The new issue of Academe takes a look at all aspects of governing boards. There are individual perspectives and individual institutions that get examined, but also a broader, quantitative look at how faculty participate on boards. In 2011-2012, researchers at the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute (CHERI) did a survey of faculty members who serve…
Recently, the administration of the City University of New York proposed a series of academic changes to the school, grouping these changes together under the name “Pathways.” The system would make it easier for students to transfer between CUNY schools, and it would have looser graduation requirements. This proposal and the faculty opposition to it…
At my monthly department meeting yesterday, the department’s representative to our University Senate gave his report on their last meeting. As part of his report, he told us some of the concerns our university president, Javier Cevallos, expressed about a recent drop in enrollment. Cevallos’s remarks before our University Senate echoed a statement he released…
Ever since the attacks on public sector unions, working families, and public education in Wisconsin that began just over two years ago, my own writing has changed. It’s become less…well, “academic.” I find myself more interested in plowing through company SEC filings on Lexis-Nexis than some of the newest scholarship in my field. Don’t get…
It’s been a little over two weeks since Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett delivered his annual budget address. Corbett’s office signaled in advance that his proposed 2013-2014 budget would not be as draconian as the previous two. I think it would be fair to say that the governor would have to work extraordinarily hard to try…
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…
This is a guest post by Darren L. Linvill, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Clemson University. His article, “The Bias Fallacy,” appears in the newest issue of Academe. Did you know people who like mayonnaise are more likely to be good dancers? As my undergraduate research methods students are taught, correlation…
Francis Bacon wrote that people with disability develop to be “extreme bold” as a habit born of their need to defend themselves from the “scorn” of others. No doubt much has changed in the years since Bacon opined on the matter, but Stephen Kuusisto writes, in “Extreme Bold in the Faculty Ranks,” that students and…
Over the past few years, plenty of ink has been spent discussing the question of how college changes students. They don’t just learn facts, of course—there are lots of important skills to learn inside and outside the classroom. Students also change as they grow out of their teens and into their early twenties. In the…
Kenneth Bernstein just retired from a career as a high school teacher in suburban Washington, DC, and he has a stark message for college professors: the students entering your classes this year will be less prepared than ever. He points to two culprits, both related to increased testing: –More and more students are taking AP…