Links for 7/14/10

Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus

Higher education has become a colossus—a $420-billion industry—immune from scrutiny and in need of reform.

Here are some proposals that might begin to set things right:…

Replace tenure with multiyear contracts…
Allow fewer sabbaticals…
End exploitation of adjuncts…
Make presidents be public servants…
Spin off medical schools, research centers, and institutes…
Give techno-teaching a fair hearing…
Spread donations around…

Anne D. Neal

accreditors, who tend to be university administrators and faculty members, are often parties whose interests may conflict with that of trustees who, at the end of the day, are expected to safeguard the public interest with their best judgment.

Accreditation was designed to protect the public interest by ensuring federal dollars go only to institutions of educational quality. There is absolutely no indication that Congress ever intended the system to supersede or trammel the authority of governing boards controlled by state statute, charter, and in some states, voters…

Blake Farmer

The state of Tennessee is bailing out a struggling trust fund that allows families to prepay for college at current tuition rates. The budget that goes into effect this month pumps $15 million into a program which was designed to be self-sustaining…

Dean Dad

students expect/demand that the library offer plenty of computer workstations with high-speed internet access, good wifi everywhere, all manner of ‘assistive technology’ for the visually or otherwise challenged, and access to proprietary (paid) databases for all sorts of materials. There’s nothing wrong with any of that, but none of it displaced what had come before, and none of it came with its own revenue sources. And that’s before mentioning the price pressures that publishers have put on traditional acquisitions.

As a result, the library is far more expensive to run than it once was. It isn’t doing anything wrong; it’s just doing what it’s supposed to do. The problem is that the technological advances it adopts -- each for good reason -- don’t, and won’t, save money...