BY HANK REICHMAN Last fall Yale University was one of the more prominent institutions where student demands for diversity and racial justice made headlines. I previously commented at some length on the Yale events in a November post, “Racism and Academic Freedom at Yale.” In a second post a few months later I commented as…
BY JEFFREY R. WILSON This is a guest post by Jeffrey R. Wilson, a Preceptor in Expository Writing at Harvard University, where he teaches the “Why Shakespeare?” section of the university’s freshman writing course. My essay in the May/June 2016 online version of Academe, “What Shakespeare Says about Sending Our Children Off to College,” is meant to…
BY KELLY HAND We all like to hear about deserving low-income high school seniors who have won generous college scholarships. However, as Nick Anderson points out in a recent Washington Post article, “For the Poor in the Ivy League, a Free Ride Isn’t Always What They Imagined,” low-income students struggle on a daily basis with…
BY MICHAEL MERANZE The following item is reposted from Remaking the University, a blog run by UCLA history professor Michael Meranze and UC-Santa Barbara english professor Chris Newfield. North Carolina Republicans Take Aim at State’s Historically Black and Native American Colleges Although overshadowed by North Carolina’s recent HB2 (forbidding transgender individuals from using the bathroom…
Here are the highlights of the 2016-Q1 report from Higher Ed Jobs: –The number of jobs in higher education expanded in Q1 2016 at the highest growth rate for the first quarter in three years. –While the number of jobs in higher education expanded at a slightly higher rate in Q1 2016, the number of…
The following excerpts from an Associated Press news story on the website of the ABC channel WLS-TV in Chicago provides on update on the longer term impact of the ongoing state budget battle in Illinois: “High school seniors’ unease over the lack of state funding for Illinois universities is contributing to a drop in applications…
BY CRAIG VASEY AND LINDA CARROLL This is a guest post by Craig Vasey and Linda Carroll. Craig Vasey is professor of philosophy and chair of the Department of Classics, Philosophy, and Religion at the University of Mary Washington. He is a former member of the AAUP’s national council and current chair of the Committee…
From the editorial of the May/June 2016 issue of Academe: At the end of his epic trilogy U.S.A., John Dos Passos writes: “A hundred miles down the road. Head swims, belly tightens, wants crawl over his skin like ants: went to school, books said opportunity, ads promised speed. . . . A hundred miles down the…
BY DAVID J. SIEGEL AND DANIEL M. CARCHIDI This is a guest post by the co-authors of “The Meaning of MOOC-topia” in the May–June issue of Academe. David J. Siegel is associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership at East Carolina University. Daniel M. Carchidi is associate director of IT academic technology at the University of New Hampshire. Back…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Last week, Thomas Farragher provided some thoughtful commentary on the perils of underfunding public higher education in Massachusetts. It’s an important discussion that reaches well beyond how much money flows to higher education. Mr. Farragher argued that the cost of attending U Mass Amherst is $26,445 annually but that tuition is…