Belt Height as a Political Metaphor
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Toronto Mayor Rob Ford are both conservative politicians with personalities as outsized as their physical selves. (How is that for a euphemistic way of saying that, like me, they are very fat?) But despite those broad similarities, their political fortunes, at least of late, could not be more different.…
The Real Cost of Austerity: Rats Multiply
When the proponents of austerity and the opponents of “big government” make their case to the public, they emphasize the inefficiencies in public services and the waste of public resources. So the implication is that taxpayers’ money can be saved—and taxes can even be reduced–without actually reducing the public services that taxpayers receive. One of…
Louie Gohmert and Ted Nugent, Proud to Be Ignoramuses
In several earlier posts (see the links below), I have chronicled the ridiculous pronouncements of Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert and “rock legend” and NRA spokesman Ted Nugent. At the risk of giving these two bozos much more attention that they deserve, I think that it is important to chronicle the asinine things that they keep…
What We Can Learn from Baseball
Former major-leaguer Doug Glanville long ago shifted from glove to pen, and quite successfully. Today, for The New York Times, he writes about Alex Rodriguez, discussing how the quest for numbers misses the real point and beauty of baseball. Two paragraphs stopped me: Now major league baseball is in overdrive, stalking the players who inflated…
Understanding Higher Education: Lessons from a British Customs Agent
As a new president in the 1990s, one of my early tasks was to sign an exchange agreement with a private Russian university. The provost and I completed our business in Moscow and headed through London to visit a second exchange program of long-standing with a British institution. While passing through Heathrow airport, a British…
Oh, Please
Let me make something clear: Teaching cannot be reduced to its tools. Let me give you an example, though I doubt anyone reading this really needs one. One of the devices I use in the classroom is the lecture. It allows me to introduce information to students in an organized fashion. I cannot package my…
400 Films about Higher Education (or at Least Set on Campuses): 51-100
Cultural Representations of Higher Ed, No. 7 I am working backwards through this list. Here are films 51 to 100. The rankings are my own and in most cases somewhat arbitrary. The descriptions of the films are paraphrases of summaries found in a half-dozen print and online film guides. I compiled the list about a…
Visual Metaphors for MOOCs
Pricing College Tuition
Let’s assume for the purposes of this analysis that getting a college degree is good for most Americans. This assumption does not mean that every American needs a college degree to lead a productive life. But in most areas and in many industries a college degree will open the same doors for students that a…