New CFA Feature-Our Weekly Reader

This week we present a new feature, Our Weekly Reader (OWR), designed to help you keep up with events that impact faculty at UIUC and higher education more broadly. Bruce Reznick , the chairperson of our Communications Committee introduces the feature below, followed by this week’s edition of OWR. Enjoy

P.S. You can link to last week’s OWR (not previously published) here: https://cfaillinois.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1044&action=edit

Introducing Our Weekly Reader

For the last few months, I have been doing a weekly summary of relevant news for the CFA excomm, and have now been asked to make it more generally available. I am not a journalist by training and I warmly invite you to put links I’ve missed into the comments.

Bruce Reznick, Chairperson, CFA Communications Committee

The best single-stop source is http://www.uillinois.edu/our/news/summary.cfm , the daily E-summary prepared by the U of I Office for University Relations. This is a daily clipping service of any articles which mention the University of Illinois, as well as articles reflecting other Illinois universities and trends in ed-biz. The listings I give are those which strike me as relevant to the CFA; you might prefer others. Note: In times of scandal, the E-summary does not skimp on including unflattering articles, although it might miss a few.

Our Weekly Reader- Week of November 11, 2012

1. The big national and state news this week was the election. You don’t need OWR for information on that. Worthy of note is a discussion of what this means for pension reform. Reader SD suggested the following link from the Daily Eastern News at EIU:

http://m.dennews.com/mobile/news/experts-address-pensions-role-of-state-employees/article_9305ec0e-2a2c-11e2-be8c-0019bb30f31a.html

See also the E-summary 11/7, 11/8 below for the Trib coverage.

2. The big local news was the GEO situation. Nothing in the N-G and one item in the DI about the Thursday noon demonstration, which drew at least a dozen CFA members:

http://www.dailyillini.com/news/campus/article_1d212ac8-2a2a-11e2-9539-001a4bcf6878.html

3. The University, in its mysterious way, is reviewing various university graduate programs. (Please note that the N-G is particularly inapt in choosing headline words (“touted” appears nowhere within.) The story also asserts that

Before they can be offered by the campus, new degree programs undergo a rigorous review process, with steps that include analysis and discussion by Academic Senate committees, said Urbana Senate Chairman Matt Wheeler. Eliminating a program is a similar process, he said, with review conducted by the senate and eventually the board of trustees.

All six programs on the list are in various stages of closure, but all will go to the senate for review and ultimately before trustees, Adesida said.

Thus it seems that this is an oddly public revelation of a process which is in its early stages.

[$40m to $85m]

http://www.dailyillini.com/news/campus/article_3db4859c-2a29-11e2-8d0c-001a4bcf6878.html

(UI aims for affordable education)

http://www.dailyillini.com/news/local/article_913c020c-2a2a-11e2-b7d4-001a4bcf6878.html

(Champaign County Labor news)

This week’s E-Summary partial digest

11/5 — pp.1-2 (N-G) “Review of all academic units planned”, see above
11/5 — pp.5-9 (NYT) “The year of the MOOC”
11/5 — p.13 (N-G) John Kindt’s and Doug Whitley’s no/yes op-eds on the late, lamented Amendment 49
11/5 — pp.20-22 (InsideHigherEd) “Use of public tuition for financial aid likely to become a political issue in many states”

11/6 — pp.1-2 (N-G) “Administration latest target for review”, see above
11/6 — p.3 (DI) “New program aims to see how UI can lead way in future” on UI Labs
11/6 — pp.4-5 (N-G) “New institute plans to take research to `next step’.” CoE Illinois Applied Research Institute

11/7 — pp.5-6 (Trib) “Illinois pension benefit amendment likely fails”
11/7 — pp.12-13 (InsideHigherEd) “Tech officials weigh in on Big Data, MOOCs and open source”

11/8 — p.1 (N-G) “6 graduate programs touted for elimination”, see above.
11/8 — p.2 (N-G) correction to annual review article.
11/8 — p.6 (Trib) “Pension fix back in lawmakers’ court”

11/9 — pp.1-2 (N-G) Cost of UI hospital renovation goes from $40m to $85m, see above
11/9 — p.5 (DI) “UI aims for affordable education”, see above
11/9 — p.6 (DI) “Mediation between GEO, University starts Friday”, see above
11/9 — pp.8-9 (InsideHigherEd) “Conference considers issues associated with higher education systems” The conference is called, and as Dave Barry would say, I’m not making this up: “Harnessing systemness: delivering performance”. Issues include tensions between flagship and non-flagship institutions.
11/9 — pp.10-11 (Trib) “State higher education official getting about $65,000 to leave // $193,000-a-year director whose travel expenses had been questioned resigned last week.”
11/9 — pp.23-24 (NYT) Yale’s provost, noted psychology scholar, is named president of university

The local newspapers http://www.dailyillini.com/ and http://www.news-gazette.com/ and the site http://www.insidehighered.com/