343 posts tagged with university.
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“You know what they say—strict parents raise sneaky kids.”
Helicopter parenting often doesn’t end when a child graduates from high school. Today’s parents have more tools than ever at their disposal to stay involved (or overinvolved) in their children’s lives and keep track of their whereabouts, habits, and activities, from tracking services like Life360 to Facebook groups specifically for parents of college students. If college is historically meant to be a time of self-exploration, complete with bad decisions and murky mistakes, an increasing number of parents seem to be attempting to curtail that growth. from Helicopter U. [Slate]
“Lake”
Universidad Santo Tomás (Saint Thomas Aquinas) is the oldest (founded: 1580) university in Colombia. The music on some of their promotional videos e.g. Admisión 2022, 2011 micro-drama, another 2011 video, evening study, and a cover, may sound familiar to listeners of a reclusive Scottish electronic music duo, with an overanalytical fanbase, who have NOT RELEASED AN ALBUM IN 11 YEARS sorry about that. The original, the lyrics, and a meta-nostalgic fan video for 50+ Brits. [more inside]
You done messed up, A-A-Ron!
Thomas Jefferson University apologizes after commencement presenter flubs names. Unfortunately for the hapless presenter, the name cards used the International Phonetic Alphabet, a technical rendering used mainly by linguists. kænt rid ðɪs? Don't let it happen to you! Learn how to pronounce IPA spelling today, test your skills, or just entertain yourself with the world's most unintentionally hilarious soundboards.
administrators aim to create a more politically quietist university
Who Has the Right to “Disrupt” the University? Perhaps the most egregious example of the administrator-as-disruptor is Gordon Gee, currently the president of West Virginia University (WVU), whose administration pushed through extraordinarily deep cuts to the institution’s academic offerings last fall. During a meeting of the faculty senate, Gee said “I want to be very clear that the university is not dismantling higher education. We are disrupting it . . . And many of you know I am a firm believer in disruption.” [more inside]
hear that whistle blow
Biden administration forgives $6.1 billion in student debt for 317,000 former Art Institute students [more inside]
Do you know your mollisols from your alfisols?
"So when you say judging, it’s not, this soil is great. This soil is bad. It’s classification and analysis, right?" (scroll to bottom for transcript). To prepare for the National Collegiate Soil Judging Contest, they spent three intensive practice days describing soils derived from glacial till, outwash, lacustrine sediments, and loess. They braved freezing temperatures, snow and sleet, high winds, pits partially filled with water, and muddy conditions before the weather finally cleared up for the two competition days.
By the way, did you know there are state soils? (folder of pdfs for all states & PR & VI) and New Jersey’s is named Downer. [more inside]
By the way, did you know there are state soils? (folder of pdfs for all states & PR & VI) and New Jersey’s is named Downer. [more inside]
Libraries of life on earth
The Crucial Role of Herbaria in Science by Dr. Cassandra Quave. Podcast episode (on Youtube) includes Dr. Quave's WaPo opinion piece. In February, Duke University announced that it was shuttering its herbarium, to widespread dismay from scientists across the globe. With one of the nation's largest collections of algae, lichens, fungi, and mosses, Duke's herbarium is "highly unusual" for its depth and variety. It's also where the Lady Gaga Fern is held, named for the artist's outfit at the 2010 Grammys which looked exactly like the sexual stage of a fern gametophyte.
How easily & cavalierly the works of decades & centuries are demolished
It seems there is only one model for today’s ‘man of action’, and that is Shock and Awe. Overwhelming force deployed suddenly and overwhelmingly. A theatrical performance with no audience as such, only a houseful of victims. The lions eat the circus and then tweet about it. Ask no questions, tell only lies, and double down, triple down, quadruple down. The ineffably stupid ‘move fast and break things’ that has so much to answer for in our time. Our new ‘Innovation Hub’ has an asinine three-word slogan: ‘Grow Ignite Disrupt’. It would make just as much sense to have ‘Paper Scissors Stone’ for a motto. And rather more to have ‘Smash Grab Run’. from In Florida by Michael Hofmann [London Review of Books] [CW: DeSantis]
Defunding liberal arts is dangerous for health care
While liberal arts have been declining on college campuses, medical education is moving in the opposite direction, using the arts and humanities as teaching modalities within the traditional basic and applied sciences coursework that dominates medical school curricula. Through literature, poetry, theater, and visual arts, students acquire important professional capacities, such as tolerance of ambiguity, skillful clinical communication, and sensitivity in listening to and learning from patient stories.
