St. Patrick’s Day Rally to Defend Higher Ed in PA!

Hey all…a group of students have planned a rally to resist Governor Corbett’s higher education cuts.  A couple of of the students sent me information and I am thrilled to see students unwilling to stand by and watch affordable higher education evaporate in Pennsylvania.  I wanted to do my part to help support their efforts. [...]

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the holiday spirit of giving, but not exactly WikiLeaks

In my most recent post, “between Stalin and squirrels,” you may recall that I referred to a “concept paper” that PASSHE Chancellor Cavanaugh provided to State APSCUF Executive Committee for consideration.  According to APSCUF President Steve Hicks, Chancellor Cavanaugh asked the Executive Committee to review and “approve or not.”  In Hicks’s response to the Chancellor, [...]

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Crisis-as-Opportunity as national education policy

Readers of the XChange may remember my post from March 25, 2010 in which I discussed PASSHE’s move to join other colleges and universities in using the current economic “crisis” to fundamentally restructure American higher education. This same dynamic is evident in a recent Inside Higher Education article, “A Critique of the Cuts.”  The article [...]

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another KU budget projection hits the dust

In my March 29th post, “On Group Think and Catastrophe,” I reproduced a very pointed argument made at our local APSCUF-KU Meet and Discuss table made by former APSCUF-KU Vice President, Ken Ehrensal.  His argument called out KU Administration budget officials’ problematic use of “worst-case-scenario” logic, in particular, the logic of a budget catastrophe.  Here [...]

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Penn State Experts: PA is More Susceptible to Job Offshoring | GantDaily.com

As the fall semester quickly approaches and more PASSHE universities have announced plans to retrench over the summer, it is going to become increasingly necessary to continually ask the question: what’s the plan? As several faculty members at Kutztown have pointed out, the administration’s retrenchment moves have seem haphazard at best.  The only organizing principle for [...]

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PASSHE docs on moratoriums, terminations, and lower enrolled programs

Last week some, but apparent ly not all, faculty were sent a draft copy of PASSHE’s list of all the programs under review at the 14 PASSHE universities.  While the document may not be new to Kutztown’s faculty, I wanted to make sure that I put it up so it is available publicly for anyone [...]

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more “under-the-door” documents

Well, someone’s been slipping documents under my door again.  Yup.  I was on campus last Friday doing English Placement for incoming students and arrived back on campus this morning around 10am for the same reason.  This morning I arrived in my office to find another document had fallen out of the air onto my desk. [...]

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just when you thought it was safe to stop talking about AACSB

So. As if we don’t have enough on our plate as it is.  President Cevallos is pursuing retrenchment, while remaining committed to funding the College of Business’s AACSB accreditation aspirations.  Or, should I say, President Cevallos’s aspirations for the College of Business. President Cevallos’s choice to continue to pursue AACSB accreditation in light of the [...]

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on group think and catastrophe

At APSCUF-KU Meet and Discuss last week, Ken Ehrnesal made a really important argument that I want to share.  I’ll apologize in advance to Ken for my incomplete representation of his case (I am working from my own scrawled notes).  Ken’s argument is critical because it calls into question some of the basic presumptions of [...]

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that job description we keep hearing about

As most readers of the XChange know, Kutztown University President, Javier Cevallos has frequently mentioned (at least since his meeting with the Board of Trustees) AACSB accreditation being #1 in his job description.  Given that Cevallos has used his job description as support for his lack of agency in doing anything but moving forward with [...]

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notes on Cevallos’s case for AACSB: Claim #1

One of the most frustrating aspects of the recent College of Business, AACSB roller coaster has been some of the claims and statements made by KU President Cevallos.  Some of these claims were made in his email to College of Business faculty, others were made at public meetings. It’s not that he is simply making [...]

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quick update on College of Business

“Cevallos” held a meeting today with the faculty of the College of Business to tell them of the adminstration’s plans to move forward with AACSB accreditation.  I put “Cevallos” in quotes, because he began the meeting repeating what he said about the Council of Trustees ordering him to proceed and there was nothing he could [...]

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on shared governance and rational planning

A few days have passed since my last post and a host of new voices have weighed in on the latest news that Cevallos is proceeding with the current AACSB accreditation plan.  Cevallos closed out his email to College of Business faculty by saying, “we must move forward immediately in our pursuit of AACSB accreditation [...]

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