Higher Ed’s Quantification Problem
BY ERIC SCARFFE AND KATHERINE VALDE After the initial draft of House Bill (HB) 999 began circulating online last year, talk of Florida could be heard in the halls of almost every institution of higher education in the United States. As acting chapter president of the United Faculty of Florida at Florida International University, for…
Put Democracy on the Syllabus
BY MATTHEW BOEDY It’s that time of year again for professors across the nation. End of the semester review. What worked well? What didn’t? What can or should I change next time? And how might I make it all more relevant? This run-of-the-mill academic action should take on much more importance if you look up…
The Classism of Workforce Development in Community Colleges
BY HOLLIS F. GLASER As a community college professor, I’ve been hearing a lot about “workforce development,” the importance of getting our students ready for jobs. This has been coming down to us with a particular degree of alarm and urgency, an initiative that is college- and university-wide. We are hearing about it in our…
Why You Should Attend a First-Year Physics Class
BY BILL BERGMAN Recently, I participated in an experiment that had several first-year seminar (FYS) instructors attend each other’s classes. It was an effort to see if we could improve our teaching techniques by observing colleagues. My first visit was to a FYS class in physics. Surprisingly, this ninety-minute first-year science class not only taught…
Interview with Jonathan Marks, Author of “Let’s Be Reasonable: A Conservative Case for Liberal Education”
BY JOHN K. WILSON The following is an email interview I conducted with Jonathan Marks, the author of the new book being published today titled Let’s Be Reasonable: A Conservative Case for Liberal Education (Princeton University Press). Marks is a professor of politics at Ursinus College, and he will be discussing his book on Thurs.…
An English Professor Promotes the Value of Math Courses
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH In all sorts of ways and on all sorts of levels, the coronavirus crisis is making the case for the value of a liberal arts education and of general-education courses. As a professor of English, I could make the case for the value of communication skills and, in particular, of writing…