Teaching Limits to Enhance Creativity: The Pedagogy of Degrowth

BY LUIS I. PRÁDANOS Every time I mention the obvious in a classroom—that most industrial economic activities deplete energy and materials and, therefore, constant economic growth in the context of a limited biosphere is a biophysical impossibility—I am moved by some students’ honest reactions. Their response will be some variation of “That makes sense. Why did nobody tell us before that as the global economy grows, the living systems of…

“Clickbait!”

BY AARON BARLOW In early 2016, I shared on this blog a statement by a tenured professor recently fired by the University of California at Riverside. One of the comments, by a former colleague of the ex-professor, accused me of posting his statement solely as “clickbait.” I chuckled, but the accusation rankled: the Academe blog…

CFT and ACCJC Settle Lawsuit

BY HANK REICHMAN In a stunning development that the Faculty Association for the California Community Colleges called a “major win” for the state’s community college faculty, the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) yesterday announced that it had settled its lawsuit against the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC), the embattled agency that accredits…

Fighting Outcomes

BY AARON BARLOW Underlying the mania for “assessment” and “accountability” in higher education is an elitist sensibility that, having gone unexamined for too long, has undermined real efforts at providing useful education for everyone, no matter what college or what level. Not only is it creating a two-tiered model of education, but it is changing…

Quotation of the Day

BY MARTIN KICH In an interview published in the Wall Street Journal, President Trump seems very clearly to be telling rural voters in the “Rust Belt” that his solution to the economic decline of their communities is to abandon them for the closest metro areas. Based on this quotation from the interview, I am guessing…

Follow The Money (If You Can Find It On Campus)

BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL In many respects, what a college or university business officer (CBO) thinks about the health of higher education says more about the vitality and sustainability of America’s colleges and universities than the opinions of any other group surveyed. The reasoning is simple. The business officers know where the money comes from…

AAUP Responds to DOJ Affirmative Action News

The following statement was issued by Henry Reichman, first vice president of the American Association of University Professors, in response to news that the Justice Department will redirect resources to investigating and potentially litigating affirmative action cases in college admissions. “The American Association of University Professors is deeply troubled by yesterday’s announcement that the US…