University Pres Fires Assistant for Going to Restroom

Reginald Green was driving his boss, a university president, from Philadelphia to Washington DC. He needed to use a restroom once during the trip. But the boss said no! Huh? Who does that?

According to an article in Business Management Daily,

Green warned the president that he would 'have an accident in the car' if he wasn’t allowed to stop. The president ignored his plea. Regardless, Green drove to a rest stop and used the facilities. When Green returned to the car, the president mumbled something under his breath and refused to talk to Green the rest of the drive. The next day, Green was fired.

I guess arrogant jerks do that.

Green sued the university and won, but only because he had disclosed during his pre-employment physical that he has irritable bowel syndrome. The court ruled it was a disability covered by the Americans With Disabilities Act, and since he was hired with knowledge of his condition the university was required to accomodate his need for restroom breaks.

My question is, why don't ALL employees have the right to use the restroom when they need it?

Who Really Teaches College Classes?

One of the things some students and their parents look for when consulting US News Best College rankings is the fulltime faculty ratio. "A higher proportion of faculty who are full time scores better in the ranking model than a lower proportion," presumably because it indicates courses are taught by professors who make teaching their fulltime job, as opposed to part-timers hired off the street or something like that.

But a report by Scott Jaschik in Inside Higher Ed calls into question the percent of fulltime faculty used by US News in its Best College rankings. Nebraska's numbers were among those that seem questionable. Say it ain't so!

Nebraska has plenty of company, including Georgia Tech, North Carolina State, Penn State, U of Iowa, U of Missouri-Columbia and Cornell.

The issue of inaccuracies in the rankings was first raised this month by the American Federation of Teachers, (AFT)....Focusing on the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, the AFT asked how it could be listed as having a faculty that is 100 percent full time when data submitted to the U.S. Department of Education show it has 401 part-time faculty members (compared to 1,539 full-timers).

U.S. News divides the part-time total in three, in theory because a part-time adjunct wouldn't be teaching as much as a full-time professor. Ignoring for a minute the reality than many a part-time adjunct teaches more sections than a tenured professor at a research university, applying the formula at Nebraska would not yield a 100 percent figure.

Inside Higher Ed asked Nebraska how it could claim a 100 percent full-time faculty, and the answer was that it left out all of its adjuncts, believing that was what U.S. News wanted.

The issue I think most students would consider relevant is that "the U.S. News figures...exclude instruction by graduate students -- meaning that just about every research university in the rankings would have a lower percentage if the actual section instructors were all counted." In reality, research universities use grad students to teach nearly 1/5 of their classes.

This number only counts for 5% of the faculty resources category, which is 20% of the score, so this is not a big factor (1% if my math is good). Still, it seems some clarification is in order. If being taught by fulltime faculty is important to you, US News's report won't help you figure out where to apply.