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A new crop of public higher education leaders are having a destructive
effect on the quality of public higher education, NEA's Board of Directors
noted in an action item passed at its December meeting.
 To challenge these
in-house critics---characterized as "hard-charging, non-academics
attempting to whip public colleges into shape"---the Board has created a
task force of higher ed leaders, Board members, NEA state affiliate leaders, and
staff that's charged with coming up with systematic and positive approaches for
affiliates to use in meeting this challenge.
"Meaningful change in
higher education can only come about with the involvement of faculty, staff, and
appropriate governance structures," the Board action notes.
The results of a recent NEA survey of part-time faculty suggest that
unionization contributes to quality in instruction.
A first look at
the data shows that part-time faculty working under union contracts at two- and
four-year colleges and universities hold office hours and are evaluated in
larger numbers than their nonunion counterparts, notes NEA Higher Education
Coordinator Christine Maitland. She points out that both of these factors are
quality indicators.
The
survey asked part-time faculty working under NEA contracts in Washington,
California, Minnesota, and Michigan about their salaries, workload, satisfaction
levels, and perception of the union.
The survey results will be
presented at the 1998 NEA Higher Education Conference. |
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It's not too late to register for the NEA Higher Education Conference,
March 6-8 in Savannah, Georgia.
You can find speakers,
session topics, the conference schedule, and hotel and transportation
information on the NEA Higher Ed Web site at: www.nea.org/he/conf98/index.html.
Friday's plenary session
will feature a dialogue between NEA President Bob Chase and Charles Kerchner,
author of United Mind Workers, a widely acclaimed new book on the union role in
education.
The
theme of the conference: On the Cutting Edge of Quality: The Power of
Collective Action in Higher Education.
Leaders from NEA higher ed affiliates joined their K-12 colleagues at an
invitational conference in Washington, D.C. in January entitled "Technology
and the New Unionism."
The conference, sponsored by
the NEA Center for Education Technology, provided an opportunity for a
broad-ranging discussion on the role of technology in education and its
implications for NEA, affiliates, members, the teaching profession, students,
and unions. Speakers included Howard Means, author of the futurist book, The
500 Year Delta, United Mind Workers author Charles Kerchner, and
Gerald Van Dusen, author of The Virtual Campus.
Among the topics considered:
distance education, technology and quality education, and the virtual classroom.
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