Here's an interesting article on why college costs have been skyrocketing in recent years.

Why has college tuition been rising so high and fast? Will college costs ever drop back to more affordable levels?

Those questions have been frustrating parents and students for years. A new report provides some surprising answers that will, unfortunately, probably only frustrate and anger them even more. At public colleges, tuition has generally been driven up by rising spending on administrators, student support services, and the need to make up for reductions in government subsidies, according to a report issued by the Delta Cost Project, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.

In some cases, such as at community colleges (which educate about half of the nation's college students), tuition has risen while spending on classroom instruction has actually fallen. At public colleges especially, the current economic troubles will likely only accelerate the trend of rising prices and classroom cutbacks, says Jane Wellman, the author of the report. After analyzing income and spending statistics that nearly 2,000 colleges reported to the federal government, Wellman concludes: "Students are paying more and, arguably, getting less in the classroom."

There is one particularly interesting statistic that comes out of the article -- the one related to spending on administration. It seems that the a huge chunk of the spending is for non-classroom purposes like administration, maintenance, and "student services" -- $4000 a year, to the $8700 spent in the classroom. Knowing that colleges are like school districts, I know that there is plenty of room for cuts in one of those categories -- administration. For that matter, I wonder how much cutting could be made in "support services", much of which is fluff.

H/T The Glittering Eye

Posted by: Greg at 03:58 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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This story is the sort that produces mixed emotions for me as a teacher. On the one level, it is good to know that the criminal justice system works, even in these sorts of cases. But on the other hand, it points out the vulnerability that teachers – especially male teachers – have to these sorts of allegations. And it makes me ask the question with which I titled this piece – because I wonder if there is any way that Eric Foster will ever be able to recover his good name and his profession.

A former Conroe High School teacher has been found not guilty of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl.

Eric Foster went to trial last month in Montgomery CountyÂ’s 410th state District Court on three counts of indecency with a child and one count of sexual assault of a child. The jury cleared him of the charges.

The alleged victim was not a student in the Conroe Independent School District.
Foster, who was an algebra teacher, resigned shortly after his February indictment. He had worked for the district since 2000, school officials said.

Some have asked why Foster would quit if he was not guilty. Simple – in this state, we don’t have tenure here in Texas and so the district could have refused to renew his contract, which would have effectively made him unemployable in education (not that this accusation does not have the same effect). This way he can at least honestly state that he was not fired. In addition, as long as he remained employed by the district but suspended, the district would have been able to restrict his movement and activities during work hours in such a way as to make it difficult to work with his attorney to prepare his own defense.

But what happens now? The article about the initial accusation and indictment was longer and more prominently placed than the news of his acquittal. Too bad the media that tore him down doesn’t feel the responsibility to help restore his name. In addition, there are all too many who insist upon presuming his guilt even in the face of the jury verdict to the contrary – would any school be able to hire him and take the heat from the local public?

And what of the girl, whose identity remains protected, who made this all too public accusation. Will there be consequences for her? And doesnÂ’t the outcome here raise the question of the disparate treatment of accuser and accused in these cases? If we are to protect accusers because of the alleged stigma attached to these crimes, do we need to consider the greater stigma attached to an unsubstantiated/unproved accusation and consider withholding the identity of the accused?

Just some questions that cross my mind as I consider how this fellow educator recovers in the wake of an all too public accusation.

Posted by: Greg at 01:40 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Or the notion that a university is supposed to be a place of intellectual ferment where competing points of view may be aired and debated.

At least if these union thugs in Canada get their way.

In their current war against Hamas, the Israelis recently bombed buildings at the Islamic University of Gaza. As reported in the Chronicle, an Israeli army spokeswoman said the facilities had been used as "a research and development center for Hamas weapons."

In response to the bombing, the Canadian Union of Public Employees in Ontario, the largest labor union representing staff members at the province's universities, announced its plan to introduce a resolution at its forthcoming conference to ban Israeli academics from all schoolarly activity at Ontario universities if they do not first condemn Israeli operations in Gaza.

There is, of course, the obligatory anti-Semitic quote from the head union thug comparing Israel’s defensive war to the policies of the Nazis, so we know what the REAL motive of the boycott is. But let’s pretend that CUPE Ontario president Sid Ryan isn’t a raving Jew-hater and apologist for terrorism for just a moment, and consider this proposal more objectively. What he is, in effect, demanding is that a political orthodoxy be imposed before scholars are permitted to engage in scholarly activity at universities in Ontario. That would appear to fly in the face of the very notions of academic freedom that are usually demanded by the faculty of institutions of higher education. Where is the outcry against this effort to undermine academic freedom – especially when this litmus test is being imposed upon academe by a non-academic and would be voted upon by a union which is composed primarily of those outside of academia?

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