Most people think education is the great equalizer, that in a society where everyone is equally educated to the highest levels, everything will be perfectly equal in all other ways. It’s a silly utopian dream, and a recent article highlights the reality of higher education today, although it misses quite a few things. The number […] … learn more→

Cornell Professor Sara Pritchard recently made the argument in The Conversation that female professors should receive bonus points on their student evaluations because of the severe negative bias students have toward their female professors. Commentators on FOX News attempted to discredit her argument as “insane,” ridiculed the idea that gender plays a role in evaluations […] … learn more→

Stopping an 8,000 ton ship from leaving port may sound like difficult work, but that’s just what activists meant to do when they swarmed the St. Johns Bridge in Portland, Oregon. Some descended into dangling hammocks, while others took to the water with kayaks in what would turn into a 40-hour standoff between Greenpeace and […] … learn more→

A faculty member wondered why her students were always late. So she asked them. It’s 9:30 a.m., and the upper-level course I teach on mass communication is about to begin. Ten of my 27 students are missing. Twenty minutes later, that number dwindles to just two, as eight students arrive, one by one, during my […] … learn more→

Last week I announced our new MOOC “How to survive your PhD”. Since then I’ve been overwhelmed by the response, with more than 2600 people signing up in the first week alone, which is far more than I expected! A few people have written to me about how they might use the MOOC to help […] … learn more→

The U.S. Department of Education’s announcement last week of a pilot program that will allow Pell Grant eligibility for some incarcerated students signaled a welcome change in the way education is viewed in correctional facilities across the nation. The step was a tangible way to break the cycle of crime and incarceration that too often […] … learn more→

Across the country, many of our institutions of higher education are in full-pillage mode. Legitimate students are being lured in, sold bogus coursework in giant lecture halls, and spit out six years later, deep in debt with only a worthless degree to show for it. Bogus students are being signed up, sold bogus coursework in […] … learn more→

Corruption touches our lives every day. It happens across the private sector as well as the public service in the realms of housing, education, health and agriculture. Its influence reaches dangerously further, too: it directly threatens sustainable development. Corruption takes many forms. This makes it almost impossible to definitively calculate its cost, though one estimate […] … learn more→

It is often said that prison is where criminals go to learn how to be better criminals. In the absence of other educational opportunities, that’s not terribly surprising. But what if they could use that time to gain valuable skills and credentials that would help them get jobs when they leave prison? In fact, there […] … learn more→

In legislative chambers across the United States, policy makers are debating the merits of open- and concealed-carry laws as a policy response to the threat of campus violence. In the past two years, elected leaders in more than 30 states have pushed to enact legislation that would allow guns on college campuses. This summer, for […] … learn more→