4 juillet 2015

By Scott McLemee. I fell in love with the grand reading room of the 42nd Street branch of the New York Public Library long before ever setting foot in the place. The occasion was Damon Knight's Charles Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained, the first biography of America’s great chronicler of strange phenomena. Read more...

By Scott McLemee. If you can remember the 1960s, the old quip goes, you weren’t really part of them. By that standard, the most authentic participants ended up as what used to be called “acid casualties”: those who took spiritual guidance from Timothy Leary’s injunction to “turn on, tune in and drop out” and ended up stranded in some psychedelic heaven or hell. Read more...

By William G. Durden. The most pressing challenge to undergraduate education in the United States is arguably its sharply rising cost. In a 2013 Bloomberg News article, Michelle Jamrisko and Ilan Kolet assert that tuition expenses have increased 538 percent since 1985, compared with a 286 percent jump in medical costs and a 121 percent gain in the Consumer Price Index. Read more...

By Michelle Asha Cooper. Racism exists in American society. This fact may be an inconvenient truth for some, but for millions of Americans it is an ever-present, inescapable aspect of their reality. And while racism -- or its persistent threat -- characterizes the lived experiences of so many, there are still those who will dismiss civil discourse on the topic of race until tragedy strikes, thrusting these societal ills into the spotlight. Read more...

By James F. McGrath. There are professors who find student comments on their end-of-semester evaluations so upsetting that they cry after reading them. If my course evaluations have tended to be pretty good, I can still relate to how faculty members feel, thanks in part to RateMyProfessors.com. Read more...

By Kellie Woodhouse. More and more colleges and universities are hiking their minimum wage above what’s required by their states and the federal government. Read more...

By Elizabeth Redden. Foreign students' applications to American graduate schools climbed by 2 percent this year, driven in part by continued growth in applications from India, according to survey results released today by the Council of Graduate Schools. Read more...

By Jacqueline Thomsen. One women’s college is making sure that all students who want a degree can earn one. Alverno College, an all-women’s institution in Wisconsin, is phasing out its once popular weekend courses in favor of a hybrid option for students, a move the college’s president said will allow the student body to better balance personal and professional demands while still pursuing a degree. Read more...

By Jacqueline Thomsen. After a racially motivated shooting in Charleston earlier this month left nine black people dead, a nationwide conversation about the Confederate flag began. Politicians jumped on the bandwagon, major corporations removed merchandise displaying the flag from their shelves and the topic pervaded social media and news coverage. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. Influuent (the university says the name is a combination of “influence” and “influunt,” the Latin word for “flow”) is being developed as more than just a faculty directory. For the private sector, administrators say, the database could serve as a starting point for commercial partnerships; for faculty members, a “matchmaking” site for research projects; and for journalists, a catalog of experts available to comment. Read more...