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October 1999

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

Speaking Out

NEA Affiliates in Action

State funding support for higher education is as good as it is going to get, according to a recent report by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education (www.highereducation.org). Average spending per student on campus has risen faster than the rate of inflation, and this will not continue, notes the report. Current relatively generous increases in state support of higher education only reflect the standard response to extraordinarily strong fiscal conditions. They will disappear when those fiscal conditions disappear.

This year the richest 2.7 million Americans, the top 1 percent, will have as many after-tax dollars to spend as the bottom 100 million, according to a recent analysis done by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (www.cbpp.org). The findings show that the gap between rich and poor has grown so much that four out of five households are taking home proportionately less today then in 1977, while the incomes of the richest Americans are rising twice as fast as those of the middle class.

The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (www.icftu.org) recently reported that workers in the United States are suffering under some of the most regressive labor law practices in the world.

"While in theory U.S. law provides for workers to have freedom of association, the right to join trade unions and participate in collective bargaining is in practice denied to large segments of the American workforce in both the public and the private sectors," the ICFTU notes.

In its annual list of the top 10 most activist college campuses, Mother Jones magazine gives the top honors to the University of Wisconsin at Madison for protests against sweatshop apparel; Arizona State University for sit-ins and a peace vigil to protest a law against sitting on public sidewalks, and California State University Northridge for rallies that improved the quality of life for deaf people.

Ph.Ds Ten Years Later, a study released by the University of California Berkeley , reports that a surprising 75 percent of " the lost generation of Ph.D's" --- those who earned their doctoral degrees in English between 1982-1985 --- who sought academic posts received them despite the tight academic job market.

A study of sexual harassment of professors by students at Illinois State University finds that 63 percent of students in the survey admit to having sexually harassed a professor. Male and female students, the report notes, were equally likely to admit to harassing, while male and female professors are equally likely to have encountered the problem. Researchers call the phenomenon "contra-power harassment" since the perpetrators, in this case the students, are thought to have inferior status in the relationship. More information on the study is available from the American Psychological Association.

The NCAA recently reported that the graduation rates for Division I football players and men and women's basketball players are declining. The report notes that while the graduation rate of Black athletes continues to be higher then Black students as a whole, the graduation rate for Black athletes is at its lowest rate since the mid-1980s.

A class-action lawsuit, filed on behalf of four California high school students, charges that Black and Latino high school students are disproportionately rejected from top California colleges and universities because their schools don't offer as many Advanced Placement courses as schools with predominantly white students. The suit claims that these students' rights to free and equal education are being violated and seeks to force schools to provide an equal and adequate program of AP studies.

Computer Use Among College Faculty*
* Percent using computers at least twice a week to do the tasks listed in the chart above.