It is commonly known that writing an academic paper in higher educational institutions consists of many different stages besides the actual writing: researching, planning, outlining, proofreading, and formatting. The last one can’t be called the most favorite part of students because even trying their best to follow the citation style guidelines, they often make mistakes. […] … learn more→
Blog Archives
Loopholes in MLA writing guide you should use to save writing time
Why accountability efforts in higher education often fail
As the price tag of a college education continues to rise along with questions about academic quality, skepticism about the value of a four-year college degree has grown among the American public. This has led both the federal government and many state governments to propose new accountability measures that seek to spur colleges to improve […] … learn more→
Work experience should be a job requirement for academics
As head of professional development at a research-intensive university in Hong Kong, it is part of my job to prepare professors as well as possible to, in turn, prepare their students for the future. One widely discussed problem is that, in the midst of the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution – the age of robots and […] … learn more→
Why school leaders fake academic success
At the beginning of each school year, before the students arrived, teachers from every school in the Atlanta Public Schools district were placed on school buses and taken to the old Georgia Dome. We were not organized by alphabetical order, or even by elementary, middle or high school. Instead, all schools were organized by their […] … learn more→
Your biggest asset for academic career success? A growth mindset
Is your latest career success testimony to your no doubt commendable talents? Connecting career achievements to ability seems obvious – and crucial in today’s competitive academic environment. Yet we would argue that we are often blind to the connections between ourselves and our work, and seriously underestimate the influence that our mindset has over career […] … learn more→
When is it ‘enough’?
I have worked exclusively with PhD students for over a decade now. I have clocked up the 10,000 hours Malcolm Gladwell says you need to be an expert, so I hereby declare myself an expert in the problems of research education. One sign that you can genuinely claim the title of ‘expert’ is when you […] … learn more→
Inside the mind of a lunatic running a Higher Ed asylum
It’s no secret many of our institutions of higher education have a real problem with rabid, vicious, White-Hating Social Justice Warriors (or SJWs, or Leftists, if you prefer) overrunning campuses across the county. For “converged” institutions, that is, institutions where the takeover is complete, I see no solution beyond bulldozers. These guys have no tolerance […] … learn more→
Vice Provost needed…Whites need not apply
Earlier I covered a position for a Kentucky physicist where the job posting made it perfectly clear that no white person could get the job, on account of being white. Admin made it perfectly clear that the posting was a mistake. Honest, they would consider any candidate, regardless of skin color, so they say (wink, […] … learn more→
Do Colleges have strength to heed bond rating agency warnings?
Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s recently released their updated outlooks for American higher education. The news is not good. Moody’s revised its 2018 outlook for higher education from stable to negative “as aggregate operating revenue moderates while expense growth increases.” Moody’s vice president, Susan E. Shaffer, elaborated: “the annual change in aggregate operating revenue for four-year colleges […] … learn more→
De-stuffing your writing: or the the bumper list of words and phrases you could delete to make your writing more concise
As you probably already know Inger, Shaun and I are writing a book about Academic Writing Trouble and How to Fix It that distills the advice you would get if you took us out for lunch and asked us your most pressing questions. I’d love to have lunch with every single one of you, but […] … learn more→
