By Lucy Ferriss. “Is your novel fiction, or did any of it really happen?” I’ve started doing readings of my new novel, A Sister to Honor, and sure enough, the question came from one of the attentive listeners waiting in line to buy a signed copy. More...
By Ben Yagoda. The email came in with the heading “Ben! How could you!?” The message read, in its entirety:
“How Not to Write Bad,” page 26: “As for state names, never abbreviate when they’re four letters or less, or when they’re standing alone.” More...
By Allan Metcalf. Early in January every year, nearly a thousand people who study how language works flock together for the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America together with six smaller groups under its wings, including the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, the Association for Linguistic Evidence, and of course the American Dialect Society. More...
By Anne Curzan. This past Friday night was the 25th time that the American Dialect Society (ADS) has voted for the Word of the Year. We were reminded at the beginning of the meeting that this makes it only the 24th anniversary, so no champagne yet. … It was, as usual, a lively gathering, with standing room only in the back and even, at one point, chanting in support of one word on the ballot. More...
By Chronicle Staff. Report: “CLA+ National Results, 2013-14″
Author: Jessalyn James, program manager for assessment reporting and data management, Council for Aid to Education
Organization: The Council for Aid to Education, which promotes and tracks private giving to education and conducts research in the field.
Summary: In 2013 the Council for Aid to Education revised its Collegiate Learning Assessment, a test it introduced 11 years earlier to measure how well colleges help their students attain higher-order thinking skills. More...
By Chronicle Staff. Report: “Travel to Learn: The Influence of Cultural Distance on Competence Development in Educational Travel”
Author: Erik van ’t Klooster
Organization: Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University
Summary: Advocates of study abroad tout its advantages to students, saying it arms them with cultural skills critical in a global workplace. But new research from the Rotterdam School of Management suggests this isn’t always so. More...
By Lawrence Biemiller. In a move that could make admissions officers across the country nervous, a group of anonymous Stanford University students who send out an irregular email called “The Fountain Hopper” are encouraging their classmates to request their complete admissions files by filing formal requests that cite the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. A Stanford spokeswoman confirmed to The New York Times that the university had seen an increase in such requests. More...
By Andrew Mytelka. President Obama will speak at two universities—Boise State University and the University of Kansas—in the two days after he delivers his State of the Union address, on Tuesday. He will appear at Boise State on Wednesday and at Kansas on Thursday. No further information was yet available on his plans. More...
By Charles Huckabee. The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released on Wednesday the draft of a “Safe Student Account Scorecard” that it says will help colleges in their negotiations with financial institutions regarding college-affiliated debit cards and other financial services. The scorecard will enable colleges to avoid partnerships with institutions that offer accounts “with tricks and traps,” the bureau said in a news release. More...
By Andy Thomason. Standard & Poor’s Rating Services has issued a negative outlook for nonprofit higher education for 2015, citing, among other things, tension between rising costs to colleges and a focus on student affordability. In a report released on Thursday, the agency says the ensuing competition among colleges to attract top students will weigh heaviest on “those whose credit characteristics are already on the cusp of a lower rating.” More...
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