This is a guest post by Darren L. Linvill, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Clemson University. His article, “The Bias Fallacy,” appears in the newest issue of Academe. Did you know people who like mayonnaise are more likely to be good dancers? As my undergraduate research methods students are taught, correlation…
Francis Bacon wrote that people with disability develop to be “extreme bold” as a habit born of their need to defend themselves from the “scorn” of others. No doubt much has changed in the years since Bacon opined on the matter, but Stephen Kuusisto writes, in “Extreme Bold in the Faculty Ranks,” that students and…
The study released this week at the NCAA’s annual meeting showing that annual spending on sports by public universities in the six big-time conferences like the SEC and the Big 12 passed $100,000 per athlete raises some interesting questions that colleges and universities must address. It is less what the large conferences – call them…
Thus far, 2013 has been a tough year for open-education advocates. As Flat World Knowledge promised at the tail-end of 2012, the publisher no longer provides a CC 3.0 NC SA version of its textbooks for students. In response, Leslie Scott endeavored to defend the commons by crowd-sourcing an effort to harvest Flat World Knowledge’s catalog…
Over the past few years, plenty of ink has been spent discussing the question of how college changes students. They don’t just learn facts, of course—there are lots of important skills to learn inside and outside the classroom. Students also change as they grow out of their teens and into their early twenties. In the…
North Dakota State University President Dean Bresciani has announced a ban on a federal research grant to two faculty for a sex education program, after Republican legislators objected to its connection with Planned Parenthood. Bresciani claims to be obeying a state law, but that law only relates to family planning programs. Below is an open…
Kenneth Bernstein just retired from a career as a high school teacher in suburban Washington, DC, and he has a stark message for college professors: the students entering your classes this year will be less prepared than ever. He points to two culprits, both related to increased testing: –More and more students are taking AP…
The AAUP has just issued a new report on “The Role of the Faculty in Conditions of Financial Exigency.” The report “insists that faculty members must be involved in consultation and deliberation at every stage of the process, beginning with a determination that a state of financial exigency exists.” According to the report, “Financial exigency…
As the clock ticks closer (if clocks can, in fact, still be said to tick) to Lance Armstrong’s confessional interview with Oprah, it’s worth noting that as the Union Cycliste Internationale used the findings of the United State Anti-Doping Agency to strip Armstrong of all of his cycling titles, including his record seven Tour de…
The following op-ed piece was originally published in the Los Angeles Times. It is reprinted here with the permission of the author. Hey, Kids, Don’t Forget Your Guns Op-Ed What’s missing from the typical kindergartner’s backpack? A pistol. December 28, 2012 By Daniel Akst Here we go again. After the tragic school killings in…