By Stephen Kuusisto There’s a dialogue in the most recent Sunday New York Times Book Review entitled “Whatever Happened to the Novel of Ideas?” which, by its very title, inveigles readers to believe, even before setting out on the stertorous voyage, that good old smarty pants novels have been abducted, or killed off. The headline…
This is a guest post by Jacob Felson. He is associate professor and acting chair of the Department of Sociology at William Paterson University. His recent research has focused on evaluating the validity of twin studies and on the history of quantitative methods in sociology. It’s well-known in higher education circles that about a third of the students entering four-year colleges as freshmen don’t return…
We at the Academe Blog have been hosting posts on a conflict between scholars sparked by Indian Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Silicon Valley. While we encourage and promote open debate and discussion, some of the comments on some of the posts have been anything but civil. Heated discussion can be positive and all of…
This is a guest post by Vicki L Baker, a contributor, along with co-author Peter Boumgarden, to the September-October issue of Academe. She is associate professor of economics and management at Albion College, where she teaches management, organizational behavior, and leadership courses. As a business educator who has been in higher education for nearly 12 years, I am always seeking opportunities to…
By Robert Warrior, Director of American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign As the one-year anniversary of the debacle over the aborted appointment of Steven Salaita at Illinois approached, Inside Higher Education published an op-ed by former AAUP president Cary Nelson spelling out the lessons he contends we can all learn from…
This is a guest post by Donald Earl Collins. He is adjunct associate professor of history at University of Maryland University College. He previously taught at Howard University in the Department of Afro-American Studies and has written on topics such as multiculturalism, education, and African American identity. I come at the issue of the future of HBCUs, the topic of my article “Three Things…
Bramson, Kate. “Life-Sciences Firm Nabsys Closes, Says Stockholder; DNA-Sequencing Firm Was Seen as Star Startup in State.” Providence Journal [RI] 16 Sep. 2015: A, 8. . . . Nabsys founder and former CEO Dr. Barrett W. Bready on Tuesday would neither confirm nor deny whether the company has closed, but said “a lot” of…
We read a great deal about the internationalization of higher education—which, in many contexts, is simply a catchphrase for the corporate provision of digitalized higher education through conglomerates such as Laureate, Pearson, and McGraw-Hill. But if this one-size-fits-all approach to education has created all sorts of issues in North America and Europe, it is inevitably…
The Ohio Conference provides some financial support to One Ohio Now, a non-partisan group advocating common-sense tax policies that actually meet the needs of our state—that provide sufficient funding of our state’s public institutions, public services, and physical and digital infrastructures. Yesterday, I came across the following news item reporting that a similar group has…
The Glasgow Herald has published a short item with the headline “Educationalists Ready to Learn.” The cynic in me immediately wondered whether “educationalist” was some new corporate coinage created to reframe and to devalue the essential role of “faculty” in higher education. But if the headline writer was influenced by corporatization, that influence has probably…