By Matt Reed. A new (and fortunate) correspondent writes
I am writing to ask your advice on teaching at a school and teaching undergrads. I have job offers from schools and an offer to work as an instructor at a university. I need to make a choice [soon]. Read more...
Location and Local Identity
By Matt Reed. Jeff Selingo has a thought-provoking piece about location and its effect on campuses. It doesn’t focus on community colleges, but in some ways, they face the same issue even more starkly. Read more...
Shared Among Whom?
By Matt Reed. Among whom should “shared governance” be shared? And how, exactly?
This week, IHE featured two articles on the subject, both of which rely on an assumption I find troubling. The first is a profile of the argument in a new book, The Rise and Decline of Faculty Governance, by Larry Gerber. Read more...
Attendance, Discrimination, and LDA
By Matt Reed. In case you missed it, Tenured Radical has a thought-provoking piece claiming that class attendance policies discriminate against students with disabilities. The argument is that many students have “invisible” disabilities that prevent regular attendance, and that blunt-instrument attendance policies put those students at a disadvantage. Read more...
Report: Work-Study Students More Likely to Graduate
Students who participate in the federal work-study program are more likely to graduate and be employed six years after college than their similar counterparts who don’t participate in the program, according to a new study. Read more...
CCSF Applies for Accreditation 'Restoration' Option
City College of San Francisco this week applied to have its accreditation status restored, a solution that could buy the college two more years to work on fixing problems the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges has identified. City College's lengthy accreditation crisis has become politicized. Read more...
Bar Exam Technology Disaster
New law graduates in many states experienced a technology snafu at the worst possible time Tuesday night: as they were attempting to upload bar examinations just before deadlines in their states. Many reported spending hours trying and failing to upload their answers. ExamSoft, a company that manages the bar test submission process in many states, acknowledged "slowness or difficulty" being experienced by many test-takers, and said that it was sorry for the difficulties many were having. Read more...
'Do ABCs Get More Citations Than XYZs?'
Want to up your citation stats? Try changing your name – but make sure it starts with an “A,” “B,” or “C.” That’s what a new paper in Economic Inquiry suggests (an abstract is available here). The study, by Wei Huang, a Ph.D. candidate in economics at Harvard University, says that researchers whose last names begin with A, B, or C who are listed first as authors in articles in a variety of science journals receive, on average, one to two more citations than their peers whose names start with X, Y, or Z. Read more...
Parents Are Paying More for College
Out-of-pocket contributions to cover the price of college rose in 2014 after three years of decreases, according to the seventh annual installment of a study the lender Sallie Mae released today. Parents in particular are picking up more of tuition costs, and now pay for 30 percent of the total amount from their own income and savings. Read more...
Student Debt Relief for Adjuncts Bill
Adjunct faculty members and their advocates celebrated this week proposed legislation that would help adjunct faculty members quality for the Public Loan Forgiveness Program. The Adjunct Faculty Loan Fairness Act, sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, would allow adjunct faculty members who have student debt apply for the loan forgiveness program for public and non-profit employees. Read more...