This is my response to a front page article in the Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304851104579361451951384512 Who knows, maybe I’m being unfair. Maybe it is a fine topic for study. But I don’t think so. (Speaking of English, I think I had better go to my “English Usage” book to make sure I used “who knows” […]
Good News: WSJ article notes that “Cash-Conscious Families Clamor for Numbers on How Much Students Learn”
February 21, 2014 by
The article is here. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304899704579391513428597546 Here is my comment. “I am a former professor. Far too many universities cater to their naive and uneducated customers – once quiantly called “students”. They do this even when it means NOT educating them – just fooling them into believing they are getting the education they need. This new […]
Political Science: University of Michigan, too?
January 6, 2014 by
Here is what I found. They use the same text as Washington University, except that I don’t think they have outside readings. On the other hand, if, as is apparently true in Wash. U.’s case, the readings don’t matter, what does it matter what text they use? (See my previous post.) The link to the […]
Political Science Courses – Content Deflation? Just How Bad Is It?
January 6, 2014 by
I recently had a discussion with someone who felt that I might be overreacting to changes in education. My friend felt that it was important to interest students in a subject even if that meant teaching them less. Of course, we agreed that it is a matter of degree. My friend worried that I was wrong about […]
MOOC’s Setback? But Online Still Very Useful, I Believe
December 12, 2013 by
There is this in yesterday’s New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/11/us/after-setbacks-online-courses-are-rethought.html?hpw&rref=us but I believe that online access can be very informative when used the way I described. (Also, I just finished an excellent book on the role of the internet in education. It is “Abelard to Apple: The Fate of American Colleges and Universities” by Richard A. DeMillo.) “Online […]
Jeffrey J. Williams on “The Great Stratification”
December 5, 2013 by
Professor Williams has helped shine a light on some of the inequites within the professoriate itself. (See http://chronicle.com/article/The-Great-Stratification/143285/ ) I think these inequities are important to know and understand. The fact that there is so much stratification within higher education is revealing. It makes clearer who faculty are, in spite of who they may seem to be, who they […]
Duke University Professor Calls It Like It Is
Michael Allen Gillespie, a professor of political science and of philosophy at Duke University, has written a revealing piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education. I recommend it for its honesty about grading (or not really grading) and about professors “cheating” students by not fairly grading them in a way that shows them what they […]