The Pathway From a Liberal Arts Education to a Job at Google
Quite appropriately, prospective college students and their families are looking for colleges and universities, and specific majors, that will help the student prepare for a successful future career. It is easy to see the path from accounting or nursing major to C.P.A. or R.N., but less so the path for English or Sociology majors leading…
Rethinking the Role of College Career Centers for Humanities Graduates
Numerous studies indicate that the skills produced by a quality liberal arts education correspond precisely to what employers seek beyond technical training. The ability to articulate, write, apply quantitative methods, use technology, and work in a collaborative setting will continue to shape the parameters of the skill set needed in the 21st century. So, why…
Invasion of the MOOCs: The Promise and Perils of Massive Open Online Courses
About a year ago, Steven Krause (of Eastern Michigan University) and Charles Lowe (of Grand Valley State University) came up with the idea of a collaborative anthology of essays on MOOCs, twinning an experiment in scholarship with exploration of an experiment in education. The anthology appeared last week, showing the success of the approach to…
True Detective: The Much-Anticipated Finale and the Novel That Preceded the Series
If you have been watching the new HBO anthology series, True Detective, you may be very ambivalent about watching tomorrow night’s final episode in the initial story. If you haven’t been watching, it features Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as detectives investigating a series of bizarre, ritualistically sadistic killings that have stretched over two decades.…
Interview with Rev. Joseph Lowery, 50 Years after New York Times v. Sullivan
On March 9, 1964, the unanimous US Supreme Court issued its decision in the case of New York Times v. Sullivan, revolutionizing freedom of the press by requiring “actual malice” in defamation suits involving public figures. The case began when a fundraising ad for the civil rights movement appeared in the New York Times, criticizing…
More Evidence of Seemingly Willful, or at Least Very Casual, Ignorance
Last month, I reported on the results of an annual study conducted by the National Science Foundation that measures the interest in and knowledge of basic science among a large sample of American adults. The study showed that the professed interest in science far exceeded the demonstrated knowledge of science. In fact, in some respects…
Ohio Higher Education Coalition Holds Press Conference on Student Debt
The Ohio Conference of AAUP (OCAAUP) has joined such groups as the Ohio Education Association (OEA), Ohio Federation of Teachers (OFT), New Faculty Majority (NFM), Ohio Part-Time Faculty Association (OPTFA), and Ohio Student Association (OSA) in forming a statewide advocacy group on issues related to higher education. After taking some time to create an operating…
SAT and the Standards Shibboleth
David Coleman, head of the College Board (of SAT fame) and sparkplug to the creation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), seems to believe that if we can measure it, we can know it and evaluate it. He also seems to believe that measurement results in truth absolute, not truth relative, a mindset more…
unCommon News February 2014
unCommon News A crowd-powered newsletter for a writing-centered community February, 2014 Dear Friends, We hope all’s well with you and your classes. This month we are delighted to announce the winner of the Aaron Swartz Award for 2013: Congratulations, Andrea Scott, Assistant Professor at Pitzer College, whose article “Formulating a Thesis” was published in April 2013. We are honored to…