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Jan.'99

Advocate Online

They're talking on campus...

On the Road

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From Capital to Campus

NEA Affiliates in Action

Thriving in Academe

Higher Education News

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NEA Affiliates in Action

New York State has increased spending on prisons in the last decade by almost the same amount it has cut spending on higher education, notes a recent report.

The Justice Policy Institute has released a study showing that, since 1988, New York State funding for colleges has dropped by $615 million. In the same time period, spending for prisons has increased by $761 million.

Last year, two-thirds of New York's new prisoners were nonviolent offenders.

Women are increasingly outnumbering men on the nation's college campuses. Census figures show that there are slightly more college-age men than women, but, according to the U.S. Education Department, there were 8.4 million women and only 6.7 million men enrolled in college in 1996.

"We need to be concerned that higher education is losing poor and minority men," notes Arthur Levine, the president of Columbia University's Teachers College.

Students at colleges and universities across the nation are organizing to try to stop their schools from putting the school logo on caps, T-shirts, sweatshirts, and other items produced in sweat shops in both Third World countries and here in the United States.

College's typically get 7.5 to 10 percent of the retail price for the use of their logos, an estimated $2.5 billion a year business.

United Students Against Sweatshops, now with chapters on 35 campuses, is growing rapidly. The group, working with UNITE, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial & Textile Employees and other labor support groups, has been demonstrating at campus bookstores, outside college administrators offices, at retail stores, and at some sporting events.

Elected student leaders from eight University of California campuses have unanimously condemned the UC administration for failing to recognize the collective bargaining rights of 9,000 readers, tutors, and teaching assistants who struck the university in December asking for recognition of their unions.

Kent State University students, faculty, and staff, with the support of labor and other activists, have launched a "living wage campaign" at the university. "Living Wage" campaigns have been successful at raising minimum wages in a number of cities.

Their goal: realizing the rights of all employees, including contract workers, to earn a wage sufficient to raise a family, be treated with dignity and respect, and not to be in fear of job loss, demotion, harassment, or other reprisals for speaking up for their interests.

Peter Diamandopoulos, who was deposed as president of Adelphi University last year after an uproar over his salary and perks, has been appointed to a position at Boston University, by its president, John R. Silber.

Last February, the New York State Board of Regents ousted 18 of the university's 19 trustees, including Silber, for neglect of duty, alleging that the trustees had failed to oversee Diamandopoulos' compensation.

The American Association of University Professors is seeking comments on a proposal urging faculty members to take action if they believe that one of their colleagues has violated standards of professional conduct.

The policy has been presented to the membership for discussion and must make its way through various channels before it would become official policy.

Full-Time Faculty in Public Institutions

Of the nation's 514,976 full-time faculty in 1992, the last year with complete NCES statistics, 356,296 worked in public institutions.

SOURCE: National Center for Statistics, October 1998.