The new economics of higher ed make going to college a risky bet
!umich!blackhole
The University of Michigan, a community of over 120,000 people, has gone offline in response to a security incident. [more inside]
The politics of medieval art
A Minnesota University Is Under Fire for Dismissing an Art History Professor Who Showed Medieval Paintings of the Prophet Muhammad. Also at the NY Times (paywall): A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job
With your host BOB SMiTH
AIT, the Agency for Instructional Television (WIKIPEDIA), was one of a number of organizations who made programs that PBS stations would air midday, for teachers to record for later use. One of these was the inexplicable Wordsmith, that explored the roots of words. Host Bob Smith, standing on a gameshow-like set with his 70s attire and mustache, takes foam balls with syllables on them out of a machine, opens them up to show inside is printed their meaning, then puts them back into the machine, which makes a sci-fi noise. Then Sesame Street-like short clips demonstrate its meaning. While it moves slow, it's still kind of interesting! A number of episodes survive, as well as some other programs from AIT, in the Indiana University Moving Image Archive. [more inside]
My students cheated... A lot
"Last semester I witnessed the worst cheating in a course I’ve ever seen. And, I’ve seen stuff.
Since this whole thing happened I’ve told the story a bunch of times, and sometimes I get requests to tell it. This is also a story for my future students about what not to do. I’m not interested in outing my students, or casting shade on them. So, this is a story about cheating, but also about how I tried to turn things around and get students to engage in my course.
It started in August 2021." (Length: long, 10k words)
It started in August 2021." (Length: long, 10k words)
A few university instructional and research approaches
"... now I was getting to know a swathe of 20 first year students, few of whom had any interest in majoring in Philosophy, and with whom I’d keep in touch throughout." Harry Brighouse, a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, describes a structure that helped him work better with First Year Interest Groups (seminars with linked courses). "Who wants another workshop or class that’s just going to serve more of the same old people who are currently being served, in the same old way they’re already being served?" Lindsey Kuper, a professor of computer science at the University of California at Santa Cruz, discusses "Going all in on weird outreach" (several paragraphs in), in particular encouraging undergraduate students to create zines about a CS research project. [more inside]
University of California withdraws employment advert
The university of California made to withdraw a job advertisement for an assistant adjunct Professor in Science that offered no salary. Throws a light on university sweat shops. Boston Globe [more inside]
Complaint as a queer method
"To be heard as complaining is not to be heard" is the first sentence of Sara Ahmed's book Complaint! about how power is used against those who complain about abuses of power (pdf of intro). Paris Review interview: "When you make a complaint about harassment that’s endemic to a university, you’re pitting yourself against people who don’t want that problem to be recognized." Listen to Ahmed's lecture from March 16, 2022.
Hier soir c'était une bonne soirée!
Twelve years ago, to celebrate their initiation week, 172 communications students at the University of Quebec at Montreal decided to put on a show. After weeks of preparation, the costumed and prop-wielding crowd enacted an exuberant, complex, and flawlessly-choreographed performance of the Black Eyed Peas song "I Gotta Feeling" that sprawled through the campus's multi-story Judith Jasmin Pavilion... and they did it all in one continuous take (on their second try). A look behind the scenes. A decade later, a new student body recreated the spectacle with a new song. It was the capstone on a long-running fad called lipdubbing -- a video phenomenon where a single camera moves through a crowd of highly coordinated lip-syncers in a single seamless take, with the original recording dubbed over the finished product. [more inside]
School for the Agonisingly Well-Informed
Australian university teacher Tegan Bennett Daylight on student mental health issues: "....20-something student Tom Paech described his generation as being “agonisingly well-informed” – a perfect phrase to describe young people who have “no means of remedying the situation, like the captain of a sinking ship who knows exactly where the hole is in the hull but has no way of plugging it”. Note his use of the word “captain”, which I know was partially unintentional. These young people don’t just feel like the crew on a sinking ship. They feel like they’re the captain, which suggests they are helplessly responsible while the ship goes down."
