As we watched the government shutdown and fiscal crisis play out in Washington this week, the first thought crossing the minds of most Americans was how silly and dangerous the high stakes game of “we’re not sure what we want but we still want it” was in the court of global public opinion. The agreement…
This originally appeared in Raging Chicken Press on October 21, 2013. It is a fairly long article detailing changes in Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) policies regarding new buildings and capital projects. The more I looked in the financial schemes at the system within which I work, the more it became clear that…
In several previous posts under this title, I have focused on the rapidly widening gap between administrative compensation and faculty compensation, as well as on the compensation received by “celebrity” visiting faculty and adjunct faculty. In other posts, I have written about how things being packaged as “innovations,” such as MOOCs, will widen the gap…
Every four years, well ahead of even the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primary, the Ames Straw Poll or Iowa Straw Poll is held. The atmosphere in Ames on that weekend is carnival-like, and, not surprisingly, there have been all sorts of irregularities in the voting: that is, each attempt to reduce those irregularities…
These are my alternatives to the list created by Melia Robinson and Melissa Stanger for Business Insider. I am excluding works of nonfiction and listing my top three choices for each state. Titles included in the list compiled by Robinson and Stanger are indicated in boldface. Alabama To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee Southern Discomfort…
The choices have been clear for a long time. One side, though, seemed to have won within the last decade. As Elaine Weiss, writing for the Huffington Post, says, there has been “a philosophical shift from education as a critical tool to advance democracy to a consumer-oriented system of individual choice, achievement, and even profit.”…
My apologies if the following seems too off-topic from what is normally on the Academe blog, and too self-serving. What has gone on in Washington these past couple of weeks has frustrated most of us Americans (and has amazed those watching from other countries) as a colossal waste of time and money, and for what? “We…
Guest Blogger Mary Collins taught at Johns Hopkins University’s MA in Writing Program for 12 years and is currently an Associate Professor of Narrative Nonfiction and Director of the Center for Teaching and Faculty Development at Central Connecticut State University. She offers this post as a continuation of Norm Wallen’s article for Academe online called “Critical Thinking–Again?” “My…
FutureofHigherEd.org • #futureofHE • facebook.com/FutureofHigherEd _________________________ The “Promises” of Online Higher Education: Profits With so much national focus on the “promises” of online higher education to expand access and to reduce costs, one truth about online higher education rarely mentioned is that it is big—Very Big—business. Understanding and assessing developments in online higher education require…
His Holiness, Pope Francis PP. 00120 Via del Pellegrino Citta del Vaticano Dear Pope Francis: I do not know how to begin this letter, so I will just let you know what is happening, in general, with the faculty in Higher Education here in the United States, as in the rest of the world; I will…