So the Ohio General Assembly is really at it: they’ve stripped out of Kasich’s budget and put into an education bill, HB 484, a stricture requiring public colleges and universities to up faculty workload “by ten per cent in the combined areas of instruction, advising, and research.” Maybe they just want us to give up service? I doubt it. This is exactly the sort of idea that indicates the hostility of Kasich, whose administration proposed the measure, to workers in general and faculty in particular. Why not a measure increasing the workload of coaches or administrators, too? That’s where the money is.
CSU-Pueblo, or Cold Mountain?: Administration screws up, faculty suffers
A video, in honor of More or less bunk, where Jonathan Rees has been chronicling Colorado State-Pueblo president Leslie Di Mare’s unilateral move to up faculty teaching loads from 3-3 to 4-4, as announced in this letter. As Historiann has noted, Di Mare’s letter is all passive: rather than Di Mare taking responsibility for the change, she’s shifting onto hapless chairs and directors to enforce, while taking none of the responsibility. Just like BGSU’s Mary Ellen Mazey my august university president, Di Mare is quick for everyone else to sacrifice, while accepting no accountability. This is part-and-parcel of the corporatization of today’s universities: leadership enjoys increasingly high compensation, but blames workers for leadership’s failures, and increases workload and productivity without increasing compensation. In these ways, universities are just a microcosm for the US economy as a whole. But don’t blame poor university presidents: after all, it’s just the weather, isn’t it?