The Elite Master’s Degrees That Don’t Pay Off
Financially Hobbled for Life (Free link to WSJ article.) Columbia and other top universities push master’s programs that fail to generate enough income for graduates to keep up with six-figure federal loans. [more inside]
Majoring in sports
A Washington Post op-ed argues that colleges ought to create academic departments for sports. The idea is that athletics would be treated as another liberal art, and that the academic departments would function like music, dance, or drama departments, with a "sports performance" major. Coaches would be professors or instructors, but the departments would also offer traditional academic classes in addition to instruction in athletic activities themselves. Appeals are made to the ancient Greeks.
The crisis of upper-crust sports for college
It was like Foucault’s panopticon, except for private-school kids in Dri-Fit. Ruth S. Barrett surveys the increasingly fraught world of niche sports for the college-bound kids of wealthy families, and how competition and COVID-19 have made things harder. (SLAtlantic) [more inside]
School's. Out. Forever.
The End of the University: The pandemic should force America to remake higher education. [more inside]
welcome the covid influencer
Brooklyn and Bailey are second-generation influencers. They have 5.8 million followers on Instagram; they’re students and paid brand partners at Baylor University; and as of last week, they both have COVID (Anne Helen Petersen on Culture Study). [more inside]
The COVID-45 Fall
In the United States, the coronavirus has killed more than 170,000 people and caused over 5.5 million confirmed infections, with deaths rising by more than 1,000 a day on average. As schools reopen, Reuters reports on increasing concerns about children and the coronavirus, Ed Yong describes how long-haulers are redefining COVID-19, and The Guardian reports millions of Americans are scraping by. As noted by Democratic VP nominee Kamala Harris in her 2020 DNC speech, "while this virus touches us all, let's be honest, it is not an equal opportunity offender. Black, Latino and Indigenous people are suffering and dying disproportionately. This is not a coincidence. It is the effect of structural racism." Politico reports Trump continues to insist his adminstration has "done a great job" handling the coronavirus, while the U.S. record is among the worst in the world. [more inside]
College football’s leaders are answering the wrong questions
Ryan Nanni of the college football website Banner Society says, "The football part’s not safe until the college part is." [more inside]
Universities have failed Black Students For Too long
The Free Black University is a hub for radical and transformative knowledge production.
"The Free Black University exists to re-distribute knowledge and act as a space of incubation for the creation of transformative knowledge in the Black community. We firmly believe education should centre Black people healing and it should be free, anti-colonial, and accessible to all – so we will provide it." [more inside]
The “onlinification” of face-to-face lectures is terrible
Cancel This Semester. Adopt a Coronavirus Student Bill Instead (Inside Higher Ed): "Some people may claim that remote learning can be very effective. But we are not dealing with faculty members who want to teach remotely, who have had much experience with it or who have had time to develop courses. And we are not dealing with students who prefer online courses, who have had time to acquire proper computer equipment or who can ask their dorm roommate for assistance. So the experience of remote learning now upon us is likely to be worse that what we’ve previously seen. ¶Moreover, a fair amount of evidence suggests that, even under good conditions, online education does not offer the same quality of education that face-to-face classes do." [more inside]
In 1865, Cornell acquired 6,716 parcels comprising 977,909 acres.
Expropriated Indigenous land is the foundation of the land-grant university system. A stunning and thorough accounting by journalists
Robert Lee and Tristan Ahtone. "Over the past two years, High Country News has located more than 99% of all Morrill Act acres, identified their original Indigenous inhabitants and caretakers, and researched the principal raised from their sale in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We reconstructed approximately 10.7 million acres taken from nearly 250 tribes, bands and communities through over 160 violence-backed land cessions, a legal term for the giving up of territory."
Project MUSE free access / Women's History Month sources
Several university presses are offering content on Project MUSE for free until the end of May or June: Johns Hopkins University Press; The University of North Carolina Press; University of Nebraska Press; Temple University Press; University Press of Colorado; Utah State University Press; The Ohio State University Press; Vanderbilt University Press; and University of Georgia Press.
Incidentally, it's Women's History Month, and Project MUSE hosts many recent publications of relevance. [more inside]
Before they found the body behind their sorority house...
