For the first time, this year’s Mindset List includes an addendum—a list of slang words that will be familiar to most members of the class of 2019 and that presumably have become more widely used, even if they were not coined, over this past year. The list includes somewhat conversational definitions of the terms and…
2. Google has always been there, in its founding words, “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible.” 3. They have never licked a postage stamp. 14. Cell phones have become so ubiquitous in class that teachers don’t know which students are using them to take notes and which ones are planning a…
The following map was included in an article by Libby Nelson, published by Vox. The map originally appeared in an article by Sandhya Kambhampati and Meredith Myers in the Chronicle of Higher Education. It shows how long it would take a student working half-time at a minimum wage job to earn enough to cover one…
People are the same everywhere, I guess. That cliche stared me in the face this morning, when I saw over 30 new comments on the statement we published signed by a long list of scholars on the upcoming visit by Indian Prime Minister Naarendra Modi to a Silicon Valley. Five more have appeared while I’ve…
I usually try to limit my posts on this blog to issues directly involving higher education. But as AAUP President Rudy Fichtenbaum has pointed out, “the attack on higher education as a public good is a political attack” that “requires us to respond by entering the arena of politics.” And today, via Paul Krugman’s blog,…
Yesterday’s NLRB’s decision on the collective-bargaining rights of employees hired through “temp” agencies has meant that very little attention has been paid to a decision handed down yesterday by an NLRB Administrative Law Judge. Although the change in how contingent employees are defined has potentially broad direct ramifications and signals an important, fundamental shift in…
I’ve had a strange fascination with an education start-up called Minerva for some time now. They’re a Silicon-Valley inspired online operation that has actually enrolled students now. Yet unlike so many other for-profit education ventures they’ve always aspired to be highly selective – the first “Online Ivy.” I think the source of my fascination stems…
In an e-mail from Professor Steven Salaita’s attorneys, the fired academic from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign addresses the issue of document destruction and concealment: “The revelation that top administrators at the University of Illinois destroyed evidence is disheartening. The wonderful students and scholars at the university have a right to expect transparency and…
When I was in graduate school at Lehigh University, Darryl Dawkins was playing professional basketball for the Philadelphia 76ers. He was part of the team assembled around Julius Erving and coached by Billy Cunningham, and they were among the best teams in the league year after year, in a few instances coming tantalizing close to…
By Andrew Scheinman The fallout at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) continues unabated: the Chancellor and Provost have both “stepped down,” and Steven Salaita’s legal team’s added destruction of evidence claims to their lawsuit. Here in Urbana-Champaign we’re having a “red soybeans” moment, what with the show-trials and blood sports already occurring and, no…