In the next 10 months, we shall see the college campus to be a center of Democratic activity. The reason appears in this short piece at The New Republic by Ruy Teixeira. According to Teixeira, the youth vote is crucial to Obama’s reelection, 18-29-year-olds forming one of his strongest support groups. In 2008, the youth […]
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At research universities and many liberal arts colleges, too, it is universally assumed that research is an unadulterated good. Research keeps professors fresh in their fields, makes them better teachers, and raises intellectual standards for departments. Who would disagree? In conversations about research in my world of the humanities, though, one doesn’t often hear about one […]
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If you go this web site, you can search the course roster at the University of Wisconsin and find out what grades were given each semester for the last several years. In Spring 2011, the average grade for 792 students in Intermediate Organic Chemistry was 2.8, a B-, while in Introduction to Education, 50 students […]
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A few years ago, at a luncheon at Harvard University, Larry Summers noted an interesting fact. If you look at the top ten players in any industry or business 50 years ago, the list would look wholly different than it does today–except in higher education. It was Harvard, Yale, Princeton . . . back then, […]
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English departments have diversified. Forty years ago, just about every faculty member defined himself or herself in literary historical terms. One was a Medievalist, one a Shakespearean, one a Romantic scholar, one a philologist. Large departments might have someone who does film plus a creative writer-in-residence. Today, click on any faculty roster and the expertises […]
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Not far into an important book published recently is a table displaying results for one question on the North American Academic Study Survey, a poll of professors, administrators, and students administered in 1999. The survey is the basis for The Still Divided Academy by the late-Stanley Rothman, April Kelly-Roessner, and Matthew Roessner, which reviews the results and draws balanced conclusions. […]
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Here is a story in The Fiscal Times that may sound a distant warning to wealthy universities. It raises a question that might sound repeatedly in the coming years: Since some private universities are so wealthy, why don’t they pay taxes? As the article notes, last year was a good year for endowments. Harvard’s climbed […]
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This week’s “Diversity in Academe” issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education contains an interview with the “first-person ever appointed to the position of vice president for diversity and equity at the University of Virginia,” a man named William B. Harvey. He has moved on to North Carolina A & T, where he serves as dean […]
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A recent survey of college admissions officers, sponsored by insidehighered.com, has attracted some attention in the press, such as this story in the New York Times and, of course, this account at Insidehighered.com (there is a link to a pdf of the full survey report). It’s a valuable document that reveals attitudes and policies among admissions officers […]
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Herb London and KC Johnson have already posted on the disappointing findings of the ACTA project What Will They Learn? But it is worth pondering some of the implications of the report. One of the more striking of them is the “Slightly less than 20% [of colleges surveyed] require U.S. government or history.” As KC […]
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One of the less inspiring features of academia over the years has been the tendency of the professorate (or at least a vocal portion of them) to respond to certain ideas with contempt. Twenty years ago it was “political correctness” that earned their scorn–that is, denying there was any such thing–and ten years ago it […]
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For a variety of reasons, but mainly because of cost, tenure has become a focus of debate in recent months. Given the trends in hiring and working conditions, though, one wonders why, for the fact is that tenure has been squeezed into an ever-smaller portion of the instructional employee population for years. Two charts in the Chronicle […]
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A rift is building between, on one side, university professors and, on the other side, university administrators (including finance officers), politicians, and parents. The rift doesn’t fall into one of the usual conflicts over ideology (for example, leftist faculty vs. moderate or conservative others) or educational mission (for example, social justice vs. workforce training). It […]
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One of the frequent complaints one hears from humanities professors and figures in the “softer” social sciences is that students and a growing number of higher education officials, consultants, and commentators regard college more and more as a job-training program. While driving across the country this week, I heard Rush Limbaugh declare that the only […]
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Andrew Breitbart has shot onto the media-and-politics scene in the last two years with several well-publicized stories and controversies. What many people may not realize is the extent to which Breitbart’s adversarial approach to the media was formulated out of his college education. When Breitbart sat down with Peter Robinson for his show Uncommon Knowledge […]
