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Showing posts with label DEI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DEI. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 3, 2024

Defending DEI Programming at the University of Michigan

More than 500 people have signed a petition in favor of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programming that has been part of the University of Michigan for years, and a rally was held yesterday in support of the programs. 

According to the petition:

It has been confirmed by multiple sources that the Regents met earlier this month in a private meeting with a small subgroup of central leadership members, and among the topics discussed was the future of DEI programming at UM, including possibly defunding DEI in the next fiscal year. Our understanding is that the Regents may announce or vote to implement the plan as early as December 5th (their next scheduled meeting), before the inauguration of President Donald Trump.

Diversity, equity, and inclusivity are imperative to address systemic and structural inequities. They are also stated core values of the University of Michigan. We must remind the Regents that changes to DEI are not in their mandate, which is purely financial oversight, and we must remind them of the importance of shielding our ethical commitments from political pressure.

Tuesday, June 18, 2024

Ahead of the Learned Herd: Why the Higher Education Inquirer Grows During the Endless College Meltdown (Dahn Shaulis and Glen McGhee)

The Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) continues to grow without financial support and without paying for advertising or SEO help. The reason is that HEI continues to provide useful information for folks who follow US higher education. We do it in the spirit of Upton Sinclair and others pejoratively known as the muckrakers. And we gladly take the label. 


For years, the higher ed herd dismissed warnings of looming financial crises, but HEI accurately foresaw the revenue declines and unsustainable models forcing college closures, and the downside of the online pivot (including online program managers and robocolleges). We also saw a decade of enrollment declines with no end in sight

HEI has published a number of articles that provide value to higher ed workers (including adjuncts), future, present, and former students (including the tens of millions of student loan debtors), and other folks affiliated with the higher ed industry (including workers at edtech and financial companies). We called it the College Meltdown

 

We have examined a number of groupings in the industry (from community colleges and for-profit schools to elite universities and everything in between) and issues (to include student and worker protests, student loan debt, and violence on campus).  We highlight those who are trying to good, like David Halperin (Republic Report), Gary Stocker (College Viability), Mark Salisbury (TuitionFit), Helena Worthen (Power Despite Precarity), Theresa Sweet and Tarah Gramza (Sweet v Cardona), and Ann Bowers (Debt Collective)

HEI has also had the good fortune of getting outstanding contributions from Randall Collins, Bryan Alexander, Robert Kelchen, Phil HillGary Roth, Bill Harrington, and others. Bryan Alexander's contributions have been extremely important in highlighting the existential threat of global climate change and the civil strife that accompanies it.

While honest reporting is important to us, we do take sides, just as other outlets do (most others take the side of big business and government). We are for the People, and we hunt for corruption that undermines democracy. We have examined companies (like Guild, Maximus, and EducationDynamics) that few others will bother to examine. We continue to follow subprime for-profit colleges that have morphed into subprime state universities (like Purdue Global and University of Arizona Global) and other bad actors in higher ed (like 2U and the University of Phoenix). 

We value history, the real unvarnished history, not the tales, myths and lies that have been repeated to children for generations and used as indoctrination at all levels of society. And we value those who look honestly at the present and the future, those not trying to sell themselves or their hidden agendas. 

As Howard Zinn proclaimed, you can't be neutral on a moving train. And US higher education, we fear, is a train moving away from America's hopes and dreams of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice, towards a less utopian, more dangerous, place.