Huffington Post recently ran a series of photographs of an abandoned farmhouse in which all of the previous occupants’ furniture and other belongings have been left to gather dust. Here are several of those photos: The rest of the photographs in this series can be found at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/28/abandoned-farmhouse_n_3163713.html These photographs reminded me of the haunting…
Here’s one from The Onion. If you don’t subscribe to their daily newsletter or site feeds or regularly visit their site, you really ought to do so. Sometimes the satire is very close to the reality that it is targeting, but at least you can laugh instead of weeping. Professor Deeply Hurt by Student’s Evaluation…
I thought that this communication from the Ohio Conference might be of broader interest. Ohio Conference Update The Bad News: So-Called “Right-to-Work” Legislation Introduced in the Ohio House They are at it again. Despite the fact that 62 percent of Ohioans rejected the Senate Bill 5 attack on public workers nearly a year and a half ago, the extreme…
Unemployment Rates by State In the first two posts in this series, I made the case the claim that the population shift from the “Rust Belt” to the “Sun Belt” has not been driven by a preference for “right to work” states over pro-labor states, and I examined the degree to which population growth in…
Reviews of Recent Books Concerning Current Issues in Higher Ed: No. 5 Bradley, M. J., R. H. Seidman, and S. R. Painchaud. Saving Higher Education: The Integrated, Competency-Based Three-Year Bachelor’s Degree Program. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2012. This book proposes an idea previously treated at some length by Robert Zemsky in his book Making Reform…
At Cuba’s 15th Annual Cigar Festival, held earlier this year in Havana, a team of Croatian chefs, led by Grgur Baksic, provided a complete menu of meals, including appetizers and desserts, which included tobacco as a major ingredient. The main course that attracted the most comment was baked stone bass fillets wrapped in banana and…
The concept of higher education as the “great equalizer” may be the best outcome of the evolution of American colleges and universities in the 20th century. As education advanced and the needs of the workforce changed, Americans recognized with clearheaded pragmatism that education offered the most certain avenue “out and up.” They took advantage of…
Testimony of John McNay, Ph.D., President Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors Before the House Finance Subcommittee on Higher Education Representative Cliff Rosenberger, Chair March 6, 2013 Chairman Rosenberger, Ranking Member Ramos, and distinguished members of the Higher Education Subcommittee: my name is John McNay and I am President of the Ohio…
Simply publishing material in a certain topic area does not confer on oneself or on one’s employees the expertise or the credentials of professionals in that field. So a publisher of books on government and politics would not necessarily have any special expertise in governing or in running a political campaign. Likewise, a publisher of…
The Campaign for the Future of Higher Education, a national grass-roots coalition of faculty and staff higher education organizations, is deeply concerned about California Senate Bill 520 and what it could mean, if adopted, for the future of public higher education in California. A well-intended but misguided effort to restore access that has been lost…