What follows is the first part of a posting by Public Accountability Initiative, which describes itself as “a non-profit, public interest research organization investigating power and corruption at the heights of business and government.” Read the full report at the PAI site: In May 2015, an extraordinary example of academic intimidation involving the oil and gas…
What follows is a letter sent today by 32 Instructors in the Writing Programs of Arizona State University (further information can be found at the asuagainst55 website): June 8, 2015 Dear Dr. Mark Lussier, English Department Chair, and Dr. George Justice, Dean of Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Arizona State University: The…
When Clark Ross sent me “Toward a New Consensus for Tenure in the Twenty-First Century” for possible inclusion in Academe, I was immediately interested. Not only was I seeing the ramping up of attacks on tenure but I have always felt the system too weak, if anything. My family moved every couple of years as I…
AAUP President Rudy Fichtenbaum, in his column in the May/June issue of Academe, when did the growth and vigor of the American middle class–and of American higher education–end? The reversal began under the Carter administration and accelerated during the Reagan years. Why did it end? The answer has been well documented in the book Winner-Take-All Politics by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson.…
In 1928, Horatio Alger: A Biography Without a Hero by Herbert R. Mayes appeared. For over 40 years, it was the “go to” source for information about the iconic boys’ writer. Mayes parlayed the success of his book into an editing career crowned, in the sixties, with a term as president of McCall Corporation, publisher…
Just as he is, in many ways, the godfather to the blogs, Benjamin Franklin’s spirit stands over the baptism of the MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). Something new and different? No. As are all children, MOOCs were birthed out of a long line of ancestors. Franklin’s Junto and subsequent libraries, the Lyceum movement, New Thought…
In what passes for “business” these days, institutions of any sort become potential cash cows for those at the top, structures allowing extraction of wealth while providing a minimum in return. Until, say, twenty years ago, educational entities were somewhat exempt, operating on a slightly different paradigm. Their mission was not to enrich those at the…
Replace “technologies” with “reforms” and “economic” with “educational,” in Paul Krugman’s New York Times column today and he could be writing about our schools and colleges. He claims, “the whole digital era, spanning more than four decades, is looking like a disappointment. New technologies have yielded great headlines, but modest economic results. Why?” He goes…