By Natalie Lundsteen. I spend most of my days in meetings with graduate students and postdocs, talking about where their careers might go. I jokingly say, “Nobody leaves my office without a networking tutorial.” And it’s true: for Ph.D.s engaged in a nonacademic job search, the concept of networking is omnipresent and unavoidable. Read more...
Grad Student: You Are Your Own Spokesperson
By James M. Van Wyck. If graduate students are (to borrow Leonard Cassuto’s phrase) the CEOs of their own graduate education, then a key aspect of this multifaceted role is public relations. Read more...
Beyond Yale and Mizzou
By Fabio Rojas. Last week, students and administrators at Yale University fought over a series of racial incidents. A fraternity at the university was accused of excluding nonwhite women from a party. Read more...
Who Really Bears the Cost of Hiring Adjuncts?
By Anonymous. My first adjunct job interview was at a local technical college. When the dean told me that he and his assistant would evaluate my interview and teaching demo, I found it unusual, since neither had a background that qualified them to assess my ability to teach in my subject area. Read more...
Past Its Peak
By Scott McLemee. The impending collapse of civilization should, as Samuel Johnson said about being hanged in a fortnight, wonderfully concentrate the mind. For most of the interview subjects whose responses Matthew Schneider-Mayerson analyzes in Peak Oil: Apocalyptic Environmentalism and Libertarian Political Culture (University of Chicago Press), that collapse is inevitable, if not already underway. Read more...
'Palace of Ashes'
By Elizabeth Redden. In Palace of Ashes: China and the Decline of American Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press), Mark S. Ferrara contrasts the “downward trajectory” of American higher education against the rise of China’s university system. Read more...
Who's in First (Generation)?
By Ashley A. Smith. The term "first generation" tends to be thrown around a lot by educators and policy makers. But what does the term mean?
Does a first-generation college student come from a home where neither parent earned a college degree? What if at least one parent graduated college. Read more...
Commission seeks stronger role for university leaders
By Jan Petter Myklebust. The proportion of university budgets comprising basic funding should be increased and collegial influence on decision-making and recruitment should be reduced, to give university leaders greater freedom to prioritise spending and hire staff to meet strategic needs, a commission on higher education leadership has recommended. Read more...
Local and indigenous knowledge emerges from blindspot
By Nicola Jenvey. The long-standing blindspot created by scientists' dogged concentration on positivist science – emphasising empirical data and scientific methods to the exclusion of other methodology – may be ending. Read more...
A Postcard From Bilbao
By Geoffrey Pullum. People whose experience of Spain goes back many decades tell me that Bilbao was once a nondescript little steel town on a polluted river, best driven past and avoided on your way to somewhere nicer. But today, as I stroll along the riverfront walk overlooked by the grandeur of the University of Deusto, and watch cormorants dive into the Nervion and come up with fresh white fish (river cleanups cannot be faked), it strikes me as one of the most attractive cities I’ve ever visited. More...