Media coverage about the American perspective on higher education is making me a little itchy. For example, this week’s (April 4, 2008) issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education has an above-the-fold front page story that reports a national split on government control of tuition. The sub-head talks about dealing with “college costs.” We have to understand that the words “price” and “cost” are not interchangeable.

When Harvard buys a book for its library, allowing for special circumstances, it pays more or less the same price to the publisher that a small community college pays. And this is true about all the stuff that universities need for their laboratories, their studios, and so on. Equipment and chemicals have a market price. In the case of Harvard the price, also known as tuition, doesn’t reflect the cost because the...

(Image of Euan Morton from this page) We New Yorkers suck car and truck fumes, sleep to the sound of dumpsters and car alarms, and put up with sots wandering out of bars at 4 a.m. In addition, we pay extra for the privilege of residing on the wrong (or is it the right?) side of the Hudson River. In exchange, we get to live a mere subway ride away from not just art, but great art — of all kinds.

Last Saturday night, my husband and I splurged on dinner and a cabaret performance in the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel. Back in the 20s, the hotel hosted the famed luncheons of the “Vicious Circle,” a group of testy tastemakers that included the likes of Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott and Edna Ferber.

For the occasion, I put on my fanciest dress, a pair of high-heeled shoes, and my most precious jewels (the ones I didn’t buy on Canal Street). My husband...

crossposted from howtheuniversityworks.com

I posted yesterday on the campaign of 900-member United Part-Time Faculty at Wayne State, an AFT affiliate, to win job security for faculty serving contingently. Like workers in most fields, they believe that serving part-time doesn’t exempt faculty from workplace due process, seniority, and continuing appointment.

I wrote my letter to WSU president Irvin Reid and copied the union as below: April 2, 2008 To: president@wayne.edu, uptf@aftmichigan.org Subject: End Permatemping Now

Hi, Irvin. I understand you’re having a little trouble with your 900 permanently temporary faculty. The thing to do here is follow the lead of John Sexton and Bob Kerrey of NYU and the New School, who made quick deals with the 4,000 faculty represented by Academics Come Together (ACT-UAW Local 7902) — deals that made the faculty and students happy, didn’t...

This has been a tough week for members of the Princeton University community. The comparative literature scholar and translator Robert Fagles died at the end of last week, and the classicist and former President Robert Goheen passed away yesterday. I was closer to Bob Goheen, but both Bobs were deeply admired friends of mine, and I want to notice the ways in which they modeled similar academic virtues –- each in his own way was a dedicated collegiate scholar-teacher.

Bob Goheen became President at such an early age (37) that he never had time to fully develop his scholarship, but they both operated in the upper ranges of scholarship. They were both products of elite college and graduate education — Goheen entirely at Princeton, Fagles at Amherst and Yale. They both spent their entire teaching careers here in Princeton. And that rootedness in a college place marks them as special in...

Scene One: A couple of professors with fine credentials publish a paper saying that a drug they tested is superior to competing products. Their article, appearing in a well-known peer-reviewed journal, reassuringly states that the authors report no conflict of interest relevant to their findings. The drug manufacturer’s stock soars. Not long afterward a news report reveals that the study was financed by the manufacturer and the professors hold shares in the company.

Scene Two: The editor of the journal expresses indignation, noting that all contributors must certify adherence to clearly stated conflict-of-interest disclosure regulations. The authors respond that apparently a “misunderstanding” has occurred, pointing out that part of the study was also financed by the National Institutes of Health, and the research protocol was approved by their university’s Institutional Review...

I’ve always considered myself a Mom, absence of young children notwithstanding.

I look like somebody’s mother, I sound like anybody’s mother, and heaven knows I act like everybody’s mother. I advise, I worry, I scold, I applaud, and then I worry some more. As a teacher, I consider myself the mother of about 150 kids every year — and all of them are in college.

I just thank God I am not responsible for their tuition payments.

Or their janitorial services.

My students line up outside my office door at all hours, as if I were some kind of emotional ATM machine. True, I am consulted primarily about English department and university matters, but I also hear stories about family difficulties, relationship problems, and financial predicaments.

I am asked to give fashion advice (“Don’t pierce what cannot easily be unpierced” is my latest mantra). Decorating advice (“Don’t buy a...

crossposted from howtheuniversityworks.com In recent years, faculty serving contingently have rung up a series of important successes through unionization, often raising salaries substantially. They’ve also begun to bargain for job security. At some public institutions, notably Cal State, faculty have a contractual pathway to renewable appointments. At private schools, the UAW contract with the New School guarantees not only elements of job security, but contributions toward health care, family leave, and retirement.

Now a recently formed AFT affiliate, the 900-member Union of Part-Time Faculty at Wayne State, has made job security the centerpiece of its bargaining. Like workers in every other industry, they believe that working part-time does not deprive faculty of the protections of seniority and continuing appointment.

Organizers feel that the bargaining has reached an impasse...

This May the European Union will begin planning for a second decade of purposeful higher education reform. Dubbed the Bologna Process in honor of the Italian city where, in 1999, the Ministers of Education from 29 European countries defined a common reform agenda, the Bologna Process has gone a long way towards creating commonality and interchangeability among and between Europe’s competing systems of higher education. What began slowly, almost haltingly is now being celebrated as a remarkable achievement in multi-national cooperation and reform — leading me, at least, to ask, “What did the Europeans know that those of us who served on the Spellings Commission did not?”

At least four characteristics of the Bologna Process are worth noting in answer to that question.

First it was conceived at the outset as a multi-year process. No need to hurry. No need to try to...