lot of questions, so definitely worth a listen.

Big bucks for the new prez

2010-11-28T12:58:00.000-08:00

At the public forum a couple of weeks ago, Dr. Kaler announced that he would endeavor to shift money from administration to instruction. His first act as president-to-be, accepting a salary of $610K, does not bode well for accomplishing this goal. At a time of belt-tightening at the U, he could have sent a positive signal by putting his money where his mouth is, thereby earning the respect and admiration of many students, staff, and faculty. (Note: this amounts to an increase of more than $150K over President Bruininks's salary, and he is one of the highest-paid public university presidents in the nation.) Students interviewed by KSTP were astonished. Apparently the reporter couldn't find any faculty willing to comment. Kaler defended the salary, calling it "appropriate" for the job.

Video from Kaler's visit...

2010-11-21T09:57:00.000-08:00

...is now up on the U's website. You can view the public forum and the interview with the Regents.

More coverage of Kaler

2010-11-17T19:05:00.000-08:00

From the Pioneer Press, MPR's On Campus blog, the STRIB, MPR's Minn Econ blog, and MPR's Tim Post. Today's public forum was well attended.

Protests at UC Regents meeting

2010-11-17T19:02:00.000-08:00

Things got ugly today...lots of footage of campus cops pepper spraying students.

A Faustian Bargain

2010-11-17T11:59:00.000-08:00

A scientist smacks down the prez of SUNY-Albany. Petsko's letter is long, but since it is also bold, clever, and funny, worth taking the time to read.

It's official...

2010-11-16T20:12:00.000-08:00

...Stanley Fish is an idiot. He fully embraces the argument made by a couple of raving lunatics--economists/administrators from William & Mary--that new technologies in the classroom are to blame for skyrocketing tuition.

More reporting on presidential search

2010-11-15T19:53:00.000-08:00

From the STRIB and the Daily...times two.

The highest paid university presidents

2010-11-15T19:14:00.000-08:00

The horror, the horror...

Some background on Kaler's tenure at SUNY/Stony Brook

2010-11-13T11:31:00.000-08:00

Eric Kaler is the lone finalist for the presidential post at the University of Minnesota. Before we knew that Kaler was the candidate, FRPE prepared a list of questions, published in the Minnesota Post on Friday. Now that we know Kaler is the finalist, we think that it might be useful to have a bit of context about developments at Stony Brook during Kaler's tenure as Provost. We think that this information might prove useful in generating additional questions for Kaler at next week's public forum.

1. The Public Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act (PHEEIA): SUNY has low tuition rates and tuition is set by the state legislature. The state has on occasion raided SUNY to balance the state's budget. PHEEIA is an attempt to give SUNY more autonomy from the stage legislature. Campuses would set tuition and revenues generated by SUNY would remain in SUNY. Campuses could raise tuition 6-10% per year and could institute variable tuition across majors. PHEEIA would facilitate "public-private partnerships" by untying the hands of campus administrators to do things like lease land and form joint ventures without approval of the legislature (but subject to approval by a newly chartered State University Asset Maximization Review Board). PHEEIA was not passed by the the state legislature this year. The Faculty Senate passed a qualified resolution supporting PHEEIA, and undergraduate and graduate student organizations also supported it. The union, however, opposed PHEEIA, noting that it would result in the privatization of SUNY, reduce access, and result in educational apartheid (because poor students would attend campuses and degree programs with lower tuition--these would be the less prestigious campuses and programs with lower earning potential). "President Stanley, Chancellor Zimpher, and Provost Kaler have all been lobbying tirelessly in support of PHEEIA."

2. Closing of the Southampton campus: Stony Brook acquired the Southampton campus in 2005, purchasing it for $35m. Since then, $43m was invested in the campus. Facing drastic budget cuts, the new President of Stony Brook decided to close the campus earlier this year without consultation with students (and apparently faculty) and in violation of state education law. The rationale for closing the campus was that it was losing money. Critics of the campus closure dispute this claim, arguing that the main campus wanted to cannibalize Southampton's state allocation and use the scenic campus to pursue lucrative revenue generating opportunities with the private sector (in anticipation of the passage of PHEEIA). Kaler co-chairs the committee tasked with “re-purposing” the Southampton campus. Even assuming that the closure of the campus was necessary for budgetary purposes, the closure of the campus raises two troubling issues. The first is the lack of consultation with those affected by the closure and failure to follow state law. The second is flushing $78m down the toilet in five years. The purchase of Southampton occurred before Kaler arrived at Stony Brook, but it's scandalous that the University invested that much money only to walk away a few years later. It would be good to know what Kaler has learned from this fiasco, specifically: 1) what factors would he take into account in making decisions about major new investments that add to recurring costs (in times of very tight fiscal constraints in which major new investments may require cuts in existing programs), and 2) the role of members of the university community in making difficult decisions about restructuring.

3. The Office of the Provost webpage at Stony Brook provides very little information about his activities as Provost. The links for reports are broken and there aren't any statements that indicate his priorities or vision as Provost. (For example, there's nothing like Sullivan's "academic update" there--we made fun of this update, but the virtue of having these documents is that we have a record of what the Provost stands for.) In other words, based on Kaler's public statements and the available documentation on the Stony Brook website, it's hard to tease out what motivates him and what his vision for Minnesota might be. We urge people to make inquiries to colleagues at Stony Brook and to share useful information with us.

4. Administrator salaries: Kaler earned $347,395 in 2009. What is his stance about administrative bloat and high salaries for administrators? (The Prez at Stony Brook has a total compensation package of $650K.)

Some questions for Dr. Kaler

2010-11-13T07:39:00.000-08:00

This week FRPE published a letter containing 10 questions for the presidential finalists in the Minnesota Post. Check it out here.

The finalist

2010-11-12T15:32:00.000-08:00

As we anticipated, the Regents have named a single finalist for the presidential post at the University of Minnesota. The finalist is Eric W. Kaler, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Vice President for Brookhaven Affairs at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, New York. The university community will therefore not have the opportunity to vet an array of candidates presenting distinct visions for our institution. A public forum will be held on Wednesday, November 17, 2010, 4:00 - 5:15 p.m, in Coffman Memorial Union Theater. Although it looks like a fait accompli, we encourage people to participate in the process. The Daily has a good story on the search and Kaler talked to MPR this afternoon. (He pledged his devotion to athletics and while backing away from the top three pipe dream, he voiced aspirations for Minnesota to rival Michigan, UVA, and UNC in the rankings.) You can also hear his thoughts about innovations in education here. Cuts at SUNY have been brutal, even deeper than at Minnesota. We're trying to find out more about Kaler...if you have colleagues at Stony Brook, please make inquiries and let us know what you find out.

Big bucks for MNSCU administrators

2010-11-09T21:02:00.000-08:00

MNSCU is laying off people and freezing salaries but there's still enough dough to hand out over $400K in bonuses to administrators. Reality check?

FSU layoffs of tenured faculty rescinded by arbitrator

2010-11-09T20:52:00.000-08:00

Two things worth noting in this story. First, the union contract forced arbitration. Second, the firing of non-tenured faculty was not rescinded. Also see Inside Higher Ed's coverage here.

An animated video is worth 1000 words

2010-10-25T21:28:00.000-07:00

I laughed until I cried ... or maybe I cried until I laughed.

In any event, it's true, funny, and painful -- all at once.

Reclaiming governance at the U - FRPE's input to the FCC

2010-10-25T17:48:00.000-07:00

Early this fall, the FCC sent out a message inviting faculty to inform them of issues we would like them to take up this academic year (e-mail from Gary Engstrand, Sept. 13, 2010). FRPE members met and discussed this question, and we have now drafted a document articulating three main issues that we would like the FCC to address. We welcome suggestions as well as additional signatories to this document, which we shall presently send to the FCC in reply to their invitation. We also urge everyone to communicate their own concerns to the FCC, which you may do by writing to Gary Engstrand.

***
Issues that FRPE would like the FCC to address

Several members of Faculty for the Renewal of Public Education had the opportunity to meet with the Faculty Consultative Committee during its retreat at the start of the academic year, and to present issues with which we are concerned. The principal subjects we discussed at that meeting were these: 1) how to improve faculty governance, 2) the need for budgetary transparency and clarity; 3) restoring intellectual values to the work, self-conception, and public purpose of the University. We appreciate the work that the FCC and other Senate committees have already begun to undertake on such matters, in particular the issues of budgetary transparency and administrative costs. With the present communication we wish to reiterate our concerns about faculty governance, while making a couple of specific suggestions for improvement, and to present other issues that have become pressing.

1. Structure, powers, and mechanisms of faculty governance.

We urge the FCC to examine the current system and consider how it may be improved. At present the great majority of the faculty neither participate in university-wide governance nor see it as worth their while to do so. There are many reasons for this, starting with the disincentive that service in governance carries little reward (sometimes even negative rewards). Effective engagement is moreover inhibited by structural problems, such as the dissociation of the Senate as a (putatively) deliberative body from the committees that do most of the actual deliberation, and the incoherent process whereby the membership of those committees is constituted (with the exception of the FCC). But the overriding reason is encapsulated in the premise on which Mark Rotenberg based his opinion that the Minnesota Open Meeting Law does not apply to the FCC, to wit: that the statute applies only to the governing body or committees thereof “that have the capacity to transact public business on the part of the public body by making final policy decisions,” and that (only) “the Board of Regents is the governing body of the University of Minnesota” (minutes of the FCC meeting, Sept. 16, 2010).

