Category: Academia

The Dean Dad posts lots of very interesting things that I end up not having time to link to– you should be reading his blog every day, if you’re interested in how academia operates. This one is too good to not link, though– a discussion of Boards of Trustees and how they operate. I particualrly… Continue reading Trustees vs. Faculty

The winners of the 2007 Intel Science Talent Search have been announced. First prize goes to physics, as is right and proper: Mary Masterman, 17, of Oklahoma City, submitted a physics project to the Intel Science Talent Search describing the spectrograph system she built for $300 at home (commercial units can cost $20,000 to $100,000).… Continue reading Let’s Hear it for Young Nerds!

Over at Pure Pedantry, Jake Young has an anti-tenure post that repeats one of the classic mistaken arguments: 1) Tenure supports bad teachers as much as it supports unproductive researchers. I can’t tell you the number of bad lecturers that I have had over the years. It has to be like 90%. Science in particular… Continue reading The Myth of Post-Tenure Collapse

Here’s the scenario: You are the sole executive authority of Hypothetical College, which has a faculty of three. It’s performance evaluation time, and you have $1,500 in bonus money to distribute, in increments of $500 (that is, you can award $0, $500, $1,000, or $1,500 to each faculty member, but the total amount of all… Continue reading Rate Three Professors

Inside Higher Ed has an op-ed piece up urging faculty to abandon textbooks: Here’s a statement with which everyone can agree: College instructors cannot assume that students come to their classes in possession of basic knowledge. Now here’s one sure to generate some controversy: In many cases textbooks deter the pursuit of knowledge more than… Continue reading The Role of Textbooks

Over at the Freakonomics blog, Steven Levitt takes up the question of tenure in academia. As you might expect, it’s bad from an economic perspective, and ought to be eliminated: If there was ever a time when it made sense for economics professors to be given tenure, that time has surely passed. The same is… Continue reading Tenure: Threat or Menace?

Inside Higher Ed‘s regular “Quick Takes” feature is chock full of weirdness today. From the “I Thought Mormons Were Nice” file: The Utah Legislature has passed legislation allowing students at public colleges and universities to request that they share rooms only with students who don’t carry concealed weapons, The Salt Lake Tribune. But lawmakers rejected… Continue reading Only in Academia

My father taught sixth grade in the public schools for thirty-odd years, and always griped about the teacher training workshops that they were periodically subjected to, in which some expert would be brought in to talk about the wonders of the latest fad in pedagogy, while all the teachers in the school struggled to stay… Continue reading Those Who Can’t Teach, Teach About Teaching

Inside Higher Ed has a story today about a former Middlebury College president who is launching a non-profit organization to advocate a serious discussion about drinking age laws in the US. As he notes, real data on the topic are a little hard to come by: What was striking about the research, McCardell said, was… Continue reading Straight Talk About Alcohol