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A Funny Book about Worthless Degrees

“Here are some [college] degrees that cost you roughly $30,000 in tuition, their much cheaper replacements, and the savings you’d realize:                   Degree                                  Replacement                                        Savings                   Foreign Languages                 Language Software                               $29,721                   Philosophy                             Read Socrates                                    $29,980                   Women’s Studies                   Watch Daytime TV                               $30,000                   Journalism                             Start […]

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Do We Need More College Grads?

Richard Vedder calls it “the single most scandalous statistic in higher education,” an assessment that doesn’t sound overstated to us. Writing on the Chronicle of Higher Education site, Vedder says “a small army of researchers and associates” gathered by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP) shows that “approximately 60 percent of the increase […]

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Two More Reasons Why College Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be

George Leef so thoroughly dismantled Help Wanted Thursday and Friday that there’s not much for me to do but poke around the rubble. Let me take up two collateral points that are too little discussed. First, the assumption that a college degree means that the student has learned much of anything, let alone how to […]

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The Safe and Secure Professoriate

Here is what Andrew Hacker, co-author of Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids and What We Can Do About It , says about tenure in a recent interview in Atlantic Monthly: Here’s what happens. Academics typically don’t get tenured until the age of 40. This means that from their […]

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English Lit’s Poor Job Market

I have the print copy of the October 2009 Modern Language Association Job List, the annual publication in which English departments in research universities and major liberal arts colleges publicize open positions. It doesn’t contain every job opening in English literature at every institution of higher learning, but it is the main source for people […]

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What’s Happening At Columbia

Madonna Constantine has filed a lawsuit against Columbia University in the New York State Supreme Court. What could possibly be the grounds? The Spectator reports: The law firm of Paul Giacomo will litigate Constantine’ case under an Article 78 proceeding of New York’s Civil Practice Law and Rules, which allows Constantine to challenge the process […]

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