Student Success Initiatives vs. Academic Freedom to Teach Rigorous Courses
A recent AAUP report that has relevance to our own work at UVU: https://www.aaup.org/report/cca-colorado and an Inside Higher Ed piece on the report: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/03/29/aaup-report-says-adjunct-professor-was-likely-fired-insisting-rigor-courses Just days before Bork was terminated, he says, he drafted an email to the state’s Higher Learning Commission, complaining about Aurora’s new Gateway to Success initiative. The goal of the program was to increase pass rates in these gatekeeper courses but, Bork said, in reality, he’d been asked to cut 20 percent of his introductory philosophy course content; require fewer writing assignments, with a new maximum of eight pages per semester; offer small-group activities every other class session; and make works by women and minority thinkers about 30 percent of the course. Bork said he was told to keep teaching this way until 80 percent of all student demographic groups were passing the course, which in his view violate