The student loan scam only creates the potential for evil. We would not have over 20,000,000 citizens trapped in a deadly debt spiral if our higher education system had not exploited that potential as ruthlessly as possible. Technically, this scam is an unholy alliance between our Federal government, which backs the loans and enforces collection, […] … learn more→

A few years ago, I mentioned Wisconsin was retroactively changing their tenure contracts. To summarize what I said in 2015: no more new tenured faculty, and tenure can be removed from old faculty whenever admin wants. Now, admin said these changes were necessary but…you’d have to be pretty stupid not to see what the general […] … learn more→

The lecture is dead. And, according to Carl Wieman, there should be no Lazarus-style resurrection. Wieman, a Nobel prizewinning advocate of active learning from Stanford University, argued here, just over a year ago, that belief in the value of traditional lecturing was akin to belief in bloodletting in an era of modern, evidence-based medicine. And […] … learn more→

“A university,” wrote Robert Maynard Hutchins, “must stand for something, and that must be something other than what a vocal minority, or majority, demand at the moment.” As president of the University of Chicago, Hutchins was pretty sure of what his university should not stand for. A prime example was big-time intercollegiate sports. In axeing […] … learn more→

As college tuition continues to rise at a staggering rate, people tend to worry about how much harder it becomes for students and families to pay for college. As researchers who focus on higher education, we found a different reason to worry. We examined tuition hikes at public four-year colleges and universities over a 14-year period. We wanted to see if […] … learn more→

A common question to start-up founders is: “What problem does this solve?” Massive open online courses (Moocs) are a solution in want of a problem. That’s not surprising because they did not emerge from a problem. Instead, they arose from the boredom of Stanford University computer science professors fed up with teaching the same lectures […] … learn more→

Dialogue has been at the heart of learning since Plato’s academy was founded in the 4th century BC. For centuries it has pushed students in higher education to go the extra mile, provoked them into seeing things in new ways and forced them to defend their own ideas. However, the traditional forms of student dialogue have […] … learn more→

Many governments are debating what to do about the spread of online “fake news”. Singapore is no exception, and it has constituted a parliamentary Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods. Among several academics to make written submissions and to be called to give evidence in a March hearing was Thum Ping Tjin (P. J. Thum), a […] … learn more→

The Kentucky General Assembly recently passed a budget that reduces funding for higher education by 6.25 percent, and will require cuts of as much as $24 million at the two major state universities. Numerous programs may have to be shuttered as a consequence, most likely including the University Press of Kentucky (UPK), which stands to lose its […] … learn more→

When South African academics want to set up a new degree module, they’re entering into a process that can take years to germinate. These modules must be approved through an incredibly cumbersome process – departmental, school, faculty, various university quality control committees, an institution’s senate, the South African Qualification Authority. Only then can they be […] … learn more→