Depression is the leading mental health issue on college campuses in the U.S. In 2015, a survey of more than 90,000 students at 108 American colleges and universities found that during the previous year, more than one-third of them had felt so depressed at some point that it was difficult to function. More than two-thirds […] … learn more→
Author Archives: Kevin
Helping universities combat depression with mobile technology
Student debt doubles since 2008…”Fake News” spins it
My blog’s only been around a couple years now. When I started, student debt was under a trillion dollars…now it’s more like $1.4 trillion dollars. Our higher education system has been transformed from a system of education and research for humanity, into a system of massive wealth transfer into the pockets of higher education administration. […] … learn more→
Free college explained in a global context
New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo recently pledged to make undergraduate education at the the City University of New York (CUNY) and the State University of New York (SUNY) system free for families making less than US$120,000 annually. If this happens, it wouldn’t be the first time that undergraduate education has been free in New […] … learn more→
What did that peer reviewer actually mean?
We all know that real estate agents write in code. Renovation potential means it’s a dump. First home buyer’s dream means it’s a dump. Original condition means it’s a dump. Now, journal reviewers have codes too. You may find that sometimes you get reviews where it isn’t immediately obvious what you are being asked to […] … learn more→
From whence the danger? Left? Right? Both?
Today the Washington Post published an important op-ed piece, “If colleges keep killing academic freedom, civilization will die, too,” by José A. Cabranes, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Cabranes, a Bill Clinton appointee and highly respected jurist, previously served as General Counsel for Yale University (1975-80) and on […] … learn more→
Warning: conmen and shameless scholars operate in this area
As I wrapped up a research sabbatical in Canada in March 2015, I started searching for conferences to present my research at. A quick Google search highlighted a shocking number of events and organisations that I had never even heard of – and an even more shocking list of conference fees. But perhaps I shouldn’t […] … learn more→
Angry social media posts are never a good idea. How to keep them in check
“Speak your mind” and “post your mind” are not the same thing. A study that investigated how messages containing different emotions spread across social networks found that “anger is more influential than other emotions like joy, which indicates that angry tweets can spread quickly and broadly in the network”. The consequences of such angry posts […] … learn more→
What’s missing in the teaching of Islam
There has been much misinformation about Islam. Reports in Western media tend to perpetuate stereotypes that Islam is a violent religion and Muslim women are oppressed. Popular films like “American Sniper” reduce places like Iraq to dusty war zones, devoid of any culture or history. Fears and anxiety manifest themselves in Islamophobic actions such as […] … learn more→
How virtual reality technology is changing the way students learn
For many years, schools and universities have had to change the way they work and teach in order to fit in with technology. Software like PowerPoint, for example, which has long been used as an education tool, wasn’t designed for education. Nonetheless, it has been a staple tool in education settings, used as a way […] … learn more→
I may require shaming or even shunning: Twitter and the public discourse
Twitter has been central to a number of controversial cases that have tested the definitions and the limits of academic freedom. The brevity and compression of tweets means that they exist outside of any fixed context and they are therefore very frequently totally ambiguous. What seems very provocative or even outrageous to one reader may […] … learn more→
