1. There are difficulties with the argument that a professor or student should provide their own account. Aside from establishing a precedent that all essentials of the job are not provided, the cost can be significant for a student or junior faculty member. Additionally, many faculty need the support of university staff in creating and maintaining their information.
2. During my first years in academia after leaving industry, I leaned toward the elimination or curbing of tenure rights because I did not see much abuse of academic freedom, and saw a lot of faculty abuse. However, I now realize that tenure also countervails administrative abuse, and, though it is costly, it is needed.
3. Issues of freedom of speech and academic freedom fall within the scope of the AUP, and are not discussed here.
4. These policies suggest several faculty duties, which should be explicitly budgeted for. It is common to have a joint faculty/administration committee in which the faculty members serve in addition to their regular duties and the administrators serve as part of their regular duties. For this reason, the administrators control the committees and hence the policies they are administering.
AAUP: links to many documents discussing the Minnesota tenure proposal.
Corporate Internet Strategies is a monthly newsletter written by programming and software development expert Ed Yourdon. It does an excellent job of covering Internet and intranet technical and policy issues. Published by Cutter Information Corporation, (800) 964-8702.
Kairos: A Journal for Teachers of Writing in Webbed Environments.