By Joshua Kim. One question I often hear from my alt-ac colleagues is, “should I go for my Ph.D.”? The desire for alt-acs to get the terminal degree seems to have less to do with acquiring a new set of skills, as skills can be picked up in a range of less onerous and time consuming educational environments. Rather, a PhD for an alt-academic is a signifier. It is the price of admission to full colleague status with the faculty. Read more...
By Joshua Kim. The thing to remember about us alt-acs is that we are academics with a different incentive profile than our faculty colleagues. Our career progression and promotion paths are different. Work that might be a detriment for tenure track faculty are a benefit for us alt-acs. Read more...
By Joshua Kim. I’d like to make a modest proposal. We should stop scheduling meetings with zero time to go from one meeting to the next.
Does this describe your life? You have a meeting scheduled from 9:00am to 10:00am. And then another meeting from 10:00am to 10:30am. You have left yourself exactly zero minutes to get from the first meeting to the second. Read more...
By G. Rendell. A recent item in Scientific American is titled, "Games Help Save Energy". But read it all the way through (a daunting 993 words), and you'll learn that there's less to this headline than meets the eye. Read more...By G. Rendell. It's cold season here in Backboro. It;s cold, even for February. And it's stayed cold pretty much all month. And so people have colds (go figure!).
By Jane Robbins. I have come out of my hiatus from this Sounding Board blog to respond to an anonymous question I received (and apologizes for how long it has taken). The questions is:
The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday voted to regulate the Internet as a public utility, a major win for the "net neutrality" advocates -- including higher education groups -- that lobbied the agency to ban paid traffic prioritization on the Internet. Read more...
The House of Representatives has overwhelmingly approved legislation to expand the tax benefits of 529 college-savings accounts, less than a month after the Obama administration's failed bid to raise taxes on such accounts. Read more...
The Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which certifies universities to host foreign students and scholars and maintains a database that tracks international students’ whereabouts in the United States, will continue to operate in the case of a possible Department of Homeland Security shutdown, though its activities may be hobbled due to reduced manpower in administrative offices. Read more...
The American Association of University Professors on Tuesday joined a chorus of other organizations and academics that have criticized a controversial recommendation that the board of the University of North Carolina System shutter the Chapel Hill campus's Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity. Read more...
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