Why then should any faculty member bother to participate in governance, when we actually possess no governing power?

While, as a matter of legal fact, Rotenberg’s statement of the case is correct, a clearer declaration of the vacuity of faculty governance is hardly imaginable. The FCC and all other faculty bodies have, according to the general counsel, no role in governing the University and no capacity to make policy decisions. (Any decisions the faculty do make – outside the limited areas explicitly marked out for unimpeded faculty control – may be neutralized, vacated, or simply ignored by the administration and the Board of Regents.) In the FCC’s discussion with President Bruininks (also summarized in the Sept. 16 minutes), Professor Chomsky aptly distinguished consultation from decision-making and acknowledged, in effect, that faculty have a role in the former but not the latter.

Consultation is not governance. If faculty are to have a governing role, rather than merely an expectation of being consulted, then, in accord with the statute cited by Rotenberg, perhaps it is necessary to begin by redefining the Senate and its committees as committees of the Board of Regents. It would further be necessary to restructure the allocation of powers between faculty and administration, so that, rather than the faculty carrying out the administration’s decisions, the faculty make policy and the administration carries out the faculty’s decisions. To facilitate such transformation, faculty should be represented on the Board of Regents, as students are; accordingly, we suggest that the FCC consider advocating for the inclusion of (a) faculty member(s) on the Board of Regents.

Short of radically transforming faculty “governance” so that it would merit the name, there are simple changes to elements of current procedure that could readily be put into effect and would immediately make small but tangible improvements. For instance:

a. Require that ayes, nays, and abstentions be called for and counted whenever the Senate votes on any matter that has policy implications. Under current practice, voice votes are often taken unless a Senator requests a counted vote, and abstentions are often not called. Thus the Senate can be said to have “decided” something when only an insignificant minority of Senators said “aye,” a smaller minority said “nay,” and the majority, perhaps feeling insufficiently informed by the insufficient deliberation to which they were privy, said nothing at all. Yet such “decisions” are accorded the same validity as if the whole body had participated in making them.

b. The president of the University is granted the role of presiding over Senate meetings. This is an anomaly given that, regardless of faculty status, in his capacity as president the president functions as an administrator (with a P&A appointment) rather than as a member of the faculty. Pending revision of the article that grants the president this role (University Senate constitution, Articles III.3, IV.3), the president should be bound by the same constraints that apply to all other Senators: he must await a turn to speak and be limited to three minutes. Inasmuch as the president (like other officers, faculty members, or invited guests) may sometimes be granted a longer period of time to present a certain issue, after having presented it he must be deemed to have had his turn, whereupon all other Senators wishing to speak have priority over him until the time for discussion is up.

We believe that making even these minor procedural changes would be a meaningful first step toward restoring credibility to the Senate as a governance body and redressing the gross imbalance of power between the administration and the faculty.

2. Rights of P&A employees.

We urge the FCC to lead an effort to enhance and support the rights of academic professional and administrative employees (P&A staff). This becomes urgent in consequence of the administration’s imposition, last June, of a policy arrogating to itself the right to change the terms of P&A employees’ contracts unilaterally, and to cut or defer their pay, at any time it wishes to declare financial stringency. It has now been made clear to P&A employees that they are actually supposed to work during the days they are “furloughed” – even though the University will be closed on those dates – and if they do not plan to work (off campus) through the furlough days, they must use personal vacation days as work days instead. This abuse of a category of employees lacking either the security of tenure or bargaining rights is repugnant. While some employees with P&A appointments are well-paid administrators, most are low-paid members of staff, without whose work the University simply could not function.

At a minimum, P&A employees should be accorded a binding vote on whether to take a pay cut, just as regular faculty are. While this employee group has its own representative body, the Council of Academic Professionals and Administrators, in the view of many P&A staff CAPA has proven utterly ineffective at protecting their interests. Under these circumstances it is incumbent on the regular faculty to advocate for our P&A colleagues’ right to fair treatment.

3. Inclusion of students in governance.

We urge the FCC to support a requirement that student representatives be included in the process of consultation and decision-making on all matters of policy that affect students, especially those policies that students participate in implementing. Members of the Minnesota Student Association have been advocating for such a requirement, citing a comparable Wisconsin statute as precedent. The token student representation on various task forces and committees (such as the so-called “blue-ribbon committees” charged with proposing ways to restructure colleges) is widely regarded as woefully inadequate. Students were excluded from consultation on the revised Conflict-of-Interest policy, although students will participate in its implementation. Recently, in the wake of yet another instance of the administration raising student fees in order to fund construction of recreational facilities, the MSA has passed a resolution that, if put into effect, would require the administration to obtain the assent of students before raising student fees to fund non-academic construction.

Granted that students do have representation in university governance through bodies such as the Student Senate, on many important issues that directly affect them – from raising their fees to restructuring graduate education – they may be consulted, but are denied a voice in decisions. To shut students out of effective participation in decision-making is a travesty of the democratic principles the University purports to uphold. Certainly Minnesota could do as well as Wisconsin in this regard.

Why we need the AAUP

2010-10-25T08:37:00.000-07:00

A report in today's Inside Higher Ed describes how Bethune-Cookman University violated standards of academic freedom, due process, and the institution's own procedures in dismissing several faculty members, vividly demonstrates why we need the AAUP. The AAUP has produced a meticulous report on the dismissals.

The ostensible reasons for the dismissals vary, and include allegations of sexual harassment, failure to have an appropriate degree, and the need for the university to save money. The professors affected include some with tenure and some who had taught for many years without tenure. In theory, the various reasons cited by Bethune-Cookman could be legitimate reasons for a college to take action against faculty members, even those with tenure. But the AAUP investigation found two patterns across the various cases: a lack of due process and an apparent correlation between opposing the senior administration (in particular, the president, Trudie Kibbe Reed) and losing a job.

The AAUP also found that many of the accusations made by the administration were sketchy or false.

...the faculty members who lost their jobs due to financial difficulties were dismissed without the university declaring "financial exigency," typically a requirement for such dismissals...the association found that shortly after ending the employment of those professors, the university created new positions that were quite similar to the ones held by the professors, and didn't offer them their jobs back -- again suggesting a reason other than financial crisis for getting rid of these faculty members.

Biomed boom goes bust?

2010-10-23T20:42:00.000-07:00

The CHE had two great pieces this week on issues affecting the sciences. As most of you know, the U has put a lot of skin in the game in expanding the biomedical sciences. The numbers they ran for the feasibility of the project depended heavily on the ability of faculty to secure grants to support their research and their salaries. These two articles question whether these assumptions are valid...and whether scientists spending all of their time writing grants is the best way to advance scientific research.

In Science by Proxy, Toby Carlson argues that "how scientists get money for their research stifles, rather than spurs, creativity." The failure rate for grants is so high that academic scientists spend most of their time writing proposals, leaving much of the thinking to be done by grad students and postdocs...ergo "science by proxy." Teaching? Who has time! It doesn't help, of course, that success in obtaining grants determines the fate for professors' salary, tenure, and promotion. Faculty are put in the wringer as funds for scientific research decline--more people chasing after less money. The administrators have put our science colleagues on the hamster wheel. "Professors are not spending their time wisely if they are using most of it to write failed proposals." Not to mention that the feds may not be promoting the most important or creative research agendas. His solution:

...funding agencies should collaborate with academic scientists by agreeing to award qualified faculty members a nominal sum of money each year—say, $20,000, including some overhead for the university—plus one graduate student. The award would be based upon submission of a very short proposal justifying the research and citing papers published. Proposals requesting greater funds would still be submitted in a more lengthy form (subject to the current review process), but there would be less pressure on faculty members to constantly submit them. The total amount of money handed out would be far less than at present, and the time spent fruitlessly chasing funds with contrived research proposals would be reduced considerably. Scientists' productivity and creativity would increase, and the burden placed on reviewers and journal editors would decrease. Research would be initiated by working scientists rather than the agencies. In other words, bottom-up science.

Note: this practice would also help to control the unsustainable expansion of Big Science, which depends on leveraging grants to cover faculty salaries. Why not just hire people, pay them a decent salary, and have the grants be purely for research costs? Sure, we'd be smaller, but there'd be more academic and intellectual integrity to our endeavors, and they would also be more sustainable and avert escalating cross-subsidies from tuition-generating colleges.

In an essay that fits very nicely with Science by Proxy, Lior Shamir predicts that the bio-med bubble will burst. He notes that lead scientists are constantly on the hunt for more grants to sustain their work, since universities usually only cover their salaries and start-up costs for a limited period of time. "Such a system allows universities and research institutions to hire more scientists and expand their research at little cost to the institutions themselves, while enhancing their own reputations and academic prestige." The increase in applications for career development grants from the NIH is staggering--from 1,029 in 1997 to 3,340 in 2007. During the same period, the success rate plummeted from 51 percent to 31 percent. Unfortunately for our colleagues, the NIH budget has been flat since 2003, so it will only get worse, since in spite of budget constraints, universities have not lost their appetite for expansion in the sciences.

