The DOE's "College Scorecard" Isn't Accurate

Thanks to Steve Filling of California State University, Stanislaus, who is Chair of the CSU Academic Senate, for alerting me to to an October 9 article in The Hechinger Report entitled “There’s finally federal data on low-income college graduation rates—but it’s wrong.”  Here are some excerpts: The U.S. Department of Education has released college-by-college graduation…

Steven Salaita Returns to Illinois

Steven Salaita spoke tonight at the University of Illinois at Chicago before a supportive crowd of 150 about his new book, Uncivil Rites: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom, which Aaron Barlow reviewed and I also reviewed last week. Salaita will be speaking on Oct. 13 in Urbana. He wondered about the controversy that got him fired, “Why was it…

Is the Exploitation of Education Coming to an End?

In The New York Times today is an article, “For-Profit Colleges Accused of Fraud Still Receive U.S. Funds.” Exploitation of the failed student loan programs (failed, that is, in terms of protection against fraud by for-profits) continues, the Times says, even in the face of an Education Department crackdown on “bad actors.” The article claims:…

Sometimes a Single Statistic Is a Terrible Revelation

Over the past decade, any number of commentators have noted the striking differences between our national discussions of and our national responses to terrorist attacks and domestic gun violence. In fact, that contrast has now been referenced so frequently that it has become something of a truism. But, in an op-ed for the Los Angeles…

Pedagogy of “Doubt” and the Attack on Colleges of Education (Part II)

Guest Blogger Morna McDermott teaches in the College of Education, Towson University. This post originally appeared  here. Supporting evidence for Part I Corporate Control of Higher Ed A Deeper Examination of the Messaging In Part One I mentioned two articles: http://edexcellence.net/articles/reforming-ed-schools-from-within and https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/teacher-prep-programs-need-to-be-accountable-too/2015/02/20/ed140f44-b8fc-11e4-aa05-1ce812b3fdd2_story.html . The first one is published by Fordham Institiute (known for a its corporate-model reforms) promoting ““Deans…

Pedagogy of “Doubt” and the Attack on Colleges of Education (Part I)

Guest Blogger Morna McDermott teaches in the College of Education, Towson University. This post originally appeared  here. Let’s Start with a Few Recent Headlines: Teacher Prep Colleges Are Failing the Teachers Study Delivers Failing Grades For Many Programs Training Teachers  States Slow to Close Faltering Teacher Ed. Programs (also see more recently: http://edexcellence.net/articles/reforming-ed-schools-from-within and https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/teacher-prep-programs-need-to-be-accountable-too/2015/02/20/ed140f44-b8fc-11e4-aa05-1ce812b3fdd2_story.html ) Traditional colleges of…

Reporting Back from the PA AAUP Annual Meeting

Guest blogger Jacob A. Bennett lives and works in Philadelphia, where he teaches rhetoric, poetry, and literature. I was surprised to receive, and happy to accept, an invitation to attend this year’s annual meeting of the Pennsylvania State Conference of the AAUP on October 3. The keynote speaker, Dr. Gerald Beyer of Villanova University (the host…

Experts and Adjuncts: The New Model for Higher Education

The American professoriate once ranged from professionals who taught a course as an adjunct—a contribution to their professions, the compensation being almost nothing—to the regular (but generally poorly paid, often relying on family fortune to sustain them) faculty who generally assumed lifetime security at institutions whose operation their colleagues dominated. That changed over the decades starting…