I remember, years ago, when it was news that more females than males were in college. It was considered a major victory for feminism, and perhaps it was. Males never made a “comeback” after that, and soon the percentages went from a barely noticeable (but newsworthy!) 50.1% female, to 55% female, to today’s we-should-ask-questions 60% […] … learn more→
Blog Archives
The vanishing College male
Is it worth doing the three minute thesis?
It is raw. It is real. It is one of the most challenging and taxing experiences a researcher can undertake, and presenting my Three Minute Thesis completely redefined my approach to research. Naively I assumed preparing for this competition would be a breeze. The rules of the competition were simple. You have 3 minutes to […] … learn more→
#readingforwriting: being specific in qualitative research
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→
Google it! Students are ‘needy, ill-prepared and reliant on search engines’
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→
Student agency
In the weeks after the Kent State killings in 1970, I grew increasingly perplexed and withdrawn.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→
Free housing for illegal students?
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→
Fifty shades of conference feedback
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→
Academic publishing in English
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→
Why I boycotted my students’ graduation
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→
How to stop campus riots
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→
