By Scott McLemee. My ears have been burning: Michael Eric Dyson’s philippic directed at Cornel West, published a few days ago at the website of The New Republic, echoes much of my grumbling and gnashing of teeth in this column back in late 2009, following the publication of Brother West, an “as told to” autobiography. Dyson now calls that volume “an embarrassing farrago of scholarly aspiration and breathless self-congratulation” -- quite an astute characterization, if I say so myself. Read more...

By Scott McLemee. Probably the best-known fact about The Higher Learning in America by Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) is that the author’s original subtitle for it was “A Study in Total Depravity.” By the time the book finally appeared in print in 1918, the wording had been changed to “A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men,” which gives the reader a clearer sense of the contents, albeit at a considerable loss in piquancy. Read more...

By Alan Hughes. College and university faculty are expected to be excellent teachers. In public, college leaders emphasize to potential students and their parents that at their institution, teaching matters above all else. Colleges seem to unabashedly promote that the teaching done by their faculty is markedly better than at peer institutions -- or that the opportunities for close working relationships between students and faculty are unique to their campus. Read more...

By Jonathan Zimmerman. Last week, the University of South Carolina suspended a student for writing the n-word on a whiteboard in a campus study room. The university president explained that the student had violated the Carolinian Creed, which bars “racist and uncivil rhetoric.”
But in the United States, there’s another creed that’s supposed to take precedence over all the others: the Constitution. And the university -- not the offending student -- violated it. Read more...

By Holly Else for Times Higher Education. Improving “gender balance” in research to help drive up the quality of work produced is among the top priorities for the European Union’s new commissioner for research, science and innovation. Read more...

By Paul Jump for Times Higher Education. Science in the Republic of Ireland is being destroyed by a “scientific apartheid” that reserves the most competitive research funding for 14 priority areas, largely chosen for commercial reasons. Read more...

By Julie Hare for The Australian. University leaders in Australia have been pocketing large salary increases at the same time that they seek federal legislation to allow fee deregulation based on the ­argument their institutions are cash-strapped. Read more...

By Jake New. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights released a new “guidance package” Friday to help colleges understand the requirements and expectations of their Title IX coordinators. Read more...

By Kellie Woodhouse. Tuition dollars made up roughly 47 percent of revenues for public higher education for the third straight year in 2014, cementing a trend in which tuition revenue now rivals state appropriations as the main funder of public colleges and universities. Read more...

By Ashley A. Smith. Community colleges are learning that getting the authorization to offer four-year degrees doesn't mean the struggle is over.  
Twenty-two states allow community colleges to award bachelor's degrees, and many administrators believe that number will grow. Read more...