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Feb. '99

Advocate Online

They're talking on campus...

On the Road

Action Line

In the Know

From Capital to Campus

NEA Affiliates in Action

Thriving in Academe

Higher Education News

Money Savvy

The Dialogue

Speak out

NEA Affiliates in Action

Scholars, Artists, and Writers for Social Justice, a new organization that includes academics, has begun a campaign around the issue of the right to organize unions.

Notes campaign coordinator Dan Clawson, an NEA member at the University of Massachusetts Amherst: "The U.N. Declaration of Human Rights states that the workers' right to decide for themselves, free of employer interference, whether to join or form a union should be recognized as a fundamental human right."

Yet employers today, Clawson adds, routinely harass and intimidate workers who try to organize by a variety of means, both legal and illegal.

Full-time faculty at independent colleges and universities, as well as adjuncts and graduate students in some states, are among those denied full legal protection of their right to unionize.

Clawson's group will be circulating petitions and calling for a commission of inquiry to expose violations of the right to organize. More info from clawson@sadri.umass.edu

To express their frustration with the high cost of Internet access, students and academics, around the world have engaged in a series of digital-era protests. In recent months, organized "Internet strikes" have taken place in France, Spain, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, and China, involving thousands of protesters.

A federal judge has ruled that the University of Missouri at St. Louis can bar the state Ku Klux Klan from sponsoring programs on the university's public radio station.

The judge found the university chancellor acted because Klan sponsorship would lead some donors to stop giving to the university, discourage some Black students from enrolling, and cause other students to withdraw.

The Modern Language Association is embarking on a campaign to collect and publish data on salaries and working conditions of part-time faculty. The MLA delegate assembly mandated the data gathering at the Association's annual meeting.

The group also passed a resolution "deploring the hasty and ill-considered attempt by the City University of New York to phase out all remedial courses."

The California Employment Relations Board has upheld the right of University of California Teaching Assistants to unionize.

Teaching assistants on eight of the university system's campuses, demanding union recognition from the administration, struck for a week recently.

The state labor board concluded that teaching assistants operate more like employees than like students.

The first standards and assessment guidelines ever issued by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education would hold education programs responsible for the quality of their graduates' work as teachers.

The standards would require schools of education that want accreditation from the Council, known as NCATE, to provide evidence that their graduates know their subjects and pedagogy and can use that knowledge effectively.

American universities awarded a record number 42,705 doctorates in 1997, marking the 12th consecutive year of gains. But the rate of growth in such degrees has slowed, leading some observers to predict a downturn within several years.

The number of doctorates awarded in 1997 is 32 percent higher than the number awarded a decade ago.

Satisfaction with Education Support Jobs

Most NEA members working in higher ed support positions are satisfied with training opportunities, but less so on chances for promotion.

SOURCE: 1997 NEA Survey of Higher Education Support Personnel Members.