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The Chronicle of Higher Education has published the results of
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Readers of Minding the Campus may have noted the story in Inside Higher Ed entitled “Not Just Florida State” (see here). The piece cites “sizable grants” given by the Koch Foundation to universities to support the study of “capitalism and free enterprise.” These agreements are, one assumes, to be added to the Florida State grant […]
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Recently, colleges have been floating three-year bachelor’s degrees to undergraduates. Many students enter with AP credits and a need to reduce tuition costs, so why not concentrate their studies and head into the real world a year sooner? The university, too, would benefit. As a story in the Los Angeles Times last year put […]
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At research universities in the United States, most departments in the humanities have a travel budget that supports professional activities for their faculty members. Most of it goes to help professors attend academic conferences and deliver a paper to colleagues and attend sessions as an audience member as well. For a department of 30 people, the amount […]
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The report entitled “What’s It Worth? The Economic Value of College Majors” is an important study that adds to the growing data base on the outcome of a college education. It’s a product of Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce, and is authored by Anthony Carnevale, Jeff Strohl, and Michelle Melton. The study collects data […]
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If the 80 percent of faculty at the University of Texas-Austin with the lowest teaching loads were pushed to teach just half as much as the 20 percent of faculty who do most of the teaching, tuition could be cut by more than half. That’s the stark conclusion of a preliminary report from the Center for College […]
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Among the many troubling findings cited by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa in Academically Adrift is this remarkable note on grade inflation: —–55 percent of college students have a B+ grade average or higher (3.3 and higher) —–85 percent of college students have a B- grade average or higher (2.7 and higher) Those numbers demonstrate what most everybody […]
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The controversy over the Koch Foundation program at Florida State in which the Foundation has some input on hiring is so overdone that one is tempted to ignore it. (Here’s a sample editorial from the Orlando Sentinel which quotes one anonymous observer as terming the program “shocking.” At the same time, the double-standard is hard […]
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A psychiatrist once told me, “When people do something wrong, you’ve got to tell them.” She meant it not as a moral point, but a psychological one. If people don’t hear somebody else say, “That’s wrong,” an essential element of psychological advancement is missing. The principle bears upon a case in Virginia reported today […]
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Here is a story from the Baton Rouge Advocate that confirms the decline of the humanities in the state system (although cuts struck deep into the sciences and education as well). Officials reviewed hundreds of programs in state colleges and universities, judging them by, among other things, the number of students they graduated each year. […]
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Some readers of Minding the Campus may have noticed the little fracas at University of Iowa between College Republicans and anthropology/women’s studies professor Ellen Lewin. You can read about it in any of the many stories listed on this Google news page. The details are simple. UI College Republicans sent out a mass email, approved […]
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What do we do about the adjunct problem? Everybody knows it exists, and everybody agrees on its elements. Well-qualified, talented, and conscientious people teach multiple courses, sometimes on different campuses, at a few thousand dollars per course. Add up class prep and grading hours and their labor sometimes falls below minimum wage, and they don’t […]
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The American Federation of Teachers has just issued a report that outlines the institutional conditions of “student success,” including the role of the faculty. (The report itself is here.) Much of the document is predictable. The criticism of reigning assessments of student learning and graduation rehearse familiar arguments about “one-size-fits-all” and “not-all-learning-is-measurable” and “insufficient-funding-for-authentic-assessment.” And, […]
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As K C Johnson noted here yesterday, Stanley Fish and Walter Benn Michaels have a conversation at the New York Timesopinionator blog in which both advocate unionization (see here). Their immediate target is an op-ed by Naomi Schaefer Riley in USA Today entitled “Why Unions Hurt Higher Education” (see here). It should be noted that Michaels and Fish are both English professors, which puts them in […]
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Last year, Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreyfus published Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids–And What We Can Do About It, a resounding broadside against campus policies and practices. They berated the system for producing useless research, creating cushy working conditions, neglecting undergraduates, and reproducing elitism. Hacker and Dreyfus sometimes […]
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