educational tidbits

the venerable Chronicle of Higher Education had a few interesting tidbits in last week's issue:

How a College Took Assessment to Heart, Lebanon Valley College takes an accreditors warning to heart - the key issue being that the informal committee of "General Officers", the Vice Presidents, with the college President, were making all decisions, and all were focused on revenue.
The turnaround, so far, involves a new President and the departure of the VP for Finance with a focus the college actually achieving its academic goals.

There may be more colleges going down this path.

This is followed directly by For Faculty Free Speech, the Tide Is Turning, an article on how the relatively broad freedoms faculty had under Pickering vs Board of Education (1968) had been eroded by Garcetti vs Ceballos (2006) and the supreme court implicitly inviting a revisit of the issue. Now lower level courts are pushing back ruling more in favour of faculty freedom to speak out without being punished by the administration.

There are also a couple of more light articles on graduate student life, both worth a read.