Her Sorority Sisters Suspected She Was Pregnant. What Did Emile Weaver Know? For months, Emile Weaver denied her pregnancy. A gruesome discovery forced her to confront the truth. (Elle by Alex Ronan)
"Seeing what's right in front of us in portraits from the past"
Patricia A. Matthew, "Look Before You Leap" (Lapham's Quarterly, 11/4/2019): "Louise-Renée de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth, is the subject of fifteen portraits in London's National Portrait Gallery. She is alone in fourteen of them ... In the one National Portrait Gallery painting where the duchess is not alone she stands next to a black child. A curatorial note suggests the little girl is primarily there as a status symbol" [via @Bigger6Romantix]. By the same author: "AbLit: Course Materials" (patriciamatthew.blog, 2/7/2019), "Serving Tea for a Cause" (Lapham's Quarterly, 2/28/2018), "On Teaching, but Not Loving, Jane Austen" (The Atlantic, 7/23/2017), "What Is Faculty Diversity Worth to a University?" (The Atlantic, 11/23/2016), and "Teaching While Black" (The New Inquiry, 2/18/2014).
The Shaw Family Admission Plan
When it came to college admissions, Wall Street legend David Shaw knew how to hedge his bets. Some wealthy parents donate to one elite school to give their children a boost. Dan L. Golden and Ava Kofman write about a hedge fund billionaire who donated to seven. (SLNYM)
September Strikes
UAW workers on strike. 46,000 workers at the nation’s largest auto manufacturer walked out after negotiations collapsed Sunday. CNN Live updates. Workers pour out of GM plant in Rochester. (Twitter) Working People Podcast interviews people on the massive layoffs and cutbacks that lead to the strike conditions and the need for international solidarity 1, 2, 3, 4 (Patreon) Grocery workers ready to walk in 3 states . Oregon University Workers set to cast strike vote. Kaiser healthcare workers plan for nation's largest strike since 1997. How To Support The Global Climate Strike Sept 20-27th. [more inside]
The output is always the same: Admit more rich kids.
What College Admissions Offices Really Want: Elite schools say they’re looking for academic excellence and diversity. But their thirst for tuition revenue means that wealth trumps all. (SLNYT by Paul Tough)
But You Look Fine: A Reading List
About Disabilities, Accommodations, and School. "Because of her reaction, I assumed all professors might view my health condition as a nuisance. I became skilled at performing wellness, enough so that even people in graduate school made sly comments like, I’ve never seen you this way after reading my personal essays about my neurological symptoms, as if they, too, needed reassurance that what I had experienced was real."
“Student debt is essentially illegitimate.”
Representative Omar’s legislation would enact universal debt cancellation — which means every single outstanding student loan, federal or private, would be wiped out. (Truth Out) Sanders is right: Republican tax cuts cost more than forgiving student debt (Guardian Data Blog) Omar: “10 years ago, we bailed out Wall Street. Now it’s time for Wall Street to bail out the American people.” (Splinter) Low Income People Have More Student Debt Than Realized. (PPP) How student debt devoured my life (The Week) Over 100 Academics Endorse Sanders Student Debt Cancellation and Tuition-Free College Plan (Common Dreams) What Free College Really Means (NYT) The Case For Free College (2) (Current Affairs) Canceling all college debt will make us smarter and richer (CNN) [more inside]
"academics often approach books like 'sous-chefs gutting a fish'"
Buried in a slide deck about circulation statistics from Yale’s library was an unsettling fact: There has been a 64 percent decline in the number of books checked out by undergraduates from Bass Library over the past decade. Yale’s experience is not at all unique—indeed, it is commonplace. University libraries across the country, and around the world, are seeing steady, and in many cases precipitous, declines in the use of the books on their shelves. [more inside]
The Death of an Adjunct
Engler's Final Act Flops at MSU
After taking the reins at Michigan State University in the wake of the decades-long Nassar sexual abuse scandal, former Governor of Michigan and MSU alumnus John Engler said, "We have an extreme organizational challenge that must be addressed," and praised the courage of the survivors. Less than a year later, as the climate at MSU didn't seem to be getting any better, Engler told a newspaper editorial board that some of the survivors were "enjoying the spotlight". The Board of Trustees had scheduled a meeting to discuss the matter (and likely terminate Engler's interim presidency) when Engler pulled the classic You can't fire me, I quit! maneuver. [more inside]
There is so much talent wasted, so many silenced
Back of the Class: Julia Bell recalls her admission interview for Oxford University [TLS]: "I wonder now about all the other kids like me, the ones at odd angles, the queer and working class and black, or even just Northern, or Welsh, or provincial. This is not a place for them, however loudly they might be knocking on the door." Julia Bell writes about her 1988 interview for admission to Jesus College, Oxford University, touching upon class, elitism, social control and how the mind reacts in high-pressure situations. In response other people have shared similar experiences on twitter. [more inside]
Paywall: The Business of Scholarship
Paywall: The Business of Scholarship provides focus on the need for open access to research and science, questions the rationale behind the $25.2 billion a year that flows into for-profit academic publishers, examines the 35-40% profit margin associated with the top academic publisher Elsevier and looks at how that profit margin is often greater than some of the most profitable tech companies like Apple, Facebook and Google.
