Monthly Archives: April 2015

As the rich get richer, what’s a ‘poor’ College to do?

Drawing upon a study by Moody’s Investors Service, Nick Anderson reported in the Washington Post last week that “the ten richest universities in America hold nearly a third of the total wealth, in cash and investments, amassed by about 500 public and private institutions. The 40 richest hold almost two-thirds of the total wealth.” He […] … learn more→

So you want to be an administrator…

The administrative superstructure that characterizes American higher education is coming under increased scrutiny. Yet administrators keep multiplying anyway, as do the “managerial pathologies” that Benjamin Ginsburg vividly described in his recent book The Fall of the Faculty. It seems like a good time, then, for someone to try to provide guidance to the growing number […] … learn more→

Revision – it’s not just about cutting words

We’re all told that the essence of revision is rewriting. Write and then write again. Rewrite. And rewriting means cutting, getting rid of the excess verbage we poured onto the page as a ‘brain dump’. We’re also told that the best way to deal with rewriting our crappy first draft is to adopt a ruthless […] … learn more→

Higher Education’s growth = No benefit to students, educators

So I’m reading a report on higher education that’s tried to determine who benefited from all the growth we’ve experienced in the 21st century. My own eyeballs tell me the tale: much larger classes, many bogus classes, and a bloated, highly paid administrative caste that does nothing in regards to education. Last time the report […] … learn more→

Children and Smartphones. How technology is shaping education

Today\’s children often know as much, if not more, about using smartphones as their parents. Kids not only use their parents\’ devices to play games, communicate with friends, and access information – they own their own devices. Research shows that nearly 80 percent of children between 12 and 15 own cell phones or smartphones. These […] … learn more→

28% growth in Higher Ed workforce = less teachers

Growth, growth, growth, it’s all admin ever seems to talk about. Higher Education has been grown, I must admit. There certainly are more students on campus, much more. My workload is easily double what it was 20 years ago, at least as far as teaching. So, more students. What else has changed? A report from […] … learn more→

The re-creationist myth

The journalistic missteps, errors, and omissions in Rolling Stone’s “A Rape on Campus” began to be exposed shortly after it was published last November. They were exhaustively described in an Columbia School of Journalism report, issued April 5, that’s even longer than the original article–13,000 words versus 9,000. (Rolling Stone removed the article from its […] … learn more→

The awesome evolution of the push button, from flash to dash

From the flashlight to Amazon’s “Dash” button delivery, push buttons have defined and redefined how we interact with the world. Every day, we push hundreds if not thousands of buttons. From the snooze button to the start button, to the pause button and the car-lock button, to every single key on a computer, many people […] … learn more→

Online piracy and the ubiquity of digital copyright infringement

While the pirates of lore sail the seven seas, plundering for treasure, today’s online pirates surf the web to illegally scoop up digital bounty, and distribute all sorts of files P2P (pirate-to-pirate, peer-to-peer). The net is full of copyrighted media, which can often be caught and shared free of charge. (And in other news, internet […] … learn more→

The for-profit College job placement rate scandal revisited

Now that the U.S. Department of Education has taken decisive action against Corinthian Colleges for cooking the books on its job placement rates, I thought that it was worth revisiting a series of posts we ran on our retired blog Higher Ed Watch in 2011 warning of an emerging “for-profit college job placement rate scandal.” […] … learn more→