Shamir's solution:

...change the NIH's grant-making policy to require that a principal investigator's salary—or at least a substantial part of it—be paid for by the investigator's home institution. The National Science Foundation has already adopted such a policy, providing no more than two months' salary for a P.I. per year. Clearly, if adopted by the NIH, such a policy would reduce the number of positions offered by universities and research institutions, slow down the growth in the number of available P.I. positions, and further increase the pressure on the academic job market. But the upside is that universities and research institutions, if forced to bear the financial burden of hiring and paying investigators themselves, would plan their hiring strategies far more carefully.

Stanley Fish, Part II on the Humanities

2010-10-23T17:54:00.000-07:00

Stanley Fish responds to the flood of comments that he received on his recent posting on the NYT that claimed that the humanities don't pay. This piece is better but he concedes too readily to administrator mumbo-jumbo. The comment below from Christopher Braider in Boulder, CO, states my views so well that I'll let him do the talking. The only thing that I would add is that in the last decade the number of faculty in Big Science at many R1 institutions has increased--administrators presumed that their salaries could be covered in part by large federal grants. But these grants are also drying up and becoming harder to get. So not only do the grants not cover all the costs--which exacerbates the cross-subsidy issue in times of declining state support as Chrisopher notes--federal grants are also becoming harder to get, making the venture capital model of expansion of Big Science all the more unsustainable.

While you've got the basic outline of the financial plight especially of public universities down right, you've still got the arithmetic wrong.

You are of course right that humanities departments don't bring in grant money the way the sciences do. And yet, as you concede, they have still traditionally made a profit since the overheads (including salaries, benefits, and plant and utility costs) are lower than the tuition revenue they generate. And if this was true before the current financial crisis arose, it remains true now since tuition continues to more than cover the costs. The financial situation in the humanities hasn't changed because it has never depended on either external grants (since they have never generated any) or state funding (not needed since tuition covers it all). I'd even go further and claim that the profits humanities departments have actually increased during the crisis. At institutions like my own here in Colorado, salaries have been frozen for two years now and, EXCEPT, typically, in the natural sciences, faculty positions left open by departures and retirements are generally left vacant. Yet tuition has sky-rocketed, with the result that the ratio between faculty costs and tuition revenue is even more favorable than it was before.

So what has really changed if it isn't the profit-loss calculation for the humanities? What has changed is that the catastrophic decline in state funding means that universities no longer have a way to cover the structural shortfalls created by Big Science. While science departments do indeed bring in extra-mural funding, that funding has NEVER sufficed to cover the cost. This has meant that the losses the sciences incur had to be made up with state money. Once state money dries up, that leaves only two options: rapidly rising tuition for ALL students, whatever their majors, and cannibalizing the rest of the institution to pay the bills the sciences run up.

Until this basic fact of life is faced for what it is, administrators will continue to do what your report of their standard defense of their policies leads them to: invest ever more money in big science (as, here in Colorado, they go on doing in absolute as well as relative terms) in the HOPE that the research dollars science brings in will somehow, someday catch up with the costs. The problem is that, even in the good times, they never caught up with the costs; and they're much less likely to do so now precisely because the general public funding situation is so bleak.

The result is this: what looks like hard-eyed realism is in fact fantasy, and all the more clearly so when administrators talk, as they do, of potential patents--the idea that molecular biologists, for example, will make some breakthrough in bio-technology that will in turn brings floods of money pouring in in the form of huge licensing fees. Nothing of the sort has ever happened, and certainly nothing on the scale necessary to recoup the giant losses sustained in providing the infrastructure big science needs.

Teachers=automatons

2010-10-22T17:41:00.000-07:00

FRPE focuses on higher ed issues, but this ruling on a K-12 teacher's curricular decisions is disturbing. It illustrates why academic freedom is important for all teachers. According to this ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit (Cincinnati), "Only the school board has ultimate responsibility for what goes on in the classroom, legitimately giving it a say over what teachers may (or may not) teach in the classroom." The teacher, Shellye Evans-Marshall, had raised controversy among some in the community (500 parents) by teaching Siddhartha , by Herman Hesse, and a unit on book censorship. Evans-Marshal allowed students to pick books from a list of works that were targets of censorship. The outraged parents called for "decency and excellence" in the classroom, and despite positive performance reviews prior to the controversy, her contract was not renewed in 2002. Her principal accused her of a bad attitude and demeanor and loathed her "use of material that is pushing the limits of community standards." (Gee, I thought that good teachers were supposed to challenge us to think!)
The suit proceeded to discovery until the school district defendants sought summary judgment last year. A federal district court granted the defendants' motion on the grounds that Evans-Marshall could not prove a link between the community outcry and the school board's decision not to renew her.

The decisive issue in the appeals court ruling was the Supreme Court's 2006 ruling (Garcetti v. Ceballos), which held that public employees do not have 1st Amendment protection for speech "pursuant to" their official duties.

"When a teacher teaches, the school system does not regulate that speech as much as it hires that speech," Sutton wrote, borrowing language from a 7th Circuit decision in a similar case. "Expression is a teacher's stock in trade, the commodity she sells to her employer in exchange for a salary. And if it is the school board that hires that speech, it can surely regulate the content of what is or is not expressed, what is expressed in other words on its behalf."

Molly P. strikes again on Troubled Waters

2010-10-22T17:20:00.000-07:00

The reporter who broke the Troubled Waters story in the Daily Planet updates her analysis based on a review of the documents released last Friday. She finds evidence in the documents that fear of big ag's reaction influenced how the U responded to the documentary. Dean Levine of CFANS was so concerned that he circulated the film to donors and prominent figures associated with big ag in April. (!!!) The Daily Planet put up links to some docs that I haven't seen from other news sources, so if you're a Troubled Waters junkie, I recommend that you scrutinize them.

MSA passes resolution limiting fee increases

2010-10-22T16:43:00.000-07:00

MSA tells the admin: students consent should be a prereq for increasing fees for construction unrelated to academics. The resolution is non-binding but sends an important message to Morrill Hall.

Internal emails on Troubled Waters...warning, it's ugly!

2010-10-17T20:32:00.001-07:00

Some reporters and Land Stewardship Project staff spent Friday afternoon in a hot, stuffy room in Morrill Hall sifting through hundreds of university emails obtained through the LSP's Minnesota Data Practices Act request. What they found ain't pretty. And much of it is redacted. (Just imagine how much uglier it would be!) The take-home point: only an independent review can get to the bottom of this. A review headed by administrators or administration apologists (or perhaps more accurately, those with Stockholm Syndrome) will not get to the bottom of things.

(Probably) 9/5: appears to be an e-mail exchange between Associate Dean Gregory Cuomo (who appears to have been on the original review panel) and Rob Blair.

Cuomo: “Lastly, several of us have seen the final version of the upcoming TPT show “Troubled Waters.” From some of our perspectives, it presents an inflammatory view of agriculture. Peoples’ opinion of what is “balanced” varies. We are preparing for some potential responses. …”

Blair: "Interesting comment about “Troubled Waters.” I am curious to hear who is included in the “several of us” who are concerned about the content of the project and why. What elements of the film are inflammatory? Are there factual errors in the film? …"

9/6, 6:47pm Karen Himle to Dean Levine at CFANS
"I have serious concerns about this, beginning with the title. Other than the fact of drainage and downstream nitrogen-based water quality degradation--which is an accepted fact--the piece has virtually nothing to do with the Mississippi River. Rather, it seems to be an advocacy piece for organic farming combined with an anti-farm bill agenda. Mainstream production agriculture is totally absent. I have been told that it would take three times more tillable land worldwide to fulfill demand for food if everything became "organic." I'm sure that Thousand Acres Cattle Company loves the advertising--they make an outstanding product--but the price is very high when compared with traditional beef production practices. That fact doesn't make it into the piece, of course...And what about balance in the piece on non-agricultural/non-point source pollutants. There is about a nano-second devoted to municipal contributions to the problem...I would like to consider our options prior to that point as I anticipate a legitimately negative response to this from some sectors of our ag community."

9/6, 7:25pm Himle to Levine
"Ugh. This has nothing to do with Minnesota: A History of the Land. I doubt that Bob has even seen it and I doubt that he would be enthusiastic if he understood the bias. David Tilman is accurate of course on his limited point on this--but it doesn't support the positioning of this at all...I will be happy to bring this up to Bob as soon as tomorrow morning. What's your view of the scholarship/balance as I think that ultimately that will be the most compelling argument. I think we also have to change the advance billing of this as well as the title ASAP."

9/7, 3:34pm Susan Weller (Director, Bell Museum) to Levine
"Is Karen going to try to explain to Blandin, McKnight, and LCCMR too? Is she going to muzzle Tilman?"

9/7 Levine to Susan Weller
"Karen Himle viewed the documentary and called TPT to cancel it--the President is aware of this. Sorry to ruin your vacation."

9/7 Dean Bev Durgan (who was on the review list) to Karen Himle and Al Levine:
"I just spoke with Jeff Strock about the video. He has not seen the entire video — even though he asked to see the final version several times. He did try to provide input into the content (other than his section) but met a lot of resistance. He was very relieved to hear that the video was probably not going to be shown. He was not happy with the overall experience."

