University of Minnesota regents on Friday will discuss a 5-year, multimillion-dollar plan that lets the U and Fairview Health Services jointly manage the services they perform together. The agreement, a year and a half in the making, would affect the University of Minnesota Physicians clinics, University of Minnesota Medical Center, Amplatz Children’s Hospital and planned Read more →
Here’s an email from University of Minnesota President Eric Kaler naming the deputy general counsel, Bill Donohue, to replace Mark Rotenberg as the U’s general counsel — essentially, its chief attorney. It sounds like an interim position of sorts. He’ll start serving later this month until the end of June 2015. At that point, Read more →
Emory University English professor Mark Bauerlein writes in the Star Tribune why the University of Minnesota is wrong to largely exclude classics from its “College in the Schools” program: The point here is not to censure the course for its contemporary, multiculturalist focus. Prof. McNaron and CIS have, in fact, developed machinery to ensure college-level Read more →
University of Minnesota regent Richard Beeson has just written me, chiming in on the issue of whether regents have spoken out enough on legislative budget cuts to the U: Regent Allen correctly points out that a Regent’s legislative time and presence can and should be measured in a number of ways. For myself, I have Read more →
Yesterday on the House floor, House higher-education committee Chairman Gene Pelowski (DFL-Winona) repeated an item of irritation for him: that University of Minnesota regents rarely if ever appeared before his committee in past years to protest budget cuts. In a recent discussion, I asked regent and former board chairman Clyde Allen what he thought of Read more →
Yesterday on the House floor, House higher-education committee Chairman Gene Pelowski (DFL-Winona) repeated an item of irritation for him: that University of Minnesota regents rarely if ever appeared before his committee in past years to protest budget cuts. In a recent discussion, I asked regent and former board chairman Clyde Allen what he thought of Read more →
I caught up with the speaker, Fairview VP Mark Hansberry, for just a minute as he was walking out the door. He wouldn’t elaborate on the timing of Fairview’s decision to end merger talks with the U — the fact that the decision was announced the same day as Sanford’s pullout. He just said that Read more →
The first line in this Star Tribune editorial on legislative control/pressure on tuition is the brassiest: It takes considerable gall for the Minnesota Legislature to deal the state’s two higher-education systems nation-leading cuts in state aid — a nearly 50 percent reduction over the last decade — and then complain about the decisions of the Read more →
Some senators were apparently so concerned over the recent multimillion-dollar contract buyout of fired University of Minnesota basketball coach Tubby Smith that yesterday they named an amendment after him. The “Tubby Smith” proposal for the U would prohibit state appropriations from going toward the buyouts at the U’s athletic department. The Senate adopted it, even Read more →
Yesterday was practically Gene Pelowski Day. First the House higher-education committee chairman appeared on MPR’s Daily Circuit. Forty minutes later, he held a press conference unveiling the latest version of the House higher-education bill. Then he held his committee’s hearing. I was there at all of them, and here are a few highlights. He’s always Read more →
Alex Friedrich