The Federal student loan scam program only disburses funds to accredited schools of higher education. The reason this is so is due to the Higher Education Act (HEA), which specifies that accreditation, and only accreditation, is key to getting all that sweet student loan loot, loot that does nothing for education but pumps up mightily […] … learn more→

Readers of my polemics against incompetent passive-disparagers (for example, this paper, and this Lingua Franca post) often suggest that I would sing a different tune if I had to grade the student papers they see. Well, don’t be misled: I teach courses, and I grade papers. And I have to admit that when I saw […] … learn more→

As the economy continues to fluctuate, the demands of the workforce have followed suit. In order to compete for jobs, or to stay current with skills needed for their current positions, adults are returning to school in large numbers. Today, more than 21 million post-secondary students are enrolled in degree granting institutions in the United […] … learn more→

You’ve read hundreds of books. You’ve waded through archival material. You’ve got mountains of surveys, folders full of transcripts, notebooks stuffed with barely legible field notes, and rather more photographs than you initially intended. Now what? How is it going to be possible to convert all of this material into something sensible? Where do you […] … learn more→

On the day my book, Guyland, was published, my agent sold the film rights to Dreamworks. I was speechless, a first for me. It was also pretty gratifying, because I had been fighting with my publisher for months over the title. They had wanted something like Almost Men, which I thought was a great title—if […] … learn more→

“I just stumbled onto this. . .” I heard the phrase a couple of times in presentations during the recent Teaching Professor Technology Conference. Faculty presenters used it to describe their discovery of an aspect of instruction that worked well, such as an assignment detail or activity sequence. Since then I’ve been thinking about accidental […] … learn more→

2014 seems to be shaping up as the year of the merger. Three mega-mergers, totaling an estimated $110 billion, have come out in just the last several months, and there could be more on the horizon. The reason for mergers is simple, cash-rich companies are looking for different ways to expand their businesses, and change […] … learn more→

Long before I threw caution to the wind and (as a mum with 2 small children) began my part-time PhD my Professor (@AndrewWGale) gave me a very wise piece of advice “Don’t be afraid of a PhD, it’s really just a project”. Now that I am entering the 3rd year of my part-time PhD I […] … learn more→

Equating protracted study with quality is exactly what causes graduate students to take so long earning a Ph.D. Read enough columns about the crisis in the humanities, the publish-or-perish dilemma, or the faculty job market, and you’re likely to think that we academic writers spend our days and nights imprisoned in dimly lit cubicles, praying […] … learn more→

I know it sounds a bit vain to ask “why isn’t anyone paying attention to me?”, but it really seems like higher education is ignored by the major media, at least for the most part. Only the UNC scandal gets coverage of late, and it’s already fading fast. Should it be? Around 2/3rds of high […] … learn more→