By Allan Metcalf. Linda Hall writes in The Conversation about strategies for getting students to make less use of the hated monosyllable like. She cites (and admits that she respects) an essay by David Grambs, “The Like Virus,” in the August 2011 edition of The Vocabula Review, a subscription-only online periodical of linguistic peeving (it is reprinted in Exploring Language, edited by Gary Goshgarian, pages 303-310). More...
27 septembre 2014
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Great Question!
By Allan Metcalf. Questions have muscle. That’s what I mentioned last week while praising the strongest question word of all, Why. Even the weakest of questions has strength not found in any declarative sentence: the strength to require a response. If someone makes a statement, you don’t have to do anything. But if someone asks you a question, you must answer. More...
Pausing Over Pronunciation
By Anne Curzan. A little over a year ago, I found myself standing in front of a class of almost 100 students, staring at a pronunciation conundrum. I was reading aloud a couple of key sentences from a quote on a PowerPoint slide, and my eyes jumped a line ahead and saw the word islet barreling toward me. Not a word I say aloud all that often, let alone one I have to say loudly in front of a roomful of people. More...
What You Need to Know About This Week’s Student-Loan Default Rates
By Andy Thomason. The U.S. Department of Education is scheduled to release this week its annual cohort default rates, which describe what percentage of borrowers are defaulting on their student loans. The data were due to be released to colleges on Monday and to the public in the middle of the week. Here’s what you need to know. More...
Student-Loan Defaults Decline in Latest Data, Education Dept. Says
By Andy Thomason. The percentage of borrowers who defaulted on their student loans in the past three years has dropped across all higher-education sectors, according to data released on Wednesday by the U.S. Education Department. The overall default rate for borrowers who began repayment between October 1, 2010, and September 30, 2011, fell to 13.7 percent from the previous year’s 14.7 percent. More...
Court Agrees to Expedite NCAA’s Appeal in O’Bannon Antitrust Case
By Andy Thomason. A federal appeals court has agreed to expedite the NCAA’s appeal in the case O’Bannon v. NCAA, reports USA Today. The NCAA and the plaintiffs in the landmark case filed a joint motion last Friday asking that the appeal be put on a fast track so an appellate ruling can precede the permanent injunction that was ordered to take effect in 2015 by Judge Claudia Wilken of the U.S. District Court in Oakland. More...
U.S. College Enrollment Drops for 2nd Year in a Row, Census Bureau Reports
By Andy Thomason. College enrollment dropped by 463,000 students from 2012 to 2013, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released on Wednesday. It is the second year in a row that college enrollment dropped nationally. According to the statistics, a 10-percent enrollment drop at two-year colleges fueled the overall decline. Enrollment at four-year colleges grew by 1 percent. More...
Low-Income Students Often Miss Out on Federal Work-Study Funds
By Chronicle Staff. Report: “A Federal Work Study Reform Agenda to Better Serve Low-Income Students”
Authors: Rory O’Sullivan and Reid Setzer
Organization: Young Invincibles
Summary: The formula for determining how federal work-study funds are allocated to colleges and universities is outdated, the report says, often favoring larger, private colleges instead of community colleges and other institutions that serve many low-income students. More...
Black Women May Face Unique Barriers to Obtaining STEM Degrees
By Chronicle Staff. Report: “Ethnic Variation in Gender-STEM Stereotypes and STEM Participation: An Intersectional Approach”
Publication: Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, a journal of the American Psychological Association
Summary: Although black women show more interest in majoring in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics than white women entering college, they are less likely to earn a degree in those fields, the paper’s authors found. Black men and women are also less likely than their white peers to subconsciously associate the so-called STEM fields with masculinity. More...
NIH Prodding Makes Data Sharing More Common, Survey Finds
By Chronicle Staff. Report: “Codifying Collegiality: Recent Developments in Data Sharing Policy in the Life Sciences”
Authors: Genevieve Pham-Kanter, Darren E. Zinner, and Eric G. Campbell
Journal: PLoS ONE
Summary: The paper, based on a study conducted by researchers at Drexel, Brandeis, and Harvard Universities, represents an attempt to measure the effectiveness of policies instituted by funding agencies and journals to encourage the wider sharing of data by scientists. More...
