Professor may lose job for Obama vote pledge

A math professor who told students to sign pledges to vote for President Obama’s re-election should be fired, President James Richey advised the Brevard Community College Board of Trustees.

Sharon Sweet, an associate professor of mathematics with tenure at the Florida college, is “guilty of electioneering, harassment, and incompetence,” concluded a report based on a three-month investigation.

“Professor Sweet strongly encouraged or mandated that students from several classes sign a pledge card that stated, ‘I pledge to vote for President Obama and Democrats up and down the ticket.’ She also misrepresented her intentions to multiple students, indicating at various times that she was conducting voter registration for the college, that the pledge cards were non-partisan voter registration forms, and that the pledge was a ‘statistical analysis.’”

Sweet created a hostile environment for students, who told investigators they feared she’d lower their grades if they refused to sign the pledge.

Jill Biden’s pay amazes adjuncts

Jill Biden’s $82,o00 a year salary as a community college professor — revealed by a look at her husband’s tax returns — has amazed adjuncts, who thought she was one of their own, reports Inside Higher Ed.  Though Biden started as an adjunct, she’s now an associate professor teaching three developmental English classes at Northern Virginia Community College. The college says she works full-time, keeps office hours and attends faculty meetings. With 15 years experience teaching at Delaware Technical Community College, she earns an above-average salary.

Jack Longmate, a member of the New Faculty Majority and an adjunct faculty member who teaches at Olympic College, said he wished Biden would use her visibility to highlight the “plight of adjuncts.”

. . . “there is a dysfunctional two-tiered system in place in our colleges and it impacts the quality of instruction. I wish she brought attention to that. ”

Despite her full-time teaching job, Biden has been visiting community colleges with U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis to promote partnerships between industries and community colleges. Yesterday, she spoke at Reading Area Community College in Pennsylvania with Under Secretary of Education Martha Kanter.

In January, Vice President Joe Biden raised academic hackles by blaming rising college costs of faculty pay. “Salaries for college professors have escalated significantly,” he said in Pennsylvania.  “They should be good, but they have escalated significantly.” Perhaps he was speaking from personal experience: His wife pay nearly doubled when she went from teaching two courses per semester as an adjunct to three as an assistant professor.