A website called foreclosure.com is sponsoring an essay contest for current undergraduates in America’s colleges and universities. The contest was introduced in 2009. First prize is $5,000, and there are four runners-up prizes of $1,000. The students must write an 800- to 2,000-word essay on an assigned topic, and this year’s topic is the following:
The start date for this is problematic for any professor taking the MOOC. Most of us are just beginning teaching for the semester and are faced with other start-of-session duties. The same is probably true for many others enrolled in MOOCs–and one of the reasons, I suspect, that so few finish them is simply that…
As American higher education begins to adapt to the changes that engulf it, one basic assumption must be that policy makers and educators see the education system in America as a continuum. For the moment, educators divide into two basic camps: basic and postsecondary. Each group has issues and opportunities, sometimes interrelated, but each approaches…
Shaun Johnson of The Chalk Face, a website dedicated to questions of public education (particularly to the struggle against the so-called “reformers” who are attempting to eradicate it), has a post at Good which, though it is aimed at demonstrating why the current “reforms” should be viewed with suspicion, also shows why we should be a…
with Katelin Kaiser In past blogs, I’ve argued academics, particularly tenured faculty, should consider self-publishing their pedagogical materials. Today I wish to further explore the benefits of open textbook publishing. For this blog I’m joined by Katelin Kaiser, a graduate student in Ethics and Medical Humanities at the University of South Florida College of Medicine…
This is a guest post by Virginia Kuhn, associate director of the Institute for Multimedia Literacy in the School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California. Her article, “Embrace and Ambivalence,” appears in the newest issue of Academe. Digital dissertations are sometimes said to be commonplace; however such talk usually refers to an artifact that is digital but…
Marjorie Heins, founder of The Free Expression Policy Project, is the author of the new book Priests of Our Democracy: The Supreme Court, Academic Freedom, and the Anti-Communist Purge (NYU Press, February 2013). In her book (watch video interviews with her), Heins examines the critical Supreme Court cases of the 1950s and 1960s that first…
Just what is the right thing to do, the right thing to do morally? That is not always so easy a question to answer, maybe hardly ever is it such an easy question. In higher education there are many situations that pose just that sort of question. Moral issues, questions and dilemmas have existed and…
Last week, I attended a presentation by William Doyle, a professor at Vanderbilt University, about his proposals to change the way student aid works in America. His analysis was sponsored by the Committee for Economic Development, who also hosted the presentation. You can read the report on CED’s website. Professor Doyle’s ideas center around one…
The leadership in America’s colleges and universities spends a great deal of time making the case for the kind of education that reflects the people, programs and facilities already in place. It is an understandable position; indeed, on most levels many of us often wish that the argument had more legs. Much of the defense…