Links for 6/7/10

Tom Vander Ark

The one difference between good schools and bad schools is everything—structure, schedule, curriculum, instruction, culture, and connections with families and community. That makes turnarounds, especially at the high school level, really difficult. Layer on top of that outdated employment contracts and revolving door leadership and you have a national Gordian knot…

Edububble

just because their called “aid counselors” doesn’t mean that they actually “aid” or “counsel” you. Nope. They’re loan salesdroids

Ann Larson

the myth persists that, to get ahead in life, the first thing you ought to do is write a tuition check.

John F. Witte

Unions, built on common purpose, tolerate inequities poorly and, have never successfully accepted merit or performance pay. There is no indication that faculty unions would be any different.

Teaching requirements will be the subject of negotiation and one of two things will occur: 1) teaching will be reduced to the lowest common denominator, so non-research universities and campuses will have the same loads as research universities, without the commensurate increase in research, but with a staggering cost to the states; or 2) teaching will be made uniform at a level somewhere between research and non-research campuses, making it very hard for departments in research universities to compete for faculty.