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→
Blog Archives
Wisconsin to remove academics from Higher Ed
We must rescue social science research from obscurity
“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→
For-profit Colleges’ own inconsistency, not the Federal Government’s, poses their biggest threat
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→
Publishing in fraudulent journals is criminal
Predatory publishing is a curse for individual academics and universities, and a blight on the landscape of academic publishing generally. We are all familiar with those “greetings” emails asking about our health and promising to publish online any manuscript we submit in double-quick time, for a small fee. But it is not enough to just […] … learn more→
Make University a boiler room = 100% pay raise
Some time back, I mentioned Arizona State University’s plan to increase faculty workloads 25%, for no additional pay. This policy idea was part of a larger plan by the ASU Poo Bah, Michael Crow, to debase education as much as possible. The primary motivation for doing so is to get more money for administration—every dollar […] … learn more→
The principled PhD?
After I passed my PhD defense in March 2016 (thank you God), friends in earlier PhD stages jokingly tried to see if I could somehow rub off on them. This is the hope of this post – sharing some thoughts on (surviving) the journey. Naturally my PhD principles are specific to my department, the Global […] … learn more→
What will research look like in 2035?
What will the world look like a generation from now? Will robots have transformed our working world? Will we move through cities in automated vehicles or even hyperloops? Will we choose to augment our bodies with highly functional prosthetics? Will low carbon energy generation be the norm or will climate change be changing the world around us? […] … learn more→
Fighting outcomes
Underlying the mania for “assessment” and “accountability” in higher education is an elitist sensibility that, having gone unexamined for too long, has undermined real efforts at providing useful education for everyone, no matter what college or what level. Not only is it creating a two-tiered model of education, but it is changing how most students […] … learn more→
Fail 2 students in 6 years = Promotion denied
In times past, tenure was awarded by scholars, to scholars, as a reward for scholarship. Those days are gone. Today, tenure is (theoretically) awarded by administrators, to scholars for, well, reasons that have little to do with scholarship. Having the right skin color can certainly be a factor, and covering up pedophilia is certainly a […] … learn more→
How do you know that what you know is true? That’s epistemology
How do you know what the weather will be like tomorrow? How do you know how old the Universe is? How do you know if you are thinking rationally? These and other questions of the “how do you know?” variety are the business of epistemology, the area of philosophy concerned with understanding the nature of […] … learn more→
