Formation Continue du Supérieur

30 mars 2014

The Ron Rand Paul Revolution Aims For 2016

By David Silbey. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky is putting together “a network in all 50 states” to jump-start his Presidential run in 2016. This is a warning shot across the bows of Republican rivals like Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz, but also taking a lesson from the Obama 2012 campaign, which built a large organization very earlier, especially in the swing states. Some of the paid Obama campaign staffers, in fact, never left Ohio after 2008, but stayed there for the next four years. That ground game is perceived to be one of the major reasons why Obama won re-election. Paul is trying to imitate that early start. More...

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30 mars 2014

A Plan for the Modern College

By Jerry Harp. As is commonly known, American higher education depends for its existence on the cheap labor of adjunct faculty members. According to recent reports, adjuncts make up as much as 70 percent of college instructors. The average yearly salary for those adjuncts is around $25,000, just above the poverty rate for a family of four, so these members of the professoriate, having put in their years working on advanced degrees while providing cheap labor as graduate students, have learned very well what to expect and really have nothing to complain about; but we academics are a discontented lot, so we do complain. However, I have hit on a proposal that might take some modest steps toward addressing the problem. More...

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30 mars 2014

Unsentimental Education

By Robert Cowan. “So, do the characters in Flaubert’s novel act in accordance with Kant’s categorical imperative?” I looked around the classroom of my freshman composition students and was greeted with blank stares.
“Who actually read up to page 306?” Two hands went up, one only halfway. Others confessed that they had read only to page 147, or page 20, 72, 3. Some hadn’t even opened Sentimental Education. Why hadn’t they done the assigned reading? More...

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30 mars 2014

Learning From the Southern Hemisphere

By Nigel Thrift. I recently visited Australia and Indonesia, both countries which—in their different ways—are pivotal for global higher education. Australia is a complex system in which higher education has become a big business. It attracts a significant number of international students, especially from Asia, which generates some $6.8-billion dollars (Australian) a year, according to the Grattan Institute. That makes higher education the country’s fourth largest export earner. Read more...

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30 mars 2014

Life-Saving Punctuation

By Allan Metcalf. “Do not use semicolons,” says Kurt Vonnegut. “They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.”Just by the look of it, you can tell that a semicolon is a dangerous tool in unskilled hands. That bullet on top, that sharp curved blade on the bottom portend trouble. It’s “the most feared punctuation on earth,” The Oatmeal website warns, before explaining how to use it. Read more...

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30 mars 2014

Are You Feeling It?

By Rose Jacobs. I’ve never been a huge McDonald’s fan (my loyalties lie with Wendy’s), but lately the Golden Arches have become a particular bugbear. Many of you will recognize the chain’s slogan of almost a decade, “I’m lovin’ it,” and some will find its grammar grating. Traditionally, after all, English stative verbs—those that describe a state of being, what we think or how we feel—are not conjugated in the present continuous form. Before the lovin’ it campaign, a tasty Filet-O-Fish would have prompted most English speakers to testify, “I love it.” Read more...

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30 mars 2014

Get Me the Concierge

By William Germano. “My husband used to be the concierge,” announces the woman in the window, “but he’s dead. Now I’m the concierge.” Movie fans will recognize the moment in Mel Brooks’s The Producers when our hapless protagonists approach the residence of the furtive ex-Nazi and pigeon fancier Franz Liebkind, author of the soon-to-be immortal musical “Springtime for Hitler. ”Liebkind’s apartment building is nothing special. It doesn’t have anything as glamorous as a concierge, just an urban denizen who watches the world suspiciously from a streetside window. Read more...

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30 mars 2014

Analysis Tracks Koch Brothers’ Financial Backing of Higher Education

By Nick DeSantis. A new analysis from the Center for Public Integrity details how charitable foundations controlled by the brothers Charles and David Koch have poured money into colleges and universities. The center’s analysis of federal tax filings found that two private Koch charitable foundations contributed more than $12.7-million to colleges in 2012, spreading the money among 163 American institutions. More...

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30 mars 2014

What’s Driving Human Evolution Now?

By Paul Voosen. Last year, when Sir David Attenborough, the British naturalist and broadcaster, speculated that human beings had ended natural selection through cultural and technological innovations, he got a deserved amount of blowback. The criticism started with his toy-model view of evolution, and went from there. But beneath it all, there was one lingering question: Was he getting at, in any way, a kernel of truth? Read more...

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30 mars 2014

New Syllabus Archive Opens the ‘Curricular Black Box’

By Marc Parry. Course syllabi are a potentially valuable source of information for teaching and scholarship. Their contents could shed light on the evolution of fields (How has Foucault’s popularity changed over time?) or help professors develop new courses (What are best practices for teaching digital humanities?). But gathering and sharing syllabi can be a messy business. Privacy concerns, legal uncertainty, fragmented and inconsistent sharing practices—all present challenges. More...

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