In a world increasingly dominated by social media, it is no longer possible for a college community to present what it values “in plain sight.” Prospective applicants and their families judge a college today largely by what they find on the web. In the old days, crafting an image was perhaps easier. Marketing was more…
Writing for Bankrate.com, Christina Crouch has surveyed in some detail “Three Radical Plans” for reducing college costs [http://www.bankrate.com/finance/college-finance/rethinking-college-costs-radical-plans.aspx]. The first two of these “three radical plans” have been addressed previously in posts to this blog: the “pay it forward” plan that originated in Oregon, that has been adopted or adapted in some form in 15…
We have heard a lot from Republicans and even some Democrats about how charter schools are a much-need alternative to our “failing” public schools. But that argument has been long on assumption and assertion and short on statistical support. The group Innovation Ohio has recently taken a close look at the performance of charter schools…
On behalf of my wife Peg and our kids, Kelly and Bud, as well as our deceased dog Buck and his female reincarnation as Lucky, I would like to apologize to America for all the dumb stuff that my distant cousin Cliven has been saying. Everyone who knows me well enough to say, “Hey, Al”…
The first of these stories seems to illustrate the potentially terrible consequences of abusing one’s position and violating one’s professional responsibilities. The second seems to suggest that there are ways to avoid such consequences. The first story was written by Cliff Peale for the Cincinnati Enquirer [http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/courts/2014/04/17/former-nku-athletic-directoreaton-going-to-jail/7818507/]. It concerns the guilty plea entered and the…
The AAUP’s first investigation of dismissals of faculty members was at the University of Utah in 1915. However, two such investigations preceded the founding of the AAUP. Each of these investigations, that of the Edward Ross case at Stanford University in 1901 and of the John Mecklin case at Lafayette College in 1913, was led by a professor…
When I read what Northwestern football coach Pat Fitzgerald emailed his team recently, all I could think of was my father: “Understand that by voting to have a union, you would be transferring your trust from those you know — me, your coaches and the administrators here — to what you don’t know — a…
In contemporary America, income inequality is indisputably increasing and indisputably limiting the potential and the upward mobility of the ever-increasing percentage of Americans slipping into the have-not category. In the absence of significant upward pressure on wages exerted by the large industrial unions and in the absence of a large industrial workforce because of the…
In “Here’s a New Way to Pay for College,” an article published in USA Today [http://college.usatoday.com/2014/04/17/heres-a-new-way-to-pay-for-college/], Daniel Wheaton reports on a new Far-Right proposal to address the student-debt crisis. In a bill that they have called “The Student Success Act,” Marco Rubio, the Republican Senator from Florida, and Jim Petri, a Republican House member from…
John Romano, writing in the Tampa Bay Times over the weekend, reviews the connection between Charles Koch and Florida State University, a problematic connection (and not the only one of its type) that has been under scrutiny for at least three years now: The relationship at FSU drew howls of protest in 2011 when a couple of professors…