FLOSS In School - Open Source Software in the Education System

The University of Southern Mississippi is planning to cut 29 faculty jobs -- including those of 14 tenured professors -- as various academic units are eliminated or reduced to deal with state budget cuts, The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Miss., reported. Anita Davis, president of the Faculty Senate, said: "It's sad. These are some of our most-respected people on campus."

A former postdoctoral researcher at Washington State University fabricated and falsified data in a journal article and has been barred from participation in federal research projects for three years, the Office of Research Integrity at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced Monday. The announcement in the Federal Register involved researcher Hung-Shu Chang, a grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and an article in the journal Endocrinology.

The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation has announced that it will conduct an audit of its scholarship program, following reports of repeated violations of its rules by one member, The Dallas Morning News reported. The Morning News revealed recently that Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Texas Democrat, gave 23 scholarships to four of her relatives and two children of a top aide -- violating the foundation's anti-nepotism rules and requirements that scholarship recipients live in the districts of the members awarding the funds.

Drew Wilson is reporting that a proposed bill in the Czech Republic may harm Creative Commons adoption. From the post:

The draft suggests that the government is preparing a bill that would require anyone wanting to take out a Creative Commons license to first submit their work to a copyright collective. After that, the creator has to prove that their work is authentic. Only then would they be permitted, under the draft legislation, to license their work under Creative Commons.

Yesterday OEN reported that the Chronicle of Higher Education put an article on open courses behind a pay wall. That article is now available for free. Alan Levine has a new post discussing the article in part, but making larger points about openness in general. From the post:

Not only love, much more flowers best in openness and freedom. It’s not that complex.

Jason Hoyt, Chief Scientist for the citation program Mendeley, posted several days ago affirming their support of open access. In the comments section of the post, questions arose regarding just how open Mendeley itself was. “Petermr” blogs his disatisfaction (post 1, post 2). “iPhylo” responds.

David Bollier has a new post on FLOSS as commons. From the post:

Without such a language of the commons, market metrics and discourse tend to prevail. This is fine as far as it goes. But the conventional market narrative provides a misleading ontology and epistemology for describing FLOSS communities.

Thanks to Michael Bauwens for the link.

“tinh” has a new post announcing a white paper on how faculty can implement open access at their institution. From the post:

This excellent companion piece, providing a thorough overview and careful analysis of legal issues related to public access policies, is written by Simon Frankel and Shannon Nestor, who are lawyers at Covington & Burling, a prominent Washington D.C. law firm.

As publishers and analysts again wonder if e-books are about to take off, the growing popularity of rental options may play as important a role as technology.

Let's stop using the term "faculty-driven," especially for things that aren't in fact driven by the faculty, writes Laurence Musgrove.

The University of California system's retirement fund faces a shortfall of $20 billion, according to a study released Monday, the Los Angeles Times reported. A committee that produced the study offered a number of recommendations for closing the gap, including raising the retirement age for new employees, increasing the contributions made by both the university and its employees, and reducing benefits. Faculty members worry that some of the changes could make employment at the university less attractive for some of the academic talent they would like to recruit. Mark G. Yudof, the system president, recently sent a letter to all employees in which he said some changes are essential. "If we do nothing, in four years, the university will be spending more on retirement programs each year than we do on classroom instruction," he said.

The White House said Monday that the Obama administration would revamp and simplify its system of export controls -- a set of procedures and regulations that are designed to limit the sharing of certain technological information with foreign parties, but that research administrators and scholars complain often impair their work. University research officials were quick to praise the proposed reforms, which are expected to limit the number and type of technologies with which companies and universities need licenses if they wish to involve foreign nationals in the work.

"The export controls regulations that served the United States well 40 years ago no longer meet the country‟s needs. In fact, many current requirements actually impede our national security and thwart our ability to compete," John Hennessy, Stanford University's president, said in a statement from the Association of American Universities. "[I]n a world of globalized science and technology, our security will come from our ability to 'run faster' than our competitors, not from building walls around our nation. A more agile and responsive system of controls will allow us to focus our energies on serious security risks, make informed decisions, and make them more quickly."

Two senior administrators at Kansas university gave regents information about the president -- who they say then fired them for doing so.

The U.S. Justice Department has sued Maricopa County Community College District, charging it with illegal discrimination by requiring non-citizens to produce more work authorization documents than are required, the Associated Press reported. U.S. citizens have not faced the additional requirements. A district spokesman declined to comment on the suit.