By Ryan. Sometimes I feel as though I’ve been swindled. Not by anyone in particular but by an institution that is relentlessly trying to prop itself up despite its progressive decline. That institution is the academy – once a public good devoted to the free production of critical knowledge, it has become in the last few decades a corporatized factory for the production of capitalist consumers and wage slaves. More than that, it has become itself a product for consumption where what’s for sale is the facsimile of intellectual freedom and integrity. Like so many extravagant island resorts, universities offer manicured landscapes, leisure activities, freedom from the wage clock – all for a price and all safely sectioned off from the harsh realities outside. But the price is going up, and students – the consumers of this image world that they are being sold – are taking on increasing amounts of debt to pay it. What’s more, they’re told this is “good debt” – like buying a house, right? Remember when owning a home was the “American Dream” – a symbol of financial security? Now that bubble has burst – the academic bubble, I believe, is not far behind it. More...

By Steve Joordens. In a previous post I shamelessly described the learning technologies we are creating in the Advanced Learning Technologies Lab of the University of Toronto Scarborough as “Stairways to Heaven”.
Specifically, I described the philosophy that guides us, one that involves building technologies (i.e., stairways) that can take us from where we are – an education system that primarily stresses memorization skills and content – to where we want to be – an educational “Heaven” in which our students regularly engage in learning activities specifically created to exercise and develop the core learning objectives that distinguish scholars and leaders from mere databases of knowledge (e.g., critical thought, creative thought, reflective thought, expressive communication, receptive communication, etc.). Read more...

By Philip G. Altbach. The past several decades have seen consistent increases in the numbers of students studying abroad. More than 4.3 million students studied abroad in 2011, more than double the number of mobile students a decade earlier. Many assume that expansion will continue indefinitely—and indeed that has been the trend in the era of massification of enrolments and globalization. Yet, international student flows can be quite volatile. The more countries and institutions think of international students as commodities to be traded, the more this volatility may have consequences for budgets and academic programs. Read more...

By Rosemarie Emanuele. In Statistics, the idea of “variance” describes how disperse data points are. Are they all bunched right at the mean, or are they very spread out, with some values much larger than the mean, and other values much lower than the mean? I taught this topic last week, and was able to create a visual (and beyond) image for my students. I entered my classroom stomping snow off my boots as I took off my coat and scarf. I asked them the question; “does anyone even remember the heat of the summer?” A room full of tired students who had driven to school in a storm glared back at me. No, no one seemed to remember the sweltering heat and humidity of the summer that had led to a tornado sweeping through and destroying part of the campus. And so I discussed the idea of variation in weather, as it relates to the calculation of the variance of a data set. Read more...

By Laura Tropp. Last week I was reading a Wall Street Journal article, an excerpt from a new parenting book by Jennifer Senior, that discusses time and parenting. This piece focused on differing notions of time management and parenting between women and men. Ultimately, it argued that women often performed tasks that involved childcare and time sensitive-tasks, which took up more mental time. It was hard for me to disagree. I would much prefer folding five loads of laundry by myself than trying to convince any of my children to take a bath before bed. This article also made me think about how our media environments, not just sex/gender identifications, may impact how we see time. Read more...