By Anne Curzan. There was an “aha!” moment in my class this week that reminded me just how important it is to talk with students about the human conversation represented by academic citation. This idea of an academic conversation on the page is far from new. More than 70 years ago, Kenneth Burke used the metaphor of the parlor filled with a heated ongoing discussion that we are choosing to enter and participate in as academic writers. More...
Little Help, Please?
By Ben Yagoda. John Updike once commented in a letter to his editor William Maxwell, “It occurs to me that the world would not be significantly poorer if I stopped writing altogether. Only a bottomless capacity for envy keeps me going. That, and the pleasure of reading proofs and designing book jackets.”
I know what he meant, though I would never presume to design a book jacket, or, indeed, anything. More...
Streamline Consumer-Information Process, Says Financial-Aid Group
By Chronicle Staff. Report: “Consumer Information Report”
Author: National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators’ Consumer Information Task Force
Summary: A nine-member panel was convened by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators to study federal requirements for consumer-information disclosure. The panel recommended 15 improvements in federal disclosure rules to “streamline both the content and delivery of those requirements.” More...
Is Same-Day Delivery Coming to Campus Bookstores? Not Quite Yet
By Avi Wolfman-Arent. There’s big news today in the race to offer same-day book delivery. Barnes & Noble announced it would team up with Google Shopping Express to offer same-day delivery in select cities. The move appears to take aim at Amazon, with which both companies compete and which already has same-day service in 10 cities. More...
Judge Rules Against NCAA in Key Antitrust Case
By Nick DeSantis. A federal judge in California ruled on Friday that NCAA rules barring college athletes from sharing in the revenues produced by the use of their names and likenesses violate antitrust law, handing the plaintiffs a key win in a case that has threatened to upend the association’s principles of amateurism, CBS Sports reported. More...
How Did the Federal Government Rate Your College a Century Ago?
By Andy Thomason. For the sake of the U.S. Department of Education, if only it were still this easy. As lawmakers, college presidents, and interest groups bicker over a proposed federal college-ratings system, a fossilized version has popped up on Twitter. From 1911. This is thanks to Robert Kelchen, an assistant professor of higher-education at Seton Hall University, who tweeted that he discovered the 1911 ratings years ago, while writing a paper. As Vox’s Libby Nelson notes in a chronicle of the 1911 ratings, the Association of American Universities actually asked the government to devise them. More...
Selectivity Doesn’t Improve Graduation Prospects, Study Finds
By Andy Thomason. Colleges prize selectivity. They also want to graduate their students. But the former has very little to do with the latter, according to a study published on Thursday in the American Educational Research Journal.
In fact, the study found, there is only one institutional variable that has a significant effect on a student’s graduation prospects, and that is tuition. The likelihood that a student will graduate increases by a fraction of a percent for every $1,000 in tuition charged at his or her college, according to the study. More...
Education Dept. Proposes Loosening PLUS-Loan Credit Requirements
By Andy Thomason. The U.S. Education Department has released proposed rules changes for its PLUS program, which provides loans to graduate students and to the parents of undergraduates who cannot pay for college through other sources of financial aid alone. According to the department, the changes would result in 370,000 more applicants’ being declared eligible for the program. More...
NCAA Approves Changes to Give Big 5 Conferences More Autonomy
By Andy Thomason. As expected, the NCAA has voted to approve a series of governance changes that will give the five biggest athletic conferences more freedom to operate independently. According to an NCAA news release, the Division I Board of Directors voted, 16 to 2, to approve the new rules. More...
2 Word Clouds That’ll Tell You Nothing About Grade Inflation at Princeton
By Andy Thomason. A faculty committee at Princeton University released a report on Thursday examining the institution’s controversial policy that sets a limit on the number of A’s each department can give out over time. The report provides a thorough look at the effects of the policy and ultimately recommends that the university do away with the numerical targets. More...