The statement on censorship recently published by the Association of University Presses deserves wide support. It affirms opposition to “all restrictions imposed on the dissemination of [scholarly] work” and raises important questions about censorship in China and the changing nature of researching and publishing. But we must get our facts straight on both of those. […] … learn more→
Blog Archives
Journals censorship is not bowdlerisation
Why some students are excluded from university later in their degree, and how to remedy it
Student attrition is of concern to universities and to politicians and, most importantly, costly for the students concerned, both financially and emotionally. Voluntary attrition – “dropping out” – has been studied extensively, and can be broadly correlated with measures of disadvantage. We looked at the under-researched area of students who face being excluded from university for […] … learn more→
Slow Academia is for the privileged – but then, isn’t all academia?
During my PhD at Cambridge, I developed the nervous habit of tying knots in my hair. Sitting in the library, I’d twist clumps of it around and around my fingers into a tight, fist-sized tangle. The procedure was very satisfying – until the knot wouldn’t undo and I’d have to cut it out. At the […] … learn more→
3 vital ways to measure how much a university education is worth
The past several years have seen increased calls for colleges and universities to demonstrate their value to students, families and taxpayers. And the pressure has come from both sides of the political spectrum. Barack Obama, for example, didn’t mince his words when he spoke a few years ago on the University of Michigan campus: “We are putting […] … learn more→
The evil Uni-Bank alliance
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→
Wisconsin Higher Ed removes the academics
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→
A philosophical defence of the traditional lecture
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→
Subversion is at the heart of the academy
“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→
When college tuition goes up, campus diversity goes down
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→
Moocs are a solution in search of a problem
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→
