Jonathan Jansen, vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State in South Africa until a year ago, has written a book on the country’s higher education sector. As by Fire – The End of the South African University is one of a number of recent books that set out to make sense of the current […] … learn more→

I can’t emphasize enough how scary it is to work in higher education. Granted, if you’re an administrator, you’re guaranteed pay raises and advancement no matter how poorly you do your job, but if you’re an academic, you’re on eggshells all the time. The reason for this is our systems are loaded down with bureaucrats […] … learn more→

I’m a good friend to have if you are in the business of examining theses as you can probably imagine. A large number of my academic friends have called me up for expert advice on acceptable style, structure and tone. Some eight years ago now, my good friend Dr Scott Mayson rang me up about […] … learn more→

Our colleges campuses are drowning in leaders. I’ve literally taught courses where I had to report to 4 different bosses (in addition to the department head and Dean) during the semester regarding every issue that came up in the class. It takes some effort to teach a class, but not that much (it’s why faculty […] … learn more→

Pursuing a professional degree can be extremely stressful for students, who often experience it as a time riddled with anxiety, uncertainty, fear and financial challenge. The emotional health of law students was recently brought to my attention in an email from a student at the University of Cape Town’s law faculty where I am the […] … learn more→

When students join college they are expected to have good writing skills. In fact, they face some problems with assignments such as getting the right sources for information, the right format, and delivery on time just to mention a few. Basically, writing is a complex skill that is needed for any student to be successful […] … learn more→

How does a thesis get written? What do I as a supervisor do to help? How does feedback work best? A set of inter-related questions that keep many of us mildly, or a lot, worried. Well, I have an ‘ideal model’ for feedback on a thesis. I don’t always follow it. Quite often my model […] … learn more→

When I cover the madnesses affecting higher education, California comes up often, although I certainly cover schools in the rest of the country. Wisconsin has avoided the madness, with nothing in the way of riots or flamboyant frauds that seem commonplace elsewhere. You’d  think the state government there would leave well enough alone, but such […] … learn more→

“Never in the history of human scholarship has so much been written by so many to the benefit of so few.” Spoken by one of my co-authors at an academic conference in the social sciences, that Churchillian inversion drew spontaneous applause from an audience of around 400. Academic publishing is now a game in which high […] … learn more→

In June, the Trump Administration took the first step in dismantling the Gainful Employment (GE) rule. Finalized by the Obama-era U.S. Department of Education in 2014, the regulation established thresholds for affordable debt relative to the typical amount graduates of career-college programs earn. But before negotiators sit down to rehash how best to define whether […] … learn more→