They're making a list, they're checking it twice

• SH*T LIST. The big news around campus is our receipt of the action letter from the accreditors. It looks like the DOE climbed all over ACCJC/WASC and is forcing the latter to stick by the rules. That’s not so good for our colleges, since the rules are that colleges that remain “out of compliance” for two years get their ticket pulled. Guess what? Yup. Thanks to Raghu and his board pals, both colleges have been out of compliance for three years. Hence the letters (one per college). Luckily, we’ve been given some breathing room. Our next reports are to be filed in October. But can we bring about the cessation of trustee micromanagement, the overcoming of despair, the defining of the undefined and the stabilizing of the unstable in SEVEN MONTHS? The accreditation commission meets in January ('09). If we don’t satisfy them (with our October reports) at that time, they'll pull our ticket. See The Accreditation Letter Arrives.

• ENEMIES LIST. On Friday, the OC Reg (Judge sets trial date in CUSD 'enemies list' case) reported on a case concering the former chief of the Capistrano Unified School District:

A trial date has been set for a felony case against retired Capistrano Unified Superintendent James Fleming and former Assistant Superintendent Susan McGill.

…Fleming and McGill were indicted last May by a grand jury over the alleged creation of an "enemies list" of political opponents during an attempted recall effort of all seven members of the Capistrano Unified board of trustees.

Both Fleming and McGill have pleaded not guilty….

Perhaps you’ll recall that our own Raghu P. Mathur is fond of enemies lists. Check out Raghu’s enemies list.

• CONTRIBUTORS LIST. There’s an odd little piece in the OC Reg this morning about presidential campaign contributions by UCI and Chapman U professors: O.C. professors spread money among presidential candidates:

Political commentators say you’ll find a lot of liberal professors and executives at colleges and universities. It’s true. But you’ll also find moderates and conservatives at such schools as UC Irvine, Chapman University and Cal State Fullerton, as we learned by examining public online donor records maintained by the Federal Elections Commission.

The donors range from famed UCI economist-mathematician Duncan Luce, who gave $1,250 to Democrat Bill Richardson, to Chapman President and economist James Doti, who gave at least $6,600 to Republicans Rudy Guiliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney.

The article provides a list of professors and administrators and to whom they donated. Check it out.


• COMPLAINT LIST. This morning’s Inside Higher Ed reports on the most recent effort to draw attention to the “equity” issue re community colleges and higher ed (Call for Equity for Community Colleges):

American higher education “is not sustainable,” and risks a growing detachment from reality if it does not come to grips with the needs of community colleges and the way higher education and government consistently mistreat the sector.

That unsettling argument was put forth Sunday night in the introductory talk of the annual meeting of the American Council on Education, by Gail O. Mellow, president of LaGuardia Community College, of the City University of New York. Mellow’s critique probably wouldn’t surprise most people who work in community colleges, but it was an unusually public rebuke for the rest of higher education at a meeting of the higher education umbrella group that represents two-year and four-year, public and private colleges.

Mellow argued that the way higher education is categorized, defined and financed have all worked to the detriment of community colleges, even as they educate nearly half of all undergraduates, and significant portions of those who will later graduate with bachelor’s degrees from four-year institutions.

“We must stop giving community colleges straw and expecting spun gold,” she said. “The fact is that what happens to community colleges affects all of higher education. As higher education leaders, we have allowed the baccalaureate and community college systems to develop separately and unequally, with tenuous points of integration and inadequate financial support.”

Added Mellow: “Higher education funding and quality assessment is still premised on what are now nostalgic memories of traditional-aged, upper-middle class college students. Unless we let go of this myth and realistically face the modern demographics of the U.S. college population — who goes and who should go to college — the relevance and status of American higher education in a competitive, global education market will erode.”….