Monthly Archives: July 2014

The Community College fraud, part 2

So, last time, I was looking at the course offerings at LACC, and saw that a huge amount of resources are devoted to teaching 6th grade and lower math. Let’s continue to see what “higher education” this community college offers: Elementary Algebra (113) and Elementary Algebra (114). Because students are so far behind, administration created […] … learn more→

How to reach the underserved third

The U.S. Department of Education recently forced Corinthian Colleges into a government-monitored wind-down of its operations and sale of viable campuses. The sale will include Heald College, the 150-year-old institution that we led for just under one year. Unaddressed by the department action and overlooked in subsequent commentary are two fundamental and related points. First, […] … learn more→

The emotional wellbeing of non-tenure track faculty

A recently released research article in the July issue of Frontiers in Psychology, authored by Gretchen M. Reevy and Grace Deason, finds that the very stigma of non-tenure track employment—now a reality for some 70% of higher education faculty members in the U.S.—brings with it an increase in stress, depression, and anxiety. Appropriately titled “Predictors […] … learn more→

War-College woes

America’s war colleges are in the news with accusations that Sen. John E. Walsh of Montana plagiarized passages in his master’s thesis at the U.S. Army War College. But the problems of such institutions go deeper, often with their own distinctive wrinkle on ailments common to academe. Even before Benjamin Ginsberg’s 2011 book, The Fall […] … learn more→

Academe’s firing squads

A quick Google search shows the wild popularity of a new genre of academic writing: the graduate-student blog about the evils of graduate school. With names like “100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate Schools,” these posts are populated by a cast of Dickensian caricatures of innocence and wickedness. Advisers are narcissistic thugs, and students […] … learn more→

25% of Community College is 6th Grade level

25% of Community College is 6th Grade level

Good ol’ community college. If you can’t get into, or can’t afford, university, then community college is the place to be. It’s also cheap, cheap, cheap…or at least, that’s what community college administrators tell you. Thing is, it’s only cheap if you’re actually getting what you think you’re getting in the way of education. It […] … learn more→

In a recent lecture at ANU, the esteemed research education expert Dr Margaret Kiley claimed that if we set out to design the Australian PhD from scratch we wouldn’t start from here. The PhD assessment (in most cases, a long form thesis), she argued, does not not necessarily develop the full panoply of skills we […] … learn more→

Educating College Trustees

It is almost impossible for those who live outside the academy to understand and appreciate how American colleges and universities govern themselves. Basically, college governance has three partners – the faculty, the administration, and the trustees. It’s commonly thought to be a kind of “three-leg” stool with each leg required to be strong enough to […] … learn more→