The Ratings Problem
John Dewey starts off Experience and Education (1938) with this: MANKIND likes to think in terms of extreme opposites. It is given to formulating its beliefs in terms of Either-Or, between which it recognizes no intermediate possibilities. When forced to recognize that the extremes cannot be acted upon, it is still inclined to hold that they are…
I Need to Take My Dog to the Vet: Can I Take Sick-Leave?
On first gloss this title might seem humorous, but my wife and I, who are childless by choice, have over the years been the proud people-companions and caretakers of three to four dachshunds at a time. On numerous occasions we have had to take our animals, called our children both by people who are supportive…
A Bad Week for the Liberal Arts
Was last week a bad week for the liberal arts and liberal arts majors? Not really, but it was hard to tell with headlines such as Liberal Arts Majors are Screwed, (More) bad news for liberal arts majors, and New Study: Is No Degree Better Than a Liberal Arts Degree. All three headlines were referring…
Restating American Higher Education as a Public Good
There has been a good deal of discussion lately on America’s college campuses about how to strengthen the reputation of an institution. Much of the conversation focuses on the decision by the Obama administration to publish a consumer scorecard to help applicants and their families better understand their choices, relying in part on an intensified…
The Apocalypse as Personal Vindication
Last month, a small herd of bison was running along a highway in Yellowstone National Park and happened to run past a film crew from a local television station that was there to do another story. The footage of the bison soon went viral, fueling endless speculation about what the bison were running from. Initially,…
Scrap or Repair English as a Second Language in College?
Clifford Adelman’s recent essay featured by Inside Higher Ed, “The Continued Coming of Second Language Students,” put both a smile and a frown on my face. I know that kind of display does not count as a formal or sufficient response in the field of education, so let me be more specific. I smiled because…
The Importance of Gender Studies
In the current frenzy of cost-cutting and budget slashing, many administrators are quick to blame what they determine are “less valuable” programs like the humanities and social sciences and cut funding to those programs accordingly—witness the governor of Florida recently saying that the state didn’t really need more anthropologists, anyway. Similarly, North Carolina governor Pat…
Feed Them Speakers, Not Ice Cream!
I doubt my college is unique in having offered over the years “events” too numerous to count where free pizza, ice cream, or doughnuts have been, if not the main course, at least one served up as part of some kind of learning experience. The publicity posters–first paper, now double-blasts of paper and email graphics–have…
The Killing of a School is Never Pleasant
Guest poster Michael McDevitt is professor in journalism and mass communication at the University of Colorado Boulder. He conducts research in political communication and is working on a book, Where Ideas Go to Die: Anti-Intellectualism in American Journalism. His e-mail address is mike.mcdevitt@colorado.edu. The killing of a school is never pleasant—especially when it’s your school—but a…