A cluster of related articles on higher education. 1. From Washington Monthly: why states are funding higher ed less. State support comes out of taxes. When the economy goes bad, states collect less money in taxes. States, however, are legally required to fund certain things. Pension plans, for instance, are usually not things the governor [...]
“Back to the basics” works if you chose the right basics. (We could debate that.) “The Writing Revolution,” an article in The Atlantic, argues that attention to basic rhetorical principles — as opposed to expressing your feelings or writing in order to become a better person— helps disadvantaged high school students to succeed. And so [...]
I have written here before about the Higher Education Bubble. Related to that perception, you hear a lot of people devaluing education in the humanities and arts. High-profile news stories about graduates with degrees in, for example, film studies and a big debt load did not help. But here is an article from a business [...]
Another article on the “higher education bubble” (think housing bubble, but with college degrees) from that screaming right-wing rag The Christian Science Monitor. (That was meant as sarcasm.) A college degree once looked to be the path to prosperity. In an article for TechCrunch, Sarah Lacy writes, “Like the housing bubble, the education bubble is [...]
Talk of the “higher-education bubble” seems to be increasing. This short article from a North Carolina-based think tank pretty well sums it up: Like the nation’s housing bubble, which eventually burst, the college bubble is caused by a number of factors. But the biggest force is, as my colleague George Leef has often pointed out, [...]
• The writing process, graphed, from Boing Boing. • The “great conversation” lives on: University students discovering ideas that their so-called teachers kept from them because they were not “relevant” or something. • Why did Borders crash? Here is one view. Too much space given to music. for one thing, says the writer. • Support [...]
It is probably no surprise to a lot of us in higher education that “45 percent of students show no significant improvement in the key measures of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore years.” (Lest I be accused of America-bashing, in talking with international students, I got an even [...]
Cherry Hill Seminary has named Wendy Griffin of California State University, Long Beach as its new academic dean. They made a good choice. I have worked with Wendy for several years on the American Academy of Religion’s Contemporary Pagan Studies steering committee, which she co-chaired from 2005-10. She and I also worked as co-editors of [...]
From a report on the school-board meeting from our county’s weekly newspaper: Sheri Shreve was upset that fourth graders were learning Greek mythology and seeing pictures she felt were inappropriate for children. Yes, your fourth-grader might end up at a liberal arts college like Bryn Mawr and join the Pagan Club.
Evanthia O. Rosati was in the English-teaching racket longer than I was, and she has heard it all. Whenever I am at a party or first introduced to anyone, I pray no one will mention my line of work. The party could be at full swing, music loud and the bass shaking the walls. I [...]