9/9 Susan Weller to Barbara Coffin (Coordinator, Bell Museum)
"… One of the factors that has contributed to my decision is that I have been told that one of your biggest supporters, President Bruininks, is now alarmed by the film’s content.… Another factor … is the lack of support among the Dean’s council for the film. They need to be on the frontline with politicians and other stakeholders. The fact that two take serious issues with the facts of the film is troubling. Associate Dean Jay Bell (tenure home: soil, water and climate) has now finally viewed the film and expressed concerns as well."

9/24 Barbara Coffin to Susan Weller
TPT still wants to air the original....

9/25 Himle to General Counsel Mark Rotenberg
Himle expresses frustration that Bell and CFANS are letting her take the fall. She said that Levine asked her to call him to discuss the film and that Weller had independently postponed the film on 9/8 or 9/9.

9/25 Barbara Coffin to Weller, Levine, and Lori Engstrom
Coffin reports that Bill Hanley of TPT says he must hear from the Regents before rescheduling. But also says need to hear from someone higher than Himle, e.g. the President or Provost, before airing the program.

9/27 Himle to Gail Klatt (cc: to Ann Cieslak)
Himle analyzes procedural problems and proposes ways to avert a repeat. At one point she states, "This problem should never have arrived on my desk." She's also pretty brutal with Bell leadership, saying that there is a pattern of poor management, and asks a semi-rhetorical question as to whether it's time for a change of leadership--Susan and Barb, watch out for your jobs!

9/28 Himle to Ann Cieslak
"I was very direct with him [Bob Bruininks] about the complicity of Dean Levine and the Provost. And I urged him to provide safe haven to Susan Weller, as I believe that she was muted under pressure by the Provost and Levine. My most important overservation was the he say nothing until he understood his end game...Susan [Weller] is begging for help but has, I believe, and as I indicated last week, been threatened in some way by the Provost and/or Dean Levine...This is why I believe this to be true: REDACTED TEXT." Himle then proceeds to call "Troubled Waters" propaganda and to compare it to a Michael Moore documentary (as an insult, apparently...). She also expresses her admiration for Professor Cramer, who serves on the FCC. (You have to read this one...it's ugly, very ugly...)

Undated, Himle to Bruininks
Himle tells Bruininks that the film does not focus on the Mississippi River. She times how much time is spent on various topics in the documentary, apparently as an effort to reveal the film's bias/lack of balance.

Uneasy feeling about the prez search

2010-10-17T17:10:00.000-07:00

Many of you probably heard Clyde Allen, Chair of the Board of Regents, on MPR this week. He said that the search could play out two ways. The first is that there will be several great finalists brought to campus for public interviews. The second is that just one finalist "who is head and shoulders above everyone else" will be named. Uh-oh. Is history repeating itself?

It's probable that naming just one finalist is a way to get around the 2004 Minnesota Supreme Court ruling that required the U to divulge the names of all *finalists* in presidential searches. "It is in no way an attempt to get away from naming the finalists. It is simply a function of how strong the candidates are," said Allen. Methinks Regent Allen doth protest too much.

In response, FRPE member Eva von Dassow commented, "In order for everyone else to be confident that that one person truly is superior, it's necessary to hear from a range of candidates who differ from each other."

Of course, there are legitimate concerns about the need to maintain confidentiality, since many qualified people might not apply unless they can keep their current employers in the dark about their interest in the position at the U. However, given past experience, the Regents are asking us to trust them when they have not demonstrated to us that they are worthy of our trust. Having effectively gagged the search committee with threats of legal action if they divulge information about applicants, it seems likely that the fix is in. Publicly releasing the names of three to five top candidates, as MNSCU plans to do, is a reasonable compromise. However, given that the Regents ignored search committee recommendations last time, the U must disclose which finalists were nominated by the search committee.

How high will tuition go next year?

2010-10-17T16:38:00.000-07:00

The U is about to fall off a cliff. The stimulus money will be gone next year. The state is asking the U to model cuts of 5-10-15%. What does this mean for tuition?

According to the minutes of the 9/21 meeting of the Senate Committee on Finance and Planning, students will see an increase of about $750 thanks to the elimination of the stimulus funds, which were used to cover tuition increases. So even without a formal tuition increase, students will pay more.

Julie Tonneson of the Office of Budget and Finance explained that the increase in the tuition rate depends on a) the base that is used (whether it be the adjusted base of $642.2m or the actual appropriation for FY11 of 591.1m) and b) the amount of the cut. If the cut is 15% of the $642.2m base, then students will see an increase of about 6%. But if the lower base of $591.1m is used, a 15% cut would require a increase in tuition of 11.8%.

Frankly, I was shocked by the uncritical acceptance by many speakers of the connection between cuts in state appropriations and tuition increases. Dean Finnegan said, "When the state disinvests, students pay more." But that is only partially true. Students pay more even when the state invests more. What struck me is how little discussion there was of how the administration's ambition to become one of the top-three public universities in the universe is implicated in the impulse to use students as ATMs. Perhaps if the administration stopped milking the tuition-generating colleges to fund its other priorities, they would not have to raise tuition so much.

Thankfully, Dean Parrente argued that the U cannot expect students to keep forking out more money for a lower quality educational experience: "What is extremely important as the university plans for the next biennium is that it makes clear what it is doing to enhance quality for students. That must be a main driver; the university cannot argue for tuition increases because the state is cutting funding. The tuition increases must be related to the quality of education."

Link to the full minutes here.

Pot calling the kettle...

2010-10-17T16:33:00.000-07:00

Mark Bousquet has a great rant on his Chronicle blog. He argues that non-profit higher education has engaged in pretty much all of the unethical behavior that the for profits have engaged in. Best line: "No, fellow hypocrites. The for-profits didn’t teach us any of these sleazy innovations. We taught them."

The Crisis of the Humanities

2010-10-17T16:00:00.000-07:00

In the NYT, Stanley Fish laments the shuttering of several departments in the humanities at SUNY-Albany. He argues that since the humanities don't cover their costs, other universities will soon follow, whether they like it or not. He may be right that other universities will follow in SUNY's footsteps, but it is false that the humanities don't pay. Many run in surplus and cross-subsidize the sciences. Still, he puts his finger on the important role that requirements play in generating enrollments in some programs, and efforts to reduce or restructure requirements could have consequences for programs with many students but few majors. There has been talk at the U about reducing requirements so that students can graduate faster. And one does not have to maintain all those language faculty (and P&A language instructors) if language requirements are dropped. Be on the watch for reduced requirements as the opening salvo in a battle to close or merge departments. Of course, at the U closing/merging departments does not allow for the termination of tenured faculty, since our tenure lines reside in the U, not the school or department. But P&A can be non-renewed, so the lowest hanging fruit is to reduce demand for those programs that rely on many P&As. Of course, these are probably also some of the programs running in surplus, thanks to the low pay of P&As. The only hope for CLA is to challenge the current budget model that sucks up a large share of our revenues in cost pools.

Eva von Dassow's comments at the October 7 rally

2010-10-07T20:40:00.000-07:00

This university has a mission: it is to advance learning and the search for truth, and to share knowledge, understanding, and creativity with the community and the world. You came here to participate in this mission.

Students, when you applied for admission, you used test scores and GPAs to earn your place here – and most likely to earn a scholarship, too, since tuition and fees keep rising out of reach. You borrow money to help pay for courses that are worth certain numbers of credits, you earn more test scores and grades, you put your credit hours into the degree bank of one program or another, and once you’ve dropped enough of this currency into the education-vending machine, it gives you a degree. You hope that degree will purchase you gainful employment: a job that pays you enough to pay the debt the degree cost you. The value of your education is thus measured in numbers, dollars, and time.

The faculty who teach you are measured in the same terms: by the number of credit hours we teach, the numbers of students our courses enroll, the number of majors in our programs. We are also measured by the number of publications we produce, the number and amount of grants we win, even by formulas to calculate our monetary merit relative to each other. Our salaries are determined through market mechanisms whereby greater or lesser value is ascribed to different disciplines based on how much profit they may generate. The more we “produce” the more valuable we are, in dollars. Elsewhere in the educational system there are plans to evaluate and pay teachers on the basis of their students’ grades and test scores. This is accountability in the form of accounting: put the M&Ms in here, insert tuition, and you get the same M&Ms out here, and that is supposed to be good value for your educational dollar.

Where in this model lies the search for truth? Where are the principles of scientific inquiry, the ideals of scholarship, the foundations of a free society? Does this vending machine have a button for ideas? For understanding? For creativity?

’Fraid not, folks: money is the sole criterion of value here. Education’s not the thing, it’s capital that’s king – and that’s you, students! You’re the human capital the university must develop for the global economy! It’s not your learning potential but your earning potential that matters! Credits, courses, research, degrees, all are fungible quanta, expressed in the form of money. And time equals money, as we know – so get on the assembly line, human capital, and develop without delay! Four years to graduation, no more, ’cos if you stay here longer you’re occupying the place of another future debtor!

This vision of education and research is the soul of the administration’s “Strategic Positioning Initiative,” which strives to manipulate enrollment figures, graduation rates, faculty productivity, and ratios of majors to programs in the service of positioning the institution higher in numerical rankings. You’d think aiming to be one of the top three public research universities in the world would mean you get the best classes tuition can buy; no, it means the U pushes you through faster to raise its 4-year graduation rate. It hasn’t worked: we’re eleventh out of the Big 10 – and losing.

