After my mother died, in cleaning out her house I went through my father’s old books, pulling out the ones that I might find of use in my own writing and teaching. Among those was a dusty paperback of Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner’s 1969 Teaching as a Subversive Activity. I returned to it recently, remembering it from…
John Wilson’s post containing the letter from the national AAUP to the Marquette administration somewhat clarifies several of the issues with McAdams—that is, clarifies the issues without presuming to resolve them. The university’s position has become that McAdams has repeatedly referred to students by name in his personal blog or other public communications–not simply that…
This past week, we received “over the transom” the following e-mail from a non-tenure-eligible full-time faculty member. I am reprinting it with his permission but with all identifying details removed. I think that the e-mail itself conveys the predicament of these faculty more pointedly than any paraphrase and comment that I might provide. _________________________ I…
I received this somewhat lengthy item in my e-mail this evening; perhaps financial desperation is making people more amenable to reading the longer pieces that we have been repeatedly warned that no one bothers to read anymore: First, I am shocked that according to Moneynews.com, one-third of Baby Boomers will survive retirement. I am not…
I should begin by stating that I am in favor of any proposal that provides free higher education at public colleges and universities. In fact, I am in favor of any proposal that reduces the cost to students without compromising the quality of instruction. I think that the president’s proposal will help community colleges because…
This is the first post in what I hope will be a series, in which conference and chapter leaders comment on the issues that they are trying to address and the initiatives that they are trying to organize and to promote. I intend to contact conference or chapter leaders directly to invite them to participate,…
Here is the table summarizing the results from the Young Invincibles report on state support for higher education over this past year: The detailed profiles for each state are available at: http://www.studentimpactproject.org/state_report_cards You can see from the table that four states have received A’s; ten have received B’s; thirteen have received C’s; twelve have received…