Goal is to address growing crisis
Higher education faculty from around the country will meet in Sacramento for the fourth national gathering of the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education in January.
Hosted by the Community College Association, the purpose of the campaign is to address the growing crisis in higher education in the United States. First and foremost that means ensuring that affordable quality higher education is accessible to all sectors of our society. The meeting will take place from Jan. 18 at 7 p.m. until noon Jan. 20.
Begin a dialogue
“The goal of the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education (CFHE) is to begin a dialogue regarding how public higher education should be funded so that the U.S. remains the focal point of intellectual development for the world,” said CCA President Ron Norton Reel, who will be a host for the January meeting.
“We expect 80 higher education professors who will meet to examine four diverse and challenging proposals for higher education,” Reel said. “These programs range from providing a credit to students who enter college and then begin to pay back after graduation and securing a job, to what it would take to make public American higher education free.”
CFHE was launched in Los Angeles in January 2011 by several faculty organizations, including the California Faculty Association and the Community College Association. At the time, they agreed on the need for a national campaign to inject rationality and human values in the discussions taking place about how to reform higher education.
Bringing faculty together
In remarks at a subsequent news conference at the National Press Conference, Lillian Taiz, president of the California Faculty Association, addressed the importance of uniting on the issue. The campaign, she said, “is about tearing down the walls of isolation among faculty but, more importantly, bringing together faculty and other groups who are passionate about higher education and deeply distressed about its current direction. We need to talk and work together and too often that has not been happening,” she said
Reel previously warned about the impact of continual budget cuts in the California community colleges to the state. Community colleges in California train over 70 percent of nurses practicing in the state and 80 percent of the first responders.
“We cannot allow our educational system to disenfranchise the working class of Americans,” Reel said. “We must spend the money needed to keep those seeking to make a positive change in their lives which we know makes a positive change in our society. Invest where it provides the most back into our social areas that are hurting so much at this time.”
The third faculty gathering was hosted by the Michigan Conference AAUP in May 2012 in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
Registration for the meeting in Sacramento is $50 in addition to the cost of lodging. Please email CFHE.conference@gmail.com for more information.