We the Faculty for the Renewal of Public Education have a different vision. Today’s mania for metrics converts all scholarly, creative, and scientific work into money while reducing students to indebted units of human capital. But education, knowledge, and inquiry are immeasurable goods: not commodities for purchase, but the inherent property of all who teach and learn. We strive to restore intellectual and ethical values to the academic enterprise, and to reclaim the university for the public.

Eva von Dassow, on behalf of Faculty for the Renewal of Public Education

Faculty fight back at Brown

2010-10-07T20:28:00.000-07:00

Brown's provost tries to change tenure procedures...the faculty say NO. A few tidbits (the whole article is worth reading):

"I think it was a triumph for faculty self-governance. If there are changes to the tenure process, the Brown faculty wants to make them ourselves," said Susan Smulyan, a professor of American civilization.

The changes that were supposed to come up for a vote Tuesday are, to proponents, relatively minor. One proposal would have ended a tradition of informing tenure candidates of the outside reviewers being asked to evaluate them. Another would have increased the number of outside letters from a minimum of five to a minimum of eight (a figure commonly used already). Yet another would allow deans to add to the list of outside reviewers, in a break from the current policy of letting departments decide whom to ask. Faculty critics of the proposed changes have said all of these changes would, to various degrees, shift some of the power of tenure decisions away from departments and toward the administration.

The backdrop for the discussion -- and part of the reason many faculty have been dubious of the recommendations -- is that Brown was faulted in a recent accreditation report for having too high a tenure rate (70 percent), because many top research universities have significantly lower rates. Brown faculty members insist that they do a good job of advising those who will not receive tenure to leave before the final vote.

Further, Brown faculty critics of the changes say that they are proud of the emphasis on teaching in evaluations of faculty members and that they view the changes being proposed as raising the bar on research in a way that will force junior faculty members to focus their time clearly on writing or lab work -- and not on students.

One interesting note for UM professors--Brown doesn't have an elected faculty senate. Rather, they have meeting of all faculty--yes, all 700 non-medical instructors get to participate. The proposed changes to the tenure process have lured many faculty to the meetings--200-300

All out for October 7!

2010-10-06T07:58:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow, October 7, is a national day of action to defend public education. As most of you know, the national day of action is a continuation of struggles in California. The first national day of action was March 4, and we had great turnout at the University of Minnesota. We hope that there will be even greater participation by students, staff, and faculty on October 7. The main event of the day is the noon rally on Northrop Mall. West Bankers will meet near the bridge at 11:45 to march over together. Join us! Bring your signs from March 4 (recycle!).

After the rally, a number of other great events are scheduled in the Twin Cities (and beyond):

- 2:00-4:00pm - a Disorientation Guide to the U of M’s History, (in Coffman Union, room 324) – speakers on the 1969 occupation of Morrill Hall that led to the creation of the Black Studies department, struggles for equal access including the fight to save General College, the AFSCME union's struggles for a more democratic and equitable U, and more – with free food, followed by discussion about how to create a better U of M.

- 5:00-6:00pm - Rally and March at MCTC plaza – speakers on issues facing students and teachers at MCTC and the MSCU system.

- 6:00-9:00pm - Free Concert to Defend Public Education -- in Loring Park -- featuring: Guante, Usual Suspects, Fresh Squeeze, Junkyard Empire, Poetic Assassins, surprise guests, speakers, free food, info tables, and more. Organized by the Public Education Justice Alliance MN (PEJAM.org).

- all day – Student Strike (and Dance Party) to Defend Public Education at Minnesota State University, Mankato (at Wigley Administration Building between Morris and the Student Union)

Reclaiming the University video

2010-10-06T07:39:00.000-07:00

Did you miss the FRPE/EAC event, "Reclaiming the University: Fulfilling Our Promise to Students and the Public," on September 30? Luckily, a student volunteered to videotape the event and has posted the files on the web, both as streaming video and as a direct download.

Stop Using Students as ATMs

2010-10-06T07:37:00.000-07:00

FRPE members Bruce Braun and Teri Caraway have a letter in today's Daily.

Hacking off the humanities

2010-10-04T20:05:00.000-07:00

SUNY-Albany has announced plans to close several language departments and to terminate the faculty who work in them. Faculty assert that this was done without adequate consultation by the administration. Think you're safe? Think again.

Ten tenured faculty members in language programs were told Friday that they would have two years of employment in which to help current students finish their degrees, but that they would then be out of their jobs, according to several who were at the meeting. About 20 adjuncts and several others on the tenure track but not tenured are also at risk of losing their jobs, potentially even earlier, although details are not available.

"We were told [of the eliminations] without any hint" in advance of any concern about the programs, said Jean-François Brière, a professor of French studies and chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures. Brière, who has taught at the university since 1979, said that even in the context of budget cuts this year, he was shocked. "No other university of the caliber and size" of Albany has done this, he said.

Do you teach at the U?

2010-10-04T19:01:00.000-07:00

Share this video with your students. Hope to see all of you on the Mall on Thursday.

More speech, not less ... but only sometimes

2010-10-03T17:27:00.000-07:00

There's a lot I could say about last Thursday's University Senate meeting, and maybe I'll say more in a future post. But for now, I'll simply offer the following quick observations:

At one point during the meeting, President Bruininks responded to the Troubled Waters controversy by offering a passionate (if sometimes self-contradictory) defense of academic freedom, and by insisting that the proper response to controversy is always to allow more speech, rather than less. So far, so good -- though that's bracketing out Bruininks' convoluted claim that he didn't want to blame anyone for the mistakes that were made, except that he wanted to remind everyone that it was allegedly faculty (and not his staff) who insisted that the film be banned ... and that he was disappointed that the public conversation about the controversy was unjustifiably uncivil, even though he took the time to lay on the invective for all those people who had judged Karen Himle too harshly before all the evidence was in. (Okay, that's a lot to bracket out, but stay with me for a moment here.)

At a different point in the meeting, however, when the Senate was discussing a proposed Conflict of Interest policy (itself a convoluted issue, since the U desperately needs such a thing, though the one that was on the table merely pretends to address the problem, rather than actually laying down a clear set of principles and an enforcement policy with real teeth), the parliamentarian in the room declared that the allotted time for discussion had run out. Granting more time for discussion would require a two-thirds majority vote to enact a temporary suspension of the Senate rules. That motion to extend discussion by a mere 15 minutes fell two votes short. But President "more speech, not less" certainly didn't speak up in favor of extending the conversation.

In fact, at a later point in the session, when another (admittedly less pressing) agenda item also ran out of the allotted discussion time, Bruininks pre-empted a vote on the question of extending the conversation by asking the assembly, "Do you really want more of this?"

And if "this" refers to open discussion of matters pressing enough to be brought before the University Senate in the first place, then the presumptive answer should be Yes. If there are still voices that want to be heard, then we should err in favor of more speech, not less.

Of course, of "this" refers to the genial bullying of the current administration (which is presumably not what Bruininks meant, of course, though perhaps it should have been), then the obvious answer is an emphatic No.

World-Class Greatness

2010-10-02T09:49:00.000-07:00

Bill Gleason, associate professor of laboratory medicine and pathology at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, has recently published an essay about land-grant universities and the rankings game in the Chronicle of Higher Education. (Also see Bill's excellent blog, Periodic Table.)

Bill makes many astute observations in the essay. On the aspiration to rise in the rankings:

Attempting to game the rankings is a losing proposition for land-grant institutions because some of the factors that affect rankings are in direct opposition to the land-grant mission. Because high SAT scores and high-school rank often influence university rankings, many institutions try to recruit students from out of state to raise those numbers. What of the citizens of the state who are squeezed by such tactics?

On Minnesota's Strategic Propaganda (oops, Positioning!) Initiative to become one of the top three public universities in the WORLD by 2014:

There's something both hubristic and clueless about statements like those from my university. Does the administration believe that the public cannot see through the unreality of its intention to be one of the top three public universities in the world in four more years?

And on what the University of Minnesota should aspire to:

The University of Minnesota is, in other words, a tremendous resource for the state of Minnesota. Public education should be the great equalizer, and Minnesota and other land-grant institutions should return to their original land-grant priorities.

Reclaiming the University: Fulfilling Our Promise to Students and the Public

2010-09-27T17:35:00.000-07:00

Please join FRPE and the Education Action Coalition for an exciting conversation about the challenges facing higher education today.

Reclaiming the University: Fulfilling our Promise to Students and the Public

Thu, Sep 30, 5:00-6:30pm
Free and open to all

U of M, West Bank
Blegen Hall, room 5

We are told that the university is in crisis. The administration claims the crisis is created by reductions in public support. Yet even before the recent cuts in state appropriations, the University was doing a poor job fulfilling its educational mission as a land-grant institution. Skyrocketing tuition has limited access to our state’s flagship university, the milking of tuition-generating units to fund initiatives unrelated to education has diminished the quality of instruction, and the pursuit of private sources of revenue has compromised the institution’s ethics and academic integrity. This critical conversation about higher education will illuminate why higher education is failing the public, and consider how collective action can change this situation.

