Huffington Post recently ran a series of photographs of an abandoned farmhouse in which all of the previous occupants’ furniture and other belongings have been left to gather dust. Here are several of those photos: The rest of the photographs in this series can be found at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/28/abandoned-farmhouse_n_3163713.html These photographs reminded me of the haunting…
Here’s one from The Onion. If you don’t subscribe to their daily newsletter or site feeds or regularly visit their site, you really ought to do so. Sometimes the satire is very close to the reality that it is targeting, but at least you can laugh instead of weeping. Professor Deeply Hurt by Student’s Evaluation…
This piece is reposted from the “On the Issues Blog” maintained by the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education: http://futureofhighered.org/on-the-issues/ If you are looking for faculty-driven commentary on current issues in higher education, you should consider adding the “On the Issues” blog and the CFHE website to your links page. MOOCs may prove to…
I thought that this communication from the Ohio Conference might be of broader interest. Ohio Conference Update The Bad News: So-Called “Right-to-Work” Legislation Introduced in the Ohio House They are at it again. Despite the fact that 62 percent of Ohioans rejected the Senate Bill 5 attack on public workers nearly a year and a half ago, the extreme…
Unemployment Rates by State In the first two posts in this series, I made the case the claim that the population shift from the “Rust Belt” to the “Sun Belt” has not been driven by a preference for “right to work” states over pro-labor states, and I examined the degree to which population growth in…
Reviews of Recent Books Concerning Current Issues in Higher Ed: No. 5 Bradley, M. J., R. H. Seidman, and S. R. Painchaud. Saving Higher Education: The Integrated, Competency-Based Three-Year Bachelor’s Degree Program. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2012. This book proposes an idea previously treated at some length by Robert Zemsky in his book Making Reform…
At Cuba’s 15th Annual Cigar Festival, held earlier this year in Havana, a team of Croatian chefs, led by Grgur Baksic, provided a complete menu of meals, including appetizers and desserts, which included tobacco as a major ingredient. The main course that attracted the most comment was baked stone bass fillets wrapped in banana and…
I am always amazed how some administrations defend themselves, as Brooklyn Law School Dean Nicholas Allard does, by claiming that the AAUP has somehow authorized their dubious actions. Allard claims that the school’s new policy on “demonstrated incompetence” is a “long-recognized and widely accepted regulatory term supported by the AAUP and others.” Brooklyn Law School’s new policy…
The concept of higher education as the “great equalizer” may be the best outcome of the evolution of American colleges and universities in the 20th century. As education advanced and the needs of the workforce changed, Americans recognized with clearheaded pragmatism that education offered the most certain avenue “out and up.” They took advantage of…
If the GOP wants to “re-brand,” it might start by trying to win elections by attracting new voters, rather than by trying to win elections by suppressing Democratic turnout. Not only have these voter-suppression efforts ended up being counterproductive—making affected voters all the more determined to exercise their right to vote—but they have diminished the…