Tag: Peter Galuszka
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Richmond’s Redskins Deal Gets Even Weirder
By Peter Galuszka The deal for the Washington Redskins to build a summer training facility gets richer, more one-sided and more questionable by the day. The latest wrinkle, according to the Richmond Times Dispatch, is that the City of Richmond will use money from its school and jail budgets to pony up a $10 million…
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Australians May Dump Pocahontas Parkway
By Peter Galuszka This just in from Australia! Transurban, the Aussie company that owns public-private partnered Pocahontas Parkway near Richmond, is considering selling the toll road because it has become a White Kangaroo. If so, this is incredibly bad news for PPP3 advocates everywhere, including various moderates and conservatives such as Gov. Robert F. McDonnell…
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A Settling of Accounts
Upon her reappointment to the presidency of the University of Virginia after a protracted controversy with the Board of Visitors, Teresa Sullivan made a call for unity: “There is no time for residual hostility toward anyone perceived to have been on the other side of recent disagreement. We can go forward with what is best…
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Online Education’s Dearth of Dialogue
By Peter Galuszka Despite the “existential threat” involving online education at the University of Virginia, Mr. Jefferson’s school certainly seems to be at the forefront of the debate. You have President Tereaa Sullivan being fired and then reinstated, the curious fact that the school actually was involved with online advacements after all, criticism from the Darden School…
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Yes, Hybrid Online Learning Delivers
The University of Virginia, it seems, is one of more than a dozen prestigious universities to have signed a partnership with Coursera, a company that provides hosting services for massively open online courses (MOOCs). The deal was in the works even as UVa was roiled by controversy over the forced resignation of President Teresa Sullivan,…
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McDonnell Bolsters UVa Board, Keeps Dragas
Governor Bob McDonnell has put his stamp on the University of Virginia Board of Visitors, reappointing its lightning-rod Rector Helen Dragas, replacing five old board members and appointing two “senior advisors.” “Cognizant of the need for varied and wide-ranging voices, I have appointed competent professionals to the board who come from the fields of academia,…
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UVa Needs Someone Who Thinks like Helen Dragas but Isn’t Helen Dragas
Governor Bob McDonnell soon will reveal his appointments to replace three members of the University of Virginia Board of Visitors, including Rector Helen Dragas. The sad truth is that, despite the BoV’s recent vote of support for her, Dragas is damaged goods. She rushed through the forced resignation of President Teresa Sullivan without respect for…
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Sullivan Back In
The Board of Visitors has reinstated Teresa A. Sullivan as president of the University of Virginia while also expressing support for Rector Helen E. Dragas, the university news service has reported. Dragas had taken a leading role in forcing her resignation, effective August, earlier this month. Given the overwhelming support Sullivan enjoyed among faculty, staff…
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Is Anyone Prepared to Tame UVa’s Bureaucracy?
by James A. Bacon Governor Bob McDonnell has delivered an ultimatum to the University of Virginia Board of Visitors: Get the Teresa Sullivan mess straightened out by Tuesday or he will replace the entire board. The governor, who long seemed disengaged from the controversy stemming from the forced resignation of the UVa president, now has…
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Incremental Change — or Glacial Change?
by James A. Bacon Many University of Virginia stakeholders have worked themselves into a righteous froth over the idea of privileged, out-of-touch political appointees on the Board of Visitors imposing their brand of corporate-style restructuring upon Mr. Jefferson’s University. University administrators are the best judges of how to allocate finite resources between competing academic priorities,…
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The Higher Ed Crisis: Credentialism
by James A. Bacon Jane Jacobs is best known for her masterpiece, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” but she wrote cogently on a wide variety of economic topics before she died in 2006. In her last work, “Dark Age Ahead,” she deplored the rise of “credentialism” in higher education. Her warning, written…
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Sullivan Responds, Reiterates Defense of Business As Usual
by James A. Bacon Teresa Sullivan has spoken at last, making a statement to the Board of Visitors defending her record as president of the University of Virginia and her philosophy of incremental change. “Corporate-style, top-down leadership does not work in a great university,” she said. “Sustained change with buy-in does work.” Being an incrementalist,…
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What Incremental Change Looks Like
by James A. Bacon As long ago as last October, if today’s Washington Post article is to be believed, leaders of the University of Virginia’s Board of Visitors had lost faith in the willingness of President Teresa Sullivan to “consider dramatic program cuts in the face of dwindling resources and to approach the school with…
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What An Existential Threat Looks Like
by James A. Bacon For a glimpse of the disruptive future of higher education, University of Virginia stakeholders who are up in arms over the resignation of President Teresa Sullivan should enroll in a class taught by David Evans, a popular computer science professor and winner of the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council…