Speakers:
Carl Elliott, Professor, Center for Bioethics, University of Minnesota
“A Fatal Drug Study at the University of Minnesota and Why It will Happen Again” - on the tragic story of Dan Markingson, a mentally ill young man who died in a clinical trial conducted at the University of Minnesota. The case exposes stunning ethical lapses at the U, lapses that are likely to recur without major structural changes.

Gary Rhoades, General Secretary of the American Association of University Professors
“Reclaiming the Public Promise of Public Higher Education” - on how prioritizing private, institutional, and corporate interests in pursuit of revenue and rankings has undercut the public responsibilities and functions of public universities.

Sofia Shank, campus activist and Women’s Studies major at the University of Minnesota
“The Legacy of Bruininks’s ‘Strategic Positioning’: Tracing the Direction of the University” - on the consequences of strategic positioning for students at the University of Minnesota, and organizing for change.

Moderated by Karen Ho, Associate Professor of Anthropology, UofM

Reviewing Troubled Waters - should faculty participate?

2010-09-22T08:49:00.000-07:00

In today's STRIB, Tom Meersman reports that Peter Reich, regents professor in the Department of Forest Resources will chair the review committee. Recall that after the film was pulled by university relations, the Bell Museum was charged with forming a review committee. Should faculty participate on this committee? If the university violated principles of academic freedom by postponing the public viewing of the film and then subjecting it to review, then are faculty participating in that violation by sitting on the review committee? I'm not convinced that this process is analogous to usual processes of peer review, since these processes are set up ex ante, not as a consequence of PR people and deans with industry links being upset by the lack of "balance" in the film. So in some sense it seems to me that by participating on the review committee, faculty are legitimating what the university has done. What do others think?

Bruininks also weighed in from Morocco:

"I have every confidence in Vice President Himle and her integrity"...adding that she "continues to be an outstanding part of my leadership team."

More on Troubled Waters...

2010-09-21T17:57:00.001-07:00

More reporting and commentary on the pulling of "Troubled Waters"...some interesting tidbits...

Barbara Coffin, head of the film unit at the U's Bell Museum of Natural History, described the TW fiasco as "our messy internal confusion" to the Star Tribune. She added, "Unfortunately, an impulsive late-hour decision to pull the film from broadcast was made without wide internal discussion." The STRIB also reports that The Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy has filed a legal request to obtain information about why the documentary was canceled.

David Brauer of the Minnesota Post reports on other cases of industry influence on the U, which resulted in the pulling of a story by a writer who had previously written an article that included some criticism of ethanol. Himle was involved in this case as well and also invoked the word "balance." (Seems like university relations understands balance as giving industry's perspective the same weight as peer-reviewed science...)

Molly Priesmeyer of the Daily Planet tackles the academic freedom angle, with some choice quotes from this blog and Cary Nelson:

"Perhaps Minnesota's public relations office hopes to deflect attention from Troubled Waters by creating a troubled campus," said Nelson, author of the book No University is an Island: Saving Academic Freedom.

"Academic freedom applies to creative projects like films, just as it applies to conventional research," Nelson said. "Of course, if the filmmakers agreed contractually to some form of oversight or approval by the University, that's another matter. If not, the PR office's action is both bizarre and unacceptable."

Bizarre and unacceptable indeed. She also had the opportunity to view a copy of the film in the possession of one of the major funders of the project.

Finally, the Daily published an op-ed about "Troubled Waters" in today's paper.

Digging by the Daily on "Troubled Waters"

2010-09-20T07:20:00.000-07:00

The Daily has a great story out today on the "Troubled Waters" fiasco. They dug up some interesting new information.

First, Karen Himle spoke to them. She'd been refusing to comment. And her comments reveal that her concerns were editorial. According to the Daily, she

"watched a copy over Labor Day weekend, [and] what she saw unsettled her. The contents of the film were a long way from what the title, “Troubled Waters: A Mississippi River Story,” led her to expect, Himle said. Her concern began when she saw a commercial sign for Organic Valley’s dairy farm. “Typically, in an institutional documentary you wouldn’t see a commercial interest,” Himle said. A few minutes later the film walked through the practices of Thousand Hills Cattle Company. Both companies, which use alternative methods of farming, were shown favorably, Himle said. There was also a scene at the Walker Art Center that discussed local food. “Now I’m thinking, well, OK, so now where’s the river? Because we’re getting an awful lot of commercial conversation,” she said."

Let me connect the dots for you, Karen. Agriculture is responsible for much of the run-off that is damaging our waterways, so to understand what's happening to the Mississippi River, the film had to cover that. And alternative farming methods that reduce run-off offer some solutions for this problem.

Another piece of interesting new information is that a cabal of deans at CFANS also previewed the film and were dismayed by what they saw.

"Levine said questions were raised about the impartiality and the scientific accuracy of the documentary. “I’m not a scientist in this particular area. I was just looking at balance, and it seemed unbalanced,” he said. Greg Cuomo, CFANS associate dean for extension and outreach, said he thought the film “dramatized” the relationship between farming and river pollution and “vilified” agriculture without a strong understanding of how it works. “They made agriculture look very bad,” Cuomo said. Scientists are obligated to look objectively at both sides of a problem, he said. But he said he thought the film “drew strong connections to things that weren’t well supported.” Abel Ponce de León, another CFANS associate dean who viewed “Troubled Waters,” scrutinized its scientific approach, calling it lopsided. He said he did not judge the documentary for which side it advocated, but for a lack of “vital” information. “The University is a place that tests all angles and opinions,” Ponce de León said. “We are not here to give one single opinion or choose an opinion.” The group called for another review, though Cuomo said he didn’t know what the goal of a second look would be. But, he said, there is an expectation of “scientific validity.”"

And the clencher, which finally puts to rest WHY the U pulled the film: "If the scientists from CFANS had not also had an issue with it, the film would have gone forward as is, Himle said."

Say it ain't so! Can you imagine your Dean messing around in your work and telling you that it doesn't meet her/his standards for balance (whatever that means)?

Finally, U scientist David Tilman comments on the film after viewing it. He doesn't think the U caved to special interests. But he also said that the film didn’t appear controversial to him. "“We need agriculture to provide food, a point the movie makes. Agriculture has some environmental impacts,” Tilman said. “All documentaries have to have a point of view. This was a proponent of the Mississippi River.” But he said he thought the film presented scientific facts — “science as best we know it.”"

Is it too late for Troubled Waters?

2010-09-18T12:15:00.000-07:00

Bob Collins of MPR has called Troubled Waters an "infomercial," even though he's never seen it. According to him, "By the time this film airs on television -- if it ever airs on television -- it will have little integrity because the process that created it is too polluted." He has a laughably naive view of how documentaries are made. And it almost seems like his main issue is that the director, Larkin McPhee, is not a journalist (at least not by his standards). He is correct that the integrity of the film would be in question if the documentary is changed because it "vilifies agriculture." The comments are definitely worth reading.

More trouble for "Troubled Waters"

2010-09-18T07:42:00.000-07:00

Since Daily Planet reporter Molly Priesmeyer broke the story on September 15, university officials have scrambled to get their story straight about why Karen Himle, Vice President of University Relations, canceled the premiere of "Troubled Waters," a documentary about the Mississippi. Among other things, it examines the impact of current modes of agricultural production on the health of our waterways. Given the influence of big ag in Minnesota, one wonders if it was fear of a negative reaction by the ag industry that led university officials to pull the plug.

But of course university officials won't say that. After the story was picked up by other media outlets, university officials were having a difficult time getting their story straight. Himle has refused to talk to the press, but she indicated in communications with some parties that the film was pulled to review its scientific content. So the U's pretty boy media relations director Dan Wolter was left holding the bag. First he said that he was unsure why the film was pulled but that the Bell Museum had done so because it needed further scientific review. But Bell's associate director of communications, Martin Moen, said that Himle pulled it but that he couldn't say why. University of Minnesota scientists who participated in the making of the documentary are not commenting publicly, but the director of the film, Larkin McPhee, is puzzled. Winner of numerous prestigious awards for her films, McPhee says that the film underwent extensive fact checking by university scientists.

The game of hot potato finally ended today when the Dean of CFANS, Al Levine, finally talked to reporters. According to Levine, "Troubled Waters" was postponed because it "vilifies agriculture." Apparently the film has too much drama for him and unfairly targets agricultural pollution, since it considers agriculture's role in water pollution before discussing other sources of pollution. ""Agriculture is a major contributor to these issues, we know that," he said, noting the film takes a half-hour to talk about other sources of runoff, such as cities or lawn chemicals." He does not dispute the film's accurancy but its balance, and according to him, the film should have presented views by scientists who concentrate on the need to increase agricultural production to feed 9 billion people by 2050.

Perhaps Dean Levine should resign as Dean and become a documentary film maker. University officials have once again shown themselves to be the gang that can't shoot straight. In hopes of quietly squelching a film that highlights the major role that agriculture plays in polluting our waterways--a FACT that nobody disputes--they have created a media frenzy that not only assures that the film will be widely viewed if it is released, but also makes the University look like a sell-out to industry. The University denies that there was external pressure (read: big ag). And that is probably true. The saddest part of this story is that it looks like university officials pulled the film preemptively in order to avoid complaints from industry. Industry influence runs so deep that they can exert power without lifting a finger. The mere possibility that industry will reduce its funding of research at the U leads our top officials to compromise our academic integrity.

