Conciliation talks at the University College of Cape Breton failed March 8 when the administration broke off negotiations. The government responded by appointing a mediator — a step supported by the faculty association to help end the strike and lock out as quickly as possible, and allow students to get back to the classroom.

After a ten-day organizing campaign, the Association of Professors of Bishop's University has applied for certification of a new bargaining unit for contract academic staff.

The $2.5 billion supplement to the Canada Health and Social Transfer (CHST) announced in February's federal budget does almost nothing to address problems created by seven years of budget cuts and may not even translate into any increased funding for post-secondary education, CAUT is warning.

After an auspicious beginning, February turned into a bad month for post-secondary education in Canada. The highpoint was Feb. 2 when the Canadian Federation of Students held lively Access 2000 events in more than 50 cities in support of better public funding and more accessibility. But, by the end of the month Paul Martin and Mike Harris gave the back of their hand to Canada's faculty, students and academic staff.

Education International's Global Action Week for Education (from 3 to 8 April 2000) forms part of the new Global Campaign for Education launched in mid-October to mobilize public pressure on governments to fulfil their promises to provide free, quality education for all.

Moncton's librarians and professors went on strike Mar. 2, for the first time in the history of the university.

Canadian families are increasingly finding the prospect of a university or college education for their children moving beyond their reach, concludes a report released in February by CAUT.

A new three-year collective agreement ratified in February at Trent University brings no immediate salary gain for bargaining unit members. The salary scales for faculty and librarians were revised Feb. 1, 1999, and will now be adjusted each year of the contract according to a disparity correction and parity maintenance formula.

Faculty need to critically reexamine and resist the growing links between universities and private industry, participants at a two-day conference examining the increasing corporate influence over Canada's colleges and universities heard in March.

A recent study by Professor Carolyn Kenny and two of her colleagues at Simon Fraser University reveals that for many aboriginal women the challenges of juggling work, family and education are also complicated by the challenges of trying to sustain meaningful cultural ties.

University of Calgary faculty members ratified a new three-year agreement Feb. 14 after a year long round of bargaining.

frican-American Preston King, who fled overseas in the early 1960s, returned to the U.S. in February after 39 years of exile.

The South African government has moved to close for-profit courses offered by foreign universities through local institutions

On March 8, women across the world marched against poverty and violence to mark the commemoration of International Women's Day

Part-time staff in Britain will benefit from new government regulations that will require employees on part-time contracts to receive terms and conditions which are "pro rata temporis" with comparable full-time employees

Part-time academic staff won an important victory recently when a Washington state court ruled that work part-timers do outside the classroom must be counted toward their retirement benefits

The U

The 1996 strike of teaching assistants and service employees at prestigious Yale University served as a flash point for the growing anxiety among progressive academics about troubling changes taking place in universities in the United States. In many respects, Chalk Lines is a spark off this flash point. Edited by Randy Martin, a self-defined militant labour activist and peripatetic academic until he became chair of the department of social science and management at Pratt Institute, Chalk Lines is designed to fire up a new era of political activism on U.S. campuses over control over academic work and the purposes that it should serve.

We academics rightly value our autonomy in curricular matters -- after all, we are experts in our fields. Who should know better than we what should be included in our courses or curricula? That we may squabble about the fine points generally does not invalidate our sense that we have a shared understanding of our disciplines' needs, and we are usually quick to close ranks when outsiders want to poke their fingers in our disciplinary pies.