Every now and then patter offers a close-up of research writing. This near-sighted exercise is intended to illustrate how ‘reading for the writing’ can be helpful. This particular ‘reading for writing’ post looks at writing qualitative methods in a journal article. It speaks to last week’s post about the need to be specific, not woolly […] … learn more→

A “challenging set of results”, a politician might say. Others might suggest that heads should roll. What is clear is that if there were any sort of league table that measured how well-prepared school leavers are for university, there’d be some catch-up to do. I’m referring to the results of the 2017 Survey of University Admissions […] … learn more→

In the weeks after the Kent State killings in 1970, I grew increasingly perplexed and withdrawn. My campus—I was attending Utica College in upstate New York—shut down and students seemed triumphant. Triumphant, that is, in the matter of standing for a moment on center stage. But I was unhappy. For it wasn’t really “students” who […] … learn more→

Our leaders of higher education have an amazing fetish for growth of institutions. They’ve sacrificed every standard, every form of reason to pull in more, more, more, students. I have, of course, criticized all these decisions, particularly the decision to attract violent ideologues instead of scholars, but one group I’ve only mentioned a little is […] … learn more→

It is a steamy intellectual moment when a conference presentation concludes and that taut, expectant silence descends. “Yes, I’ll take questions,” you reply – breathlessly – surveying the array of bored, bemused, envious and angry expressions. For ingénue PhD students and early career researchers, such raw, inescapable exposure to the merciless probing of academia’s numerous […] … learn more→

This week I was at a sociology of education summer school. As you might expect, I was there to talk about academic writing and publishing. In this context, I wanted to situate my usual topic in a wider context, and not simply offer strategies and advice. Here’s the abstract I wrote for the ‘lecture’: Educational […] … learn more→

Staring at my overdrawn bank account, I laid my head on my kitchen counter and sobbed in actual despair. That was the fall of 2013. ‘I would never be a real professor,’ I thought. ‘What the hell was I going to do?’. That time seems far away now. Six months later, I had a contract […] … learn more→

I’m reading yet another article of the madness on campus, and once again the dog not barking gets my attention. First a quick look at the article: Who Defines What Is Racist? Our campuses are in constant turmoil from ever more shrill cries of RACISM. It doesn’t matter if you’re drinking milk, showing up on […] … learn more→

As research students, we aim to advance our disciplines through rigorous research and intense focus on our studies. At the same time we are all too often full of anxiety and uncertainty that keep us from achieving our best. Even though other students among our friends provide support, the amount of inherent competition among research […] … learn more→

Universities fail to exploit social media’s most compelling features, tending to broadcast their brands instead of engaging students and the public online, new research suggests. Visualise this: smiling students and successful faculty. In the background, beautiful buildings framed by blue skies. These are the ways that Canadian universities choose to represent themselves on social media. […] … learn more→