What we have here is a failure to communicate

2010-09-16T15:42:00.000-07:00

Today's Daily reports that only 51% of Minnesotans consider the University to offer "good value" for their money. When asked about this, our prez stated that people overestimate the actual cost since they don't take into account financial aid. He added, “Hardly anybody knows what the cost of an airline trip from here to Seattle is too, because everybody is paying a different price.” “That’s what’s happening in higher education today … many people don’t factor in support that discounts the price of education.”

Maybe so, but there's no denying the high debt that many students incur attending UMN. So what to do about it? Maybe not raise tuition? No mention of that. Stop using our students' tuition money to subsidize the prez's grandiose projects? Noooo. The root problem is that UMN has failed to communicate effectively with the public. "Bruininks said the University needs to do a better job educating the public about the actual cost of attendance and ways students can make that cost lower for themselves, like graduating in four years or earning college credit while in high school." In other words, the concerns of Minnesotans are baseless! So little surprise that the administration is reviving the Driven to Discover television ads. Don't bother to fix the problem, just try to dupe the public!

The corporate U is no friend to science

2010-09-16T07:59:00.000-07:00

Claiming that further "scientific review" is necessary, the U's administration has pulled the plug on a documentary film about sustainable agriculture ... and then clammed up about what the alleged problems with the film are.

Sounds to me like the administration is making it pretty clear that when they say they want to see the U be a place where great research can happen, they only mean research that makes big business happy.

Whose fault is this anyway?

2010-09-15T14:14:00.000-07:00

At first glance, this MPR story about the U's push to improve its four-year graduation rate may seem pretty benign. It's hard to argue, after all, that the typical time frame for an undergraduate degree should require more than four years of full-time study. And it's certainly laudable that the administration wants to see the U's four-year graduation rate rise.

But what's all this about students finally getting the message that getting through in four years is a good thing?

Students aren't the problem here. Not even remotely. Sure, there may be a tiny handful of students who willfully lollygag their way through four or five major changes who then wind up taking seven or eight years to graduate as a result. Maybe. But if those students are out there, they're certainly not characteristic of the students who routinely come through my classroom as fifth- and sixth-year seniors. Those students have been slowed down on the road to a diploma because they're simply not able to take the classes they need to fulfill their requirements in a timely fashion. Those classes simply don't get offered often enough. Or they get offered every semester, but never with enough seats for everyone who needs them. And none of that is because of students. It's because the U's administration doesn't really give a damn about education.

Do the math. Student enrollments are going up. Tuition rates are going up. More students paying more money to attend the U should make it possible for the U to hire more faculty, more P&A instructors, and/or more graduate student instructors to help meet the needs of all those additional students.

And yet, the administration has cut back on faculty lines, let go more P&A instructors than it's hired, and downsized graduate programs. All in the name of "financial stringency." So, at best, students who somehow still manage to complete their degrees in four years will get a weaker education for all that extra money, since they'll be taking ever larger classes from ever more overworked instructors. And, at worst, it'll be even harder than before for most students to complete their studies in anything resembling a normal time frame.

So it's even more infuriating that Sullivan and Bruininks are working so hard to "remind" students of the need to finish up their degrees in four years. It's not our students who need this reminder, after all. It's the administration who needs to be reminded that students can't complete their degrees without taking courses. And that they can't take those courses if they're not offered. And that those courses can't be offered if the administration is shrinking the U's instructional staff instead of expanding it.

The media blitz continues

2010-09-15T04:52:00.000-07:00

Carl Elliott's new book, "White Coat, Black Hat: Adventures on the Dark Side of Medicine," was officially released yesterday. The book and the Mother Jones article (see previous post on this: http://umnfaculty.blogspot.com/2010/09/white-coat-black-hat-conflicts-of.html#links) are getting a lot of attention.

The Daily's editors wrote a short commentary on Dan Markingson's case. The editors note that "the case deserves continued public scrutiny, not only about the actions of the researchers carrying out the University’s mission, but about whether the University’s research mission itself favors public good over profit":

http://www.mndaily.com/2010/09/14/mary-weiss’-troubling-loss

The City Pages also published a brief interview with Elliott. When asked how his peers have reacted to his Mother Jones piece, Elliott answered, "Well, outside the medical school, and outside the university as a whole: lots of support for me personally, and, as you'd expect, shock that this could happen here. Inside the medical school: silence." Which may be because many in the medical school are lining their pockets with money from Big Pharma.

How could the U allows its employees to participate in projects that compromise its academic integrity? "You could ask the same question about any of a number of scandals at the university. A couple of years ago, the Star Tribune discovered that Leo Furcht, the co-chair of an ethics task force at the U working on a new conflict-of-interest policy, had steered a $501,000 pharma grant into a firm he owned and which he later sold for $9.5 million in stock. When the Star Tribune asked Deborah Powell, the dean of the medical school, why she had appointed Furcht to chair the ethics task force, she said it was because of his "extensive experience" devising conflict-of-interest rules. Furcht remains chair of the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology." Ouch!

What about developing a stricter conflict of interest policy at the med school? "There are a few people concerned about conflicts of interest, but most of them seem afraid to say much. They prefer to keep their thoughts to themselves. As my brother says, "Doctors fear drug companies like bookies fear the mob."" It's time for faculty in other units to work in solidarity with those in the medical school that are concerned about the influence of corporate money on the academic integrity of our institution.

http://www.citypages.com/2010-09-15/news/lawyers-drugs-and-money/

Also see Elliott's interesting piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the pharmaceutical industry's use of influential physicians (often academic researchers) to give lectures, to conduct clinical trials, and to make presentations on their behalf at regulatory meetings or hearings.

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Secret-Lives-of-Big/124335/

Will the U respond with the usual legal-ese from the General Counsel or will it finally take steps to address the root problem?

Picket and demonstration at Northrop Mall at noon on 9/14

2010-09-13T07:58:00.000-07:00

The Education Action Coalition MN (http://october7mn.org) is holding a picket and demonstration to defend public education at the U of M on Tuesday at noon on Northrop Mall at the University of Minnesota. Their demands:

- No budget cuts!
- Decrease tuition, cancel student debt!
- Stop layoffs and program cuts!
- Democratize the U! Elected students, faculty, and campus workers on all decision-making bodies!
- Confront institutional racism! Defend affirmative action and ethnic studies!

The Coalition is raising awareness for Oct. 7 on the U of M campus by bannering, picketing, and handing out tons of leaflets to students. They will also have a camera to interview students as a way to engage them about the particular struggles they are going through with tuition, debt, and increased class sizes.

They'll meet up at this location every Tuesday until the 7th at noon, holding a new and creative action each week. FRPE is working with this Coalition on some events related to October 7, so we encourage people to participate.

Milking the cash cow of undergrad tuition

2010-09-12T11:02:00.000-07:00

Earlier this summer, Bob Samuels published a nice essay in the Huffington Post that broke down some crucial numbers for the UC system comparing how much California undergrads paid in tuition and fees (on the one hand) with how much of the UC system's payroll went to the people who actually taught undergrads. The results of his number crunching weren't pretty ... not for undergrads anyway:

This means that the university made an instructional profit on each student of $15,553 for a total of $2.6 billion. In other words, teaching undergrads is a highly profitable business, and these students actually subsidize everything else universities do.

We don't have access to all the same types of data for UMN that Samuels did ... but we've got enough of it to approximate his analysis here. And what we're missing (e.g., figures on how much the state subsidizes each student) would tend to skew the figures that we can generate in ways that make things look better than they actually are.

By our calculations, roughly $288m of the $1.2b that the UMN system spends on payroll each year goes towards faculty and instructors who actually teach undergraduates. With roughly 33,000 undergraduates system-wide, that works out to a per-student instructional cost of $8,667.72 for one year. Annual in-state tuition and fees, however, are $12,288. That's a profit of more than $3,600 per student before we factor in whatever portion of the state appropriation is actually spent on undergraduate education.

To be sure, some of that excess helps to fund facilities and services that are vital to undergraduate education. Libraries, computer labs, and classroom maintenance (to name just three) aren't free, and there are thousands of front-line non-instructional staff without whom undergraduate instruction would be impossible.

But when tuition is going up, and the budgets for support facilities are being slashed, it's clear that the administration is working overtime to funnel more and more tuition dollars into projects that aren't part of the university's educational mission at all.

The logic of "revenue generation": profit-loss statements for faculty

2010-09-12T08:21:00.000-07:00

We're hearing a lot about revenue generation at UMN as a means to cover reduced support from the state. Texas A&M is discussing a policy that would allow them to assess which faculty are "pulling their weight." Under this proposed policy, all faculty will be assessed by their net revenue generation with a simple formula: deduct salary from the amount of external research funding received and tuition revenue generated from teaching.

