More on President Obama’s Proposal to Provide “Free” Community College
Two recent posts to Diane Ravitch’s blog have provided links to responses to President Obama’s proposal to provide free community college. The first item is “The Trojan Horse of ‘Free’ Community College,” an op-ed published at Truthout [http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/28637-the-trojan-horse-of-free-community-college#]. It is written by Adam Bessie, a faculty member at a California community college whose personal blog…
Student and Faculty Dress Codes
Although they have continued to provoke some controversy, school dress codes have become commonplace in primary and secondary schools. But at the college level, dress codes would seem very anachronistic. So, when I came across a small item that suggested that a student dress code had been proposed but not adopted at Purdue University, I…
WIU Lifts Suspension of Student Editor
Last week, I reported on the case of Western Illinois University suspending the Western Courier editor-in-chief Nicholas Stewart because he sold video he took of a riot on campus. This week, WIU decided to reinstate Stewart. WIU student services vice-president Gary Biller informed Stewart, “a preliminary review … has revealed that no complete policy exists within…
How the Super Bowl and Student Debt Were Linked
Neil Postman Always Rings Twice
After my mother died, in cleaning out her house I went through my father’s old books, pulling out the ones that I might find of use in my own writing and teaching. Among those was a dusty paperback of Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner’s 1969 Teaching as a Subversive Activity. I returned to it recently, remembering it from…
The Gates Foundation Profiles American College Students
The following infographic was produced by designer Eleanor Lutz and journalist Linda Kennedy for the Gates Foundation. It has been publicized under the lead “If There Were Only 100 College Students in America,” but it basically presents percentages rounded to the closest integer. The sources of the statistics in each category are indicated on the…
Postscript to My Post on the McAdams Case
John Wilson’s post containing the letter from the national AAUP to the Marquette administration somewhat clarifies several of the issues with McAdams—that is, clarifies the issues without presuming to resolve them. The university’s position has become that McAdams has repeatedly referred to students by name in his personal blog or other public communications–not simply that…
Abolish the Military Academies: Give Peace a Chance
The hawkish Washington Post has actually published an op-ed advocating the abolition of the military academies. Having been involved in a career struggle a few years back with the Air Force Academy, or more precisely with its partisans, I did a double take to encounter this article in one of America’s “elite” newspapers. Its essential argument is the military…
