Wednesday's News

Too much news, too little time.  

• Jyotsna Kapur's letter in the DE: Cheng's promotion of doublethink.
• DE: Faculty work conditions linked to student success. 
• DE: University 101 made mandatory (I here find myself somewhat troubled by the same thoughts expressed by Geology Professor Ken Anderson in the story: see my post Who's Afraid of University College?)
• Southern: Cheng at the faculty senate. (Worth more comment than I can give it here: those in attendance are hereby encouraged to provide commentary.)
• Southern: Mortenson attacks low higher ed funding as "intergenerational cop-out".
• NY Times: Survey finds small increase in faculty pay.

Who's Afraid of University College?

To step aside, briefly, from my obsession with FA-administration negotiations, I thought I'd address another potentially contentious issue: the Chancellor's implementation of the new University College model.  My initial reaction to this was rather ho-hum.  I don't really care who the director of admissions reports to, frankly; I didn't think that any rearrangements of the administrative flow-chart were likely to result in vast improvements in enrollment, but, hey, if it helps, great.  Some have raised the possibility that a University College could be a sort of Trojan Horse, to be staffed by new faculty, presumably non tenure-track faculty.  But as far as I'm aware there's no evidence of any such plan.  


Yet I'm coming to see that the whole University College experiment may impact our educational mission in ways I hadn't expected, as I've recently become aware of some of the possible ripple effects of the new first year course.