Such a policy, of course, must be opposed. (The article does a good job of explaining why--link below.) But such figures could illuminate some dynamics that university presidents don't seem to want to discuss. For example, universities often shell out big money for star faculty and let everyone else survive on the crumbs that are left over. Such faculty teach fewer and often smaller courses. What would their profit-loss statements look like? Do we have a system in which the labor of the majority subsidizes the super stars? (The answer to that is yes.) In addition, it would probably show that the colleges that teach large numbers of students and survive primarily on tuition are profit centers while many of the units that depend more on research are loss centers. This means that undergrad tuition is subsidizing parts of the university that do not teach them. Which is why the administration keeps promising, but never delivers, an accounting of how tuition dollars are spent. The logic of milking the colleges that generate tuition revenue to fund other parts of the university is manifested in what is happening with faculty positions. Dozens of faculty positions in CLA remain unfilled. Most departments were forced to reduce the number of graduate students that they admit, which means fewer TAs are available to support the teaching of large lecture courses. Students in CLA are having a harder time getting the courses that they need this semester. Meanwhile the biomedical sciences will get 40 new faculty lines. (See for more on this subject: http://umnfaculty.blogspot.com/2010/03/is-now-time-for-big-new-projects.html#links )

http://www.theeagle.com/am/A-amp-amp-M-grades-faculty

White Coat, Black Hat: Conflicts of interest at the U

2010-09-11T10:24:00.000-07:00

University of Minnesota bioethicist Carl Elliott's new book, "White Coat, Black Hat: Adventures on the Dark Side of Medicine" (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0807061425/) is already getting a lot of attention. (See the Periodic Table, http://ptable.blogspot.com/, for some links and commentary.) Among other things, the book discusses the influence of pharmaceutical companies on clinical trials that take place on university campuses, including the University of Minnesota. In a riveting recent article in Mother Jones, Elliott uses the case of the death of UofM student Dan Markingson in a clinical trial conducted at the UofM to highlight the ethical issues that arise when universities compromise their ethics in pursuit of revenue. It also presents a stinging indictment of the U's abysmal record in investigating internal misconduct. Most shameful of all, the U filed a legal action against Dan Markingson's mother to recover $57,000 in legal expenses and only dropped the lawsuit after she agreed not to appeal the partial summary judgment. (The article is available for free if you register.)

http://motherjones.com/toc/2010/09

Elliott was also interviewed recently on MPR:

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/09/01/midmorning1/

The U, of course, has its lawyers hot on the case of disputing Elliott's work. General Counsel Mark Rotenberg issued the following statement this week:

http://www.ahc.umn.edu/media/carlelliottresponse/

(On Rotenberg's antics as General Counsel, check out these posts on Periodic Table:
http://ptable.blogspot.com/search?q=rotenberg)

The statement ends with a reference to the Academic Health Center's new conflict of interest policy. Aside from the issue of lack of consultation with faculty at the AHC regarding the policy, the new policy seems to have many substantive shortcomings.

http://ptable.blogspot.com/2010/08/university-of-minnesota-defends.html#links

One wonders if such a weak policy has the teeth necessary to prevent the conflicts of interest that may have contributed to the death of Dan Markingson.

Enough verbigeration already!

2010-09-10T16:15:00.000-07:00

This week our Provost, Tom Sullivan, sent a mass email message that bragged about the University's progress in reaching the goals of its strategic positioning initiative. (Madradprof wonders if this is his campaign speech for prez!?!) Based on reading this, one would never know that we are enduring hard times at the University of Minnesota and that may who work and study here are feeling rather glum. Cheer up, folks, we're doing GREAT! We have some new and improved buildings and are hitting our numbers on the strategic positioning initiative, so all must be well.

Click on the link for the table. Scrutinize it carefully. Note that the figures are from 2008 and 2009, not 2010. The table shows that total faculty positions are increasing, which we all know just ain't so, at least not in the parts of the University that teach most of our undergraduates. Note that there's no mention about things like student debt. Only two-thirds of our students graduate in 6 years (probably because they are working too many hours to avoid going deeper into debt). But perhaps most importantly, the obsession with numbers misses the most important thing--the quality of the education that our students receive. Why don't we think about that for a change instead of obsessing about our ranking?

Dear Faculty, Staff, and Students,

Welcome to a new academic year, one filled with great possibilities and potential!

Despite financial challenges, our progress continues. Consider the new Class of 2014. Never has our freshman class been so academically strong, with so much promise, and with so many new opportunities to explore and discover. For the first time, the mean ACT exceeds 27, and for the first time our entering class will have the opportunity to learn in one of the nation's cutting-edge science and engineering classroom buildings, touted by a recent peer review team as "…preparing for what is emerging as the undergraduate pedagogy of the future,…designed for in-class active learning [that] is unique among large research universities." Next year will see the completion of the exciting and innovative renovation of our exceptional Weisman Art Museum. Together, these buildings frame the Mississippi River as a new gateway to the East Bank of campus. Each inspires us to advance our expectations and aspirations for ourselves and our University.

Other campus changes are less visible but equally compelling. We are engaging in a thorough review of the scope and scale of the University, reevaluating the budget model, exploring new ways of integrating e-learning into our courses and academic programs, implementing recent faculty/student recommendations to reshape and improve graduate education, developing new learning assessment programs, and aligning the health sciences along a new national model.

Perhaps the simplest way of capturing a snapshot of our recent successes is this table highlighting progress from the beginning of our strategic positioning effort through today.

http://www.academic.umn.edu/provost/reports/Provost%20Update%20Chart.pdf

As students, faculty, and staff, we are engaged together in making a difference, each in our own way, toward helping to understand and solve some of the world's most urgent and intractable problems. The stronger we are as a community, the stronger we will be as problem solvers and leaders. Yes, we will have to be even more financially prudent, even more agile, and even more creative in order to invest wisely, but given our mission and goal we simply must continue our intensity of purpose and resolve.

I'm reminded of the words of one of our University's pivotal leaders, John S. Pillsbury, as we continue to advance quality in difficult economic times. Pillsbury, who was instrumental in helping to guide our University through financial hardship in the 1860s, reminded us of the need to "Act; act now; act effectively; act for the greatest good." Wise words to consider as we seek to maintain our strategic positioning momentum.

To our new faculty, students, and staff, I welcome you to your new home. And welcome back to those who already have joined us on our exciting journey together.

Sincerely,

Tom Sullivan
Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost
Julius E. Davis Chair in Law

Driven to Distraction

2010-09-10T08:52:00.000-07:00

FRPE has long been critical of the U's Driven to Discover PR campaign. Wasteful in good times, spending obscene amounts of money on a PR campaign borders on criminal when deep cuts are being made to instructional budgets. It perfectly illustrates the misplaced priorities of our leadership. STRIB reporter Jenna Ross attended this month's Regents meeting and Tweeted that "U of M will restart 'Driven to Discover' TV ads Sept. 27. Survey presenters warning that when that campaign stopped, public opinion dropped."

http://twitter.com/ByJenna/status/23940516562

Looks like this will be the ad (warning: grab a bucket first because watching it will make you sick to your stomach):

http://mediamill.cla.umn.edu/mediamill/display/78681

How much was spent on creating this 3 minutes of baloney? And how much more will be flushed down the toilet on the television campaign?

FACULTY FOR THE RENEWAL OF PUBLIC EDUCATION

For shame!

Ex-lawmakers as Regents

This week @Minnesota

Academic freedom and the corporate university

More propaganda...

P&As get screwed...again

The high cost of college sports

How the FDA got the Markingson case wrong

Yet another bill to rein in administrators

Tenure protections weakened at University of Louisiana

Proposed cuts to faculty retirement plan

Lowering Higher Education

Bye-bye Faculty Senate

MLA counter-conference

Tell MPR how the budget cuts are affecting the U

University Inc Part II

Tuition freeze?

University violates spirit if not letter of open meeting law

OIP becomes GPS Alliance - Why you should give a #%&@*

The Myth of Charter Schools

U still clueless on conflict of interest

Revenue trumps research

You will be assimilated

Conflict of interest redux

Higher Ed discussions on Midmorning

The Prez’s Budget Update

Higher ed committees

Poverty wages for adjuncts

Academically Adrift

Regent candidates

Weapon of the weak?

For shame!

Faculty unionize, get kicked out of governance

Rankings based on educational quality

East-West adjuncts victory

Incentive pay for online teaching

The death of universities

Athletic bloat

Call for a national union of adjuncts

FRPE's letter supporting call for independent panel to investigate Markingson suicide

Dan Markingson and conflicts of interest at the U

Student protests in the UK

Hang onto your sabbatical!

Med schools only in it for the money

Blowing the whistle on the arms race in athletics

More big bonuses for administrators

Overpaid and underworked...I don't think so!

Restructuring at UCLA

Kaler on Midday

Big bucks for the new prez

Video from Kaler's visit...

More coverage of Kaler

Protests at UC Regents meeting

A Faustian Bargain

It's official...

More reporting on presidential search

The highest paid university presidents

Some background on Kaler's tenure at SUNY/Stony Brook

Some questions for Dr. Kaler

*The* finalist

Big bucks for MNSCU administrators

FSU layoffs of tenured faculty rescinded by arbitrator

An animated video is worth 1000 words

Reclaiming governance at the U - FRPE's input to the FCC

Why we need the AAUP

Biomed boom goes bust?

Stanley Fish, Part II on the Humanities

Teachers=automatons

Molly P. strikes again on Troubled Waters

MSA passes resolution limiting fee increases

Internal emails on Troubled Waters...warning, it's ugly!

Uneasy feeling about the prez search

How high will tuition go next year?

Pot calling the kettle...

The Crisis of the Humanities

Eva von Dassow's comments at the October 7 rally

Faculty fight back at Brown

All out for October 7!

Reclaiming the University video

The finalist