Tag: capitalism
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Business School
The New York Times: At the beginning of freshman year and end of sophomore year, students in the study took the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a national essay test that assesses students’ writing and reasoning skills. During those first two years of college, business students’ scores improved less than any other group’s. Communication, education and social-work…
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Who is “supposed” to go to college?
Tenured Radical: Needless to say, one powerful message In The Basement of the Ivory Tower delivers is how profoundly different the lives of academics are, not just because our students are sorted and tracked at an early age by testing, poverty and race, but because many of the students in most need of close attention…
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More on Cronon
Norman Markowitz: Of course, intellectual freedom is not only the basis of all serious learning and teaching; it is the foundation of citizens’ democratic rights. In the attack on William Cronon, we see exactly the kind of bullying and intimidation that employers in non-union situations have always used against workers when it suited their interests.…
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War on Academia (cont.)
Tenured Radical: Word out of Florida today is that a bill that would prohibit the granting of tenure at state and community colleges went through a legislative committee yesterday and is headed to the state senate. Faculty would work on annual contracts but administrators would not; only new and untenured faculty would be affected by…
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Gates Friend of Some of the Humanities?
The Chronicle: That meeting led Mr. Gates, founder of Microsoft, to support a free online syllabus of Mr. Christian’s unusual course, called “Big History,” that gives a sweeping multidisciplinary overview of world history from the Big Bang to the Industrial Revolution. Another educator chosen by Mr. Gates to speak at TED was Salman Khan, a…
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Gates No Friend of the Humanities
Inside Higher Ed: During a sprawling talk in which he emphasized the importance of using data-based metrics to figure out how to increase educational attainment while bringing down costs in both K-12 and higher ed, Gates said that when the governors are deciding how to allocate precious tax dollars, they might consider the disparity between…
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Yale Inc.
Through a friend from undergrad I learned people at Yale are working on organizing and getting recognized a graduate student union. First, I think this is great and wish them luck. Second, on a more broad point, I do not think the corporatization of the university is a good trend. Even though there is a…
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Build it and they will come
The crisis in the humanities is a well discussed topic, at least inside the humanities. The humanities are often seen as less important than departments that bring in money from the federal government or private businesses looking to turn a profit. These (like engineering and the sciences) departments produce “useful” and “practical” things while the…
Brian Sarnacki 