The Glasgow Herald has published a short item with the headline “Educationalists Ready to Learn.”

The cynic in me immediately wondered whether “educationalist” was some new corporate coinage created to reframe and to devalue the essential role of “faculty” in higher education.

But if the headline writer was influenced by corporatization, that influence has probably been more subtle than what I initially expected (though I am not sure whether it’s being more subtle does not make it all the more pernicious).

Glasgow is hosting the European Association for International Education’s (EAIE) 27th annual conference at the SECC. The conference, which is expected to be attended by more than 5,000 “academic professionals,” will feature presentations on “a diverse range of topics discussed from international rankings to the recruitment of overseas students, visa fraud, and the future of universities in the digital age.”

Of course, the other possibility, beyond the creeping influence of corporate edu-speak, is that the headline writer thinks that “educationalist” is a synonym for “educator.”

Lest I come off as having an insufferably superior attitude, I did not think that “educationalist” was actually a word and was more than a little surprised to discover that it is the term for an expert in educational theory.