Periodically, it’s always prudent to take a step backward to reflect on the state of American higher education in the first years of the 21st-century. It looks very different today from the higher education system that we inherited from the leadership guiding higher education policy after the Vietnam War. The currents affecting American colleges and…
For the past six months, I’ve been hearing odd complaints that the humanities, once home, supposedly, to the study of “truth, beauty and goodness,” have been overwhelmed by concern for “race, class and gender.” Another came last Friday, using the exact phrases of the older ones, all stemming from a single “study” put forward by…
The title here is from the end of David Brooks’ column in today’s New York Times. He’s lamenting how we’ve let the humanities become debased, allowing them to fall from their 20th-century high (in terms of college graduates) to a new low (though he doesn’t consider that, before the 20th century as well as in…
The following is another item that I am re-posting from Futility Closet (www.futilitycloset.com). It is re-posted with the permission of Greg Ross, who maintains the site. You can have daily updates delivered to your e-mail each morning. ************************* Marvin Harold Hewitt was bright enough to find schoolwork boring, so he dropped out of high school.…
For most of my professional career, I have believed that institutions, more or less, happen upon a seminal moment in their evolution. Indeed, when approached about consulting or management opportunities I typically first begin by looking at some combination of ethos, culture, board and management leadership, and cold, hard numbers to determine the possible. It…
Here is another item from Futility Closet (http://www.futilitycloset.com/), re-posted with the permission of Greg Ross. ************************* It was British wordplay expert Leigh Mercer who coined the classic palindrome “A man, a plan, a canal—Panama” in Note & Queries on Nov. 13, 1948. He later said that he’d had the middle portion, PLAN A CANAL P, for a…
Many college and university boards of trustees operate in a shockingly inefficient and counterproductive way. They are often an impediment to change and bastions of tradition, old boy networks, outdated practice and alumni parochialism. At other times, they may be testing grounds for new business models, consumer fads, or the will of the dominant trustees.…
I have been a faculty member at Wright State University since 1990. It has generally been a very nice place to work. Our AAUP chapter/bargaining unit has been a strong one almost since its establishment, and although we have not always regarded our administration’s decision-making as enlightened, the truth is that, especially in this corporatized…
The new issue of Academe takes a look at all aspects of governing boards. There are individual perspectives and individual institutions that get examined, but also a broader, quantitative look at how faculty participate on boards. In 2011-2012, researchers at the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute (CHERI) did a survey of faculty members who serve…