Institutions – Page 3 – Questions for Colleges

A Technological Cloud Hangs Over Higher Education

Where is higher education headed?

by Keith Williams (U Virginia)

I was there when it happened. And for the record: I did object. I was but a teaching assistant; the decision was not mine. The decision was to replace the pendulums and other demonstration gizmos in the undergraduate physics teaching laboratory with computers and software.

To be sure, the change would be convenient: no more time-consuming preparation of experiments, no more lectures on how to make demonstrations work, no more disinclined planes or springs sprung too far. This was cutting-edge. The students would love it. Students like computers. And aren’t computers the future? Don’t we need to get with the times and prepare students for the information age?

With great reluctance, I packed up the Continue reading “A Technological Cloud Hangs Over Higher Education”

Not Quite Bulletproof

What have you learned about life?

By Jon T. Coleman (Notre Dame)

To rise in academe and reach the high ground where review committees stop questioning your record and deans quit pondering your trajectory, where students applaud when you close out the semester with your lecture on the War of 1812 and Stephen Colbert invites you on his Report to plug your book, one must cultivate an entry-level superpower.

Save your supersonic speed, your laser-beam eyeballs, and your ability to communicate with sea life for emergencies and holiday parties. Instead concentrate on blocking projectiles. To get a job, to surmount third-year review, to receive tenure, to advance to full professorship, to merit a Wikipedia page that you didn’t write yourself, all you need to be is bulletproof. And if you want a Kevlar career, do as I say, not as I did. For while I excelled at thwarting some bullets, I had zero talent for dodging the countless shots I administered to myself.

As with most things scholastic, bulletproofing starts Continue reading “Not Quite Bulletproof”

Why the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act Still Matters

How should higher education be funded?

by Christopher Loss (Vanderbilt)

July 2, 1862, was a busy day for President Abraham Lincoln. He dispatched several letters to far-flung military commanders. He held meetings on the war and on the status of fugitive slaves. He also signed three laws, including one banning polygamy in the territories and another creating a loyalty oath for all government officials. The final law Lincoln signed, the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act, putting the federal government in charge of the development of public colleges and universities, not only turned out to be the most important of the three bills he signed but stands as an enduring legacy of his presidency.

The long-germinating land-for-education bill was the brainchild of a self-taught son of a blacksmith, Representative—and later Senator— Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont, a Republican. He believed that the Continue reading “Why the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act Still Matters”

Grim Job Talks Are a Buzz Kill

Are we preparing students for the professional world?

by Dan Shapiro (Penn State)

You were one of only a handful of candidates we invited to campus. We wanted to like you.

Hell, I wanted to love you. I am your potential future chair. When I became chair, I knew that bringing in strong faculty members was my best chance to leave a mark on the department and the college. I also knew that job searches were a drag on the little boat I would be trying to navigate through waters strewn with budget cuts, increased teaching loads, and fussy-somewhat-overworked faculty members. So I wanted the search to be over and for you to be here already.

But then your job talk started and my throat went dry and I felt that thumping in my temples.

Grim job talks are a buzz kill. And let’s be clear, your problem was not Continue reading “Grim Job Talks Are a Buzz Kill”

Encourage, but Terrify

Is graduate school worth it?

by Amanda Seligman (U Wisconsin, Milwaukee)

“Professor Seligman, you scared the hell out of me!” confided “Andrew” as I gathered up my papers, course books, several sample dissertations, and my keys after the first session of my undergraduate course in history methods last January. “I still want to be a professor, but you scared the hell out of me!” he repeated, in case I missed the point the first time.

I had just completed my first-day-of-class warning exercise, which I disguise as a form of acculturation. In a room full of history majors, there are always some students who think that they want to go to graduate school and become professors. Like many of my colleagues in the humanities, I am mindful of the impossibly crowded academic job market, which leaves all too many excellent scholars underemployed as adjuncts, working in jobs unrelated to their training, and so disillusioned and embittered that they denounce higher education to all listeners.

