The conference coordinated events beginning with a daylong organizing drive with the United Faculty of Florida/AFT/NEA at Central Florida University and ending with a panel presentation on efforts to protect free speech on campus—one of the recurring hot topics of the weekend. AFT executive vice president Antonia Cortese kicked off the conference with a welcome to the 350 AFT members who came.

The program featured flash sessions, workshops, training sessions and plenaries, running the gamut from salary and health benefit trends to campus safety and cyber security to the USA Patriot Act and civil liberties to legal and contingent issues. Hearing about conferences is never the same as being there, but below you’ll find a sampler of the ideas shared.

The free press/academic freedom alliance
Highlighting the conference was the keynote presentation by Robert McChesney, a research professor of communications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is also president and co-founder of Free Press, a media policy group, author of the book The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communications Politics in the 21st Century, and host of the radio program “Media Matters” (WILL-AM). McChesney’s point resonated with the academics: Our free press and academic freedom—twin pillars of a free society—are both under siege right now and must be protected.

McChesney noted that when the founding fathers conceived a free press, it was to foster citizen participation in a democracy, not to provide a venue for unlimited profit. Yet, with changes allowed by Congress and the Federal Communications Commission, media ownership has concentrated into the giant communication companies. As they’ve gobbled up local radio, TV and newspapers, entertainment and profit have taken the place of news and information. This limits what the public knows and demoralizes the profession, says McChesney.

Historian Ellen Schrecker, of Yeshiva University, also addressed issues of freedom in a workshop on terrorism, national security and higher ed. Joining UUP member Patricia Bentley, Schrecker described the current culture of fear and control fed by the USA Patriot Act, the proposal for an international studies program advisory board, tightened visa procedures, and ideological attacks on faculty activism in foreign affairs.

On Saturday, Jennifer Washburn, a fellow at the New America Foundation and author of University, Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education, delivered the Irwin Polishook Lecture. She outlined how federal legislation and funding changes have affected academic research practices in the past 30 or so years. These include remarkable breakthroughs in genetics and other biomedical research, the gradual withdrawal of federal support for basic and applied research, and the passage in 1980 of the Bayh-Dole Act, which opened the transfer of research results from universities to the marketplace, ostensibly for public benefit.

What Washburn has documented is a pattern of conflict of interest among researchers and institutions that seems built into the structure of collaborating with industries whose first priority is profit. While research institutions that take in 30 percent or more of their research funding from pharmaceutical and other companies remain the minority of higher ed institutions, their ethic can color the entire enterprise, says Washburn. This represents an intrusion of market ideology into academic life.

Internationalization of Higher Ed
In a workshop on globalization in higher education, the focus included GATS, the General Agreement on Trade in Services regulations on international trade. Concerned that education not be treated as a commodity—and not be restricted by GATS—participants discussed the perilous intersection with for-profit institutions, which sometimes emphasize profit-making over education. Describing the “colonization of higher education by for-profit business,” moderator Anthony O’Brien of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) suggested public education stay apart from the business trade. “They’re not all fly-by-night opportunists,” said panelist Philip Altbach, director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, but one does have to be careful of for-profit institutions.

Changing Faculty-Student Dynamics
A shift in the concept of education generated enough interest to make this workshop standing-room only. The session included a lively interchange among faculty who described students who e-mail them at all hours and expect immediate responses, and others who come to campus woefully unprepared not only academically, but socially, unable to exercise the self-discipline to complete their assignments or even sit still in class. Recognizing that students consider themselves consumers—and reflect that in teacher evaluations necessary for promotion—faculty struggle to keep the classroom a place of learning, rather than a place where a commodity, education, is delivered.

Rebuilding tenured faculty corps
A continuing trend away from tenured faculty and increased dependence on often-exploited contingent faculty could be addressed through a legislative initiative suggested by PSC president Barbara Bowen, who described her idea at a workshop. The staffing crisis—illustrated by a 41 percent increase in part-time faculty compared to a 5 percent increase among tenure-track faculty from 1995 to 2003—will improve only incrementally through local efforts. But coordinated legislation addressing the problem, she said, could garner more attention and “galvanize a movement.” Bowen hopes to see an initiative that will launch model legislation in many states starting in January 2007, and is pushing for federal legislation that would force accrediting agencies to ensure proper staffing at colleges and universities.

Concurrent Enrollment: Pros and Cons
The enrollment of high school students in courses that yield college credit, either in the college or high school classroom, is taking off, but to mixed reviews from unions. In terms of quality assurance and fair compensation, the devil is in the details, says Charles Clarke, president of the Monroe (N.Y.) Community College Faculty Association. Administrators may deliver sound bites, but faculty are the ones who must invest time and expertise to ensure that rules and standards are maintained. In Minnesota, the state Legislature enacted the postsecondary enrollment option for high school students 21 years ago, notes Jo Ann Roche, Minnesota State College Faculty president, and it was instantly controversial. College faculty saw it as the “farming out of our work” and high school teachers thought it could destroy their junior and senior classes. But because of its public popularity, faculty unions collaborate to make it work.

Commission on the Future of Higher Ed
Formed last fall, U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings' commission explores many hot-button issues, including access, quality, affordability, accreditation, accountability and workforce preparation. On March 3, Spellings’ top deputy, Vickie Schray, listened as a panel of union leaders and faculty experts aired their chief concerns. Barmak Nassirian of the  American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers asked about balancing affordability with the Bush administration’s $12 billion in cuts to student aid, for example. Ken Buckman, vice president of the Texas Faculty Association, questioned commission interest in standardized testing for college students. It reveals “a presumptive distrust of faculty,” he noted.