Education in the Corporate Oz
BY AARON BARLOW One of the more depressing articles I’ve read recently—outside of politics—is Kevin Carey’s “The Creeping Capitalist Takeover of Higher Education” for Huffington Post. He writes: Instead of students receiving a reasonably priced, quality online degree, universities are using them as cash cows while corporate middlemen…
Consolidation of Majors? A Bad Idea Floated at CUNY
BY AARON BARLOW The City University of New York is quietly floating the idea of consolidating majors across its campuses. Rather than a Physics major at City College, Hunter, Baruch, my own New York City College of Technology and all the rest, students would be funneled into one CUNY campus. This, I suspect, is seen…
On the Tenured and Teaching
BY AARON BARLOW The traditional classroom is an admittedly questionable structure. It limits learning by confining bodies of knowledge within four walls, scuffed floor and ceiling generally too low. It also keeps things out, particularly a world that should have an impact on every type of learning. It reinforces hierarchy: no matter that teachers try…
Can We Move Beyond Our RPT Assumptions?
BY AARON BARLOW “Peer review,” cried the provost, “that’s the gold standard.” Sometimes it seems like the only standard. And we are being told to grasp it strongly. Why not? It lets us off the hook. Accepting it without question, we can ignore at least a couple of the urgent concerns regarding Reappointment, Promotion, Tenure…
Stop Disparaging Professors. They Work for a Better America
BY AARON BARLOW Yesterday, I posted an expanded version of “Stop Disparaging Professors. They Work for a Better America” on medium.com. I added, in particular, mentions of a number of professors in the public sphere, including Christine Blasey Ford. I wrote: This unfortunate blindness to the reality of…
Too Perfect?
BY AARON BARLOW Maybe it was just too perfect a topic for my classes today. Certainly, though, I couldn’t resist. It had everything. It had: Topicality that would keep students interested; Relationship to our university system (City University of New York); Room for discussion of student value, something particularly important for first-year college students; Relevance,…
In Defense of Editors
Continuing Assumptions About Aging
BY AARON BARLOW Writing in InsideHigherEd, Rebecca Gould claims that mandatory retirement at 65 would be “a good first step toward dismantling hierarchies and opening opportunities for many more young scholars.” The assumption, of course, is that young scholars are of more value than older ones. And that older scholars don’t need opportunities. Oh, and that senior academics…
The Faculty: Reclaiming the Role as the Real “Straight Shooters”
BY AARON BARLOW David Horowitz, whose attacks on “professors” caused a great deal of concern among the American faculty a decade ago, is back in the news in relation to Florida Gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis, who spoke at a number of Horowitz’s Freedom Center conferences. DeSantis is quoted in the Washington Post from a conference speech…