Professor sanctioned for refusing to write a recommendation letter
The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor has disciplined a professor who retracted his offer to write a letter of recommendation for a student who wished to study in Israel. After the associate professor refused to write a letter of recommendation for a student, the student went public about it, the professor was sanctioned by not getting his merit raise and his planned sabbatical was cancelled and he cannot apply for sabbatical for 2 years. [more inside]
Happy 30th Birthday IRC
IRC has been used for 30 years. Did you know that it was developed at the University of Oulu? Simple link FPP for us olds.
Backwards in high heels isn't enough
Medical university rigged exams against women:
Informed sources say Tokyo Medical University has for years rigged entrance exams to limit its intake of women students, slashing their scores by well over 10 percent across-the-board.[more inside]
The Debt Crisis
“In some ways, I now think that one of the primary functions of the university, for the ruling class, is precisely to train a generation in indebtedness, in a state of being in debt.” ON UNIVERSITIES: ROUNDTABLE - what is a University for? (The White Review) - Season Of The Bitch episode 42: Debt as a feminist issue and possible solutions (1:03:52) - The net worth of college graduates with student debt is truly depressing (Market watch) - Competition: Find the craziest graph that shows how bad the student debt crisis really is (Twitter) - The Debt Collective, organizing as debtors and recourses against predatory lenders and collectors - The New Economy Project , what is the Soildairty economy? (Previously, Letter to an unknown lender. )
Then. Now. Next. A year since UBC's sexual assault policy.
Student journalist Samantha McCabe's (excellent!) long form piece for the Ubyssey "It has been a year since UBC put their first stand-alone sexual assault policy into place, and students are disappointed with the university’s progress. As The Ubyssey investigated sexual misconduct and Policy 131, we discovered numerous problems with the policy's implementation, education and communication. While UBC has cited a reasonably lengthy checklist of things they have done, the holes that remain are the ones that survivors routinely seem to be falling through."
(TW: sexual violence) [more inside]
Lesson One: Greed is good
Neoclassical Economics. Best before: 1500AD
“A lot of economics professors, especially the more junior ones who are more focused on research and really trying to develop new ideas and process new data, there’s an escapism to a large extent, in that their career depends so much on getting published in high ranking journals,” he says. “That deviates from the practical problems of understanding the economy as it truly is and trying to address the policy questions that truly exist, because they’re confronted with the pressure in their own careers to develop these journal articles and the game of getting these journal articles written and published is truly a game in itself that involves so much more from observing reality and trying to make things better.” How economics professors can stop failing us.
The architect is the natural enemy of the librarian
"Librarians and architects were already at odds in the late nineteenth century, when librarianship and architectural practice were being professionalized. (The American Library Association was founded in 1876, the American Institute for Architects in 1856.) Many librarians felt that architects ignored their needs and created buildings that emphasized grandeur over functionality. ... At a meeting of the ALA in 1881, Poole delivered a fiery speech against the “vacuity” of the new Peabody Institute Library in Baltimore. “The nave is empty and serves no purpose that contributes to the architectural effect,” he argued. “Is not this an expensive luxury?" [more inside]