Daily Archives: March 17, 2011

by | March 17, 2011 · 11:01 pm

Links for 3/17

Links for today! And perhaps a bit more editorializing than usual :).

Poll: Most in PA Oppose Corbett Education Cuts

Thanks to Bill Lalicker for bringing this to my attention; for PASSHE faculty member and APSCUF leader Terry Madonna reports on the results of a poll indicating that huge majorities of Pennsylvanians, including most members of the Assembly, do NOT support Corbett’s proposal.

That, however, does NOT alleviate the need to keep pushing and fighting.  Until our budget is protected, we must keep after it.

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Via Jana Nestlerode:

Tom Corbett’s Proposed Higher Education Cuts Draw Protests

Good coverage including student responses from Penn State and Pitt.  By the way, PASSHE students, this ups the stakes for you.  Gotta get the same kind of press, right?

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Corbett Defends Higher Education Cuts

The Governor points to Penn State’s tuition increases as the explanation for his draconian budget cuts.  It doesn’t seem to occur to him that PASSHE and Penn State are different.  And this guy has the guts to talk about anybody, ever, making an informed decision about anything?

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Budget Proposal Targets the Wrong Special Interests

Editorial from The Mercury (Potttown/Tri-County) does a nice job laying out the social class issues involved in the Governor’s proposal.

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Filed under Budget, Links, PASSHE, Penn State University, Poll numbers, Tom Corbett, University of Pittsburgh

by | March 17, 2011 · 5:34 pm

Poster for Tues 3/22 Rally

With apologies to those you who have already seen this posted on Facebook… 

If you can’t get this version to print well (blurriness, wrong size, what have you), e-mail me and I’ll send it to you in another format. 

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Filed under Budget, PASSHE, Rally, Student activism, Tom Corbett, Tuition increase

by | March 17, 2011 · 2:46 pm

The richest irony I’ve seen in years

Yesterday afternoon, I’m cruising through my work Inbox, trying to pare down the 450 messages to something I can manage, when I notice the invitation below from our Human Resources department.  I can’t even begin to describe how richly ironic the timing of this invitation is.  Within a week of our Governor threatening to slash our universities’ budgets to pieces, prompting all kinds of fears about job loss, increased class sizes, crashed working conditions for those of us who stay, and so on… 

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Subject: Upcoming Faculty/Staff Survey for The Chronicle’s Great Colleges to Work For Program 2011

Our institution is participating in The Chronicle’s Great Colleges to Work For Program 2011, a study designed to recognize institutions that have built great workplaces.

Part of the program involves an employee survey distributed to a random sample of each institution’s full-time Faculty, Administrators and Exempt Professional Staff.  This survey was designed specifically for Higher Education. On March 21, 2011, this survey will be distributed to a random selection of our professional employees. If you are included in this random sample of employees, you will receive an email invitation encouraging you to take part in this survey.

If you receive the invitation, please take a moment to complete the survey.  The results of the survey will be factored into the overall scoring process that will ultimately determine the institutions recognized. After The Chronicle publishes the findings this summer, our institution will receive a report that summarizes responses to the survey questions.

This is a confidential survey that measures the strength of certain organizational competencies and relationships which most directly impact and influence an institution’s culture. Your participation and honest feedback are critical to the assessment process.

To ensure the confidentiality of your responses, your survey will be processed by ModernThink LLC, a research and consulting firm focusing on workplace excellence.  Survey Results provided back to the universities will only be numerical in nature and will not include employee names.

We encourage everyone’s participation! A high response rate helps ensure accurate results and demonstrates the commitment of our workforce.

Thank you in advance for your time.  Please contact the Office of Human Resources at x5653, or visit www.ChronicleGreatColleges.com, if you have any questions.

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Really?  Are you sure this is the time to be asking those questions?  Really?

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by | March 17, 2011 · 9:43 am

Paterno knows we need the money more than they do

I prefer to send batches of links out, but this one’s good enough to send on its own.  Reposted from the State APSCUF blog:

From Sunday’s Harrisburg Patriot News: Scott Paterno, son of legendary football coach Joe Paterno, contends that the legislature should take more money away from Penn State than PASSHE because Penn State is better equipped to handle the loss (which is true) and because our PASSHE schools serve a mission in the Commonwealth that Penn State has, well, superceded (in his eyes, and probably right).

 

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Filed under Budget, Penn State University, Tom Corbett, Tuition increase