BY MARTIN KICH One of my most widely read posts to this blog has addressed the difficulty not only in visualizing a million, a billion, and a trillion dollars but also in conceptualizing the great differences between those numbers, which do after all sound a lot alike. So, today, as we grapple with the reality…
BY MARTIN KICH The publication of a new biography of the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson, Brother Robert: Growing Up with Robert Johnson, written by his now elderly “step-sister,” Annye Anderson, with the assistance of Preston Lauterbach. As with just about everything else associated with Johnson, his blood relation to Annye Anderson is actually not quite…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Our administration has asked our chapter to meet with them to discuss budget shortfalls. Noeleen McIlvenna, our chapter president, and other members of our executive committee recruited groups of faculty who have done detailed research on multiple “cost centers” on which the university has not adjusted its spending despite the financial…
BY MARTIN KICH Empty Exercises in Planning without Much Meaningful Preparation Francois Furstenberg, a Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, has written an article for the Chronicle of Higher Education that is one of the most lucid and impassioned dissections of what’s wrong with American higher education that I have ever read—and I have…
BY MARTIN KICH Everyone gives lip-service to the primacy of instruction in institutional missions, but the first place where administrators and boards look for “savings” is almost always instructional budgets and instructional staffing. They almost always say that instruction is where all of the money is, but typically “instruction” accounts for only 30%-40% of a…
BY MARTIN KICH Writing for Politico, Juan Perez has reported the results of a poll conducted by the magazine in collaboration with Morning Consult: Forty-one percent of Americans said it’s a bad idea to reopen K-12 schools in the fall, concluded the online survey of close to 2,000 registered voters, while 44 percent felt it…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This was a very nice surprise for our graduates and a very nice moment in the very uneven recent history of our university. I’m here to say congratulations. Congratulations to you chosen ones. I am calling you the chosen ones because you have been chosen in many ways. First, by the…
BY MARTIN KICH This is the lead item in a news item from the Far-Right media site World Net Daily: If you cannot read the line right before “Read More,” it says: “Finally someone with all-American blood has the guts to stand up against government orders.” Decades ago, when I spent more time on barstools,…
BY MARTIN KICH This item appeared in yesterday’s Morning Education newsletter from Politico: NCAA LOSES ANTITRUST LAWSUIT: The unanimous decision from three judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals means that the NCAA must allow costly educational benefits and even cash awards for student-athletes. — The ruling falls short of the push for college athletes to…