Hiring and Firing Bytes

• The University of Illinois is suspending its online Global Campus program and dismissing its staff members, The News-Gazette reports. 

Virtually the entire University of Illinois Global Campus staff, which services about 500 students in the online education program, has been notified of layoffs. …

Global Campus had 44 academic employees at its peak, said its current director, Charles Evans, but lost several staffers due to retirements and promotions.

Its remaining 32 employees were given notice of no reappointment almost three weeks ago. Of those, 20 were given six months’ notice, and a dozen given a full year.

The terminations won’t be final until after the next board of trustees meeting Sept. 10, according to the UI’s chief spokesman, Tom Hardy. …

Global Campus is a $10 million initiative to expand online education opportunities for people who could not attend one of the UI’s campuses. Its functions end Dec. 31.

In it’s place, UI will establish a new e-Learning Initiative, nicknamed e-Li, which it hopes will “attract 4,000 new students, significantly more than Global Campus recruited,” the newspaper writes.

• The director of the Colorado Department of Higher Education, David Skaggs, has announced that he is quitting, effective September 11, citing a disagreement with Gov. Bill Ritter, the Denver Post reports. See a copy of his resignation letter here.

• Via The Ticker comes the news that tenure-track faculty members at Kent State University are getting bonuses this semester. See KentNewsNet for details.

• University of North Carolina system President Erskine Bowles is calling on all 17 campuses to trim their administrative bloat, The News & Observer reports:

In an Aug. 17 e-mail to the chancellors of the UNC system’s campuses, Bowles characterized a News & Observer report on the steady growth in administrative positions across the UNC system as “an absolute embarrassment.”

Campuses are putting together plans to cut spending 10 percent, and administrative costs must be a prime target, Bowles warned in the e-mail. Four times, Bowles wrote words entirely in capital letters for emphasis.

“The coverage in today’s News & Observer on administrative growth within the university is an absolute embarrassment — and we brought it all on ourselves,” Bowles wrote. “In the conversations that we will be having with you regarding your 10 percent budget reduction plans, we will be looking for absolute PROOF that you have focused FIRST on administrative reductions and solid evidence that you have taken steps to shore up our academic core.”

Campus budget reduction plans will not be approved by Bowles’ office or the UNC system’s Board of Governors unless administrative costs are pared much as possible, the e-mail stressed.