As we finish out a semester that so many people–faculty, staff, students, administrators–have found unbelievably tough, I can’t help thinking that we need a wholesale re-imagining of how we do higher ed. I saw a tweet the other day that said we’re living through an era, like the Great Depression, or WWII, where everything has … Continue reading
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Why Higher Education is Failing to Close The Racial Wealth Gap
For all too many Black students, a college degree isn’t a ticket into the middle class….As our society engages in a historic reckoning over its persistent racial disparities — in employment, income, healthcare, life span, on-time high school graduation, homeownership, incarceration, political representation, poverty rates, school suspensions and wealth — we, in the academy need … Continue reading
Hip-Hop Stars Support Mississippi Rapper in First Amendment Case
Musical tastes at the Supreme Court run toward opera. On Monday, a glittering array of hip-hop stars will try to expand the justices’ musical horizons.In a brief supporting a Mississippi high school student who was disciplined for posting a rap song online, artists including T. I., Big Boi and Killer Mike will explain to the … Continue reading
What Is the Point of College?
… [A]s higher education expands its reach, it’s increasingly hard to say what college is like and what college is for. In the United States, where I now teach, more than 17 million undergraduates will be enrolling in classes this fall. They will be passing through institutions small and large, public and private, two-year and … Continue reading
How Will Education Be Different in 100 Years
A video from The Atlantic. At this year’s Aspen Ideas Festival, we asked a group of professors, engineers, and journalists how education will change in a century. “I mean, will you need to know knowledge?” asks the journalist Amanda Ripley. “Or will you just need to be an amazing processor of information and an analyst?” Other panelists include Pamela … Continue reading
Information Technology: The Accidental Career for Ph.D.s
The United States has two major employment dilemmas. On the supply side, American universities produce a well-documented surfeit of Ph.D.s, far in excess of the number of tenure-track job openings. On the demand side, the American information-technology industry is greatly in need of skilled workers. But there has yet to be a move to direct … Continue reading
Pols’ High Anxiety Over Higher Ed
College, once a sure ticket to the middle class, is causing a lot of anxiety these days. People are concerned about its cost, about low graduation rates and about the poor employment prospects of some graduates. Hillary Clinton complained about the burden of student debt in a speech in New York last month. Senator Marco Rubio … Continue reading
Federal Solutions To Our Student Loan Problem
My dad grew up in a country that was generous and farsighted enough to see that the more its people learned, the more its people earned. So after deploying to fly a B-24 Liberator over Japan, he went to college on the GI Bill and learned enough to open his own law practice. And he … Continue reading
Tightrope for Adjunct Faculty at Community Colleges
“Your students are afraid of you.” “Really?” “Yes. You are intimidating. Try to smile more in class so they are more comfortable with you.” What began as the strangest, most Twilight Zone-like experience that I have ever had in my 13 years of teaching ended up being one of the most humiliating and frustrating conversations … Continue reading
Accusations of Student Harassment Leave Professors Feeling Vulnerable
The former assistant professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor says he had no idea what he was walking into when two administrators there summoned him to a meeting. An email from the two mentioned only concerns about his “alleged interaction with university students.” At the meeting, he says, their casual tone and … Continue reading
Professor Van Ry 