To prevent my own students from Continue reading “Encourage, but Terrify”

The Distracted Academic Self

What is your passion?

By Donald E. Hall (Lehigh)

When I published The Academic Self: An Owner’s Manual (Ohio State University Press) 10 years ago, there was one point I hoped to make above all others: I wanted academic readers to understand the absolute necessity of continuously working to sort out what we can change or influence in our own lives and selves, and what we cannot.

Much has changed since then, but I believe that point is just as valid today.

Back in 2002, my work life was so hectic that I had to microschedule everything just to keep my sanity intact. I was working at California State University at Northridge, a teaching-intensive institution, holding two administrative appointments, and commuting two or sometimes three hours a day on Los Angeles freeways.

The context of my work has changed significantly in the past decade. I have made two Continue reading “The Distracted Academic Self”

The Future Is Now, and Has Been for Years

How will open online courses affect the future of education?

By James O’Donnell

I think I taught the first MOOC in history. It was the spring of 1994.

I call it the best idea I ever had in the shower. About to teach a standard course, introducing the life and thought of St. Augustine, I wanted to do better. What about, I thought in midshampoo, inviting the rest of the world into the classroom? The Internet, after all. …

By today’s standards the technology was primitive. The first graphical Web browser had just been released, but very few people had it—or enough network connection to use it. So we depended on Gopher, the early Internet protocol, to deliver the Continue reading “The Future Is Now, and Has Been for Years”

For Love AND Money

How do you get the most out of college?

by Brian Strow (Western Kentucky)

A flourishing life is not one dimensional. It involves the search for truth and a striving for self-awareness/ self-improvement. It requires the development of one’s mind, body, and soul. A flourishing life requires faith, exudes hope, and shows love to others. It also requires a broadly defined definition of education.

Self-improvement should be a lifelong passion. Universities and colleges offer a unique development opportunity where students are enabled, and encouraged, to embrace their flourishing in a meaningful way. Universities and colleges are not meant to produce perfect graduates, but rather people who are better equipped to pursue their view of a flourishing life. Too often students obtain their degree without actually Continue reading “For Love AND Money”

A Song of Vice and Mire

What do academics do wrong?

By Rob Jenkins

For fun, I’ve been reading George R.R. Martin’s marvelous fantasy epic, A Song of Ice and Fire, about a medieval-ish kingdom and its wars and intrigues. If you haven’t yet encountered the books (five in the series so far), I highly recommend them, as Martin deftly intertwines fantastical elements, such as dragons and wights (medieval zombies), with a quasi-historical storyline to create a kind of J.R.R. Tolkien-meets-Philippa Gregory effect.

What fascinates me most about the narrative, however, is the extent to which it parallels my experiences as a community-college professor and administrator. As I follow the political machinations of the fictional court at King’s Landing—the alliances and conspiracies, the jealousies and betrayals, the dalliances and beheadings—I am frequently put in mind of actual people I have known and events I have witnessed over my 27-year career. Sometimes I wonder if George R.R. Martin isn’t really just a Continue reading “A Song of Vice and Mire”

Every Monograph a Movie

Are students learning the best way?

by Marshall T. Poe (University of Iowa)

Although we often forget it, reading is a profoundly unnatural act. We were not evolved to read. Eyes are for seeing, ears are for hearing, but we have nothing specifically designed for reading. That makes reading difficult in two ways. First, it’s hard to learn to read, largely because you have to rewire your brain to do it. That takes a lot of time and effort, so much so that some people never learn to read well at all. Second, even if you have learned to read well, it’s often not physically pleasurable. Natural selection gave us psychological reward systems that favor listening and watching. We generally like to listen and watch regardless of what we are listening to or looking at. In short, we were built to enjoy listening and watching more than reading. The proof of that is manifest. Over the Continue reading “Every Monograph a Movie”