You may think that what goes up must come down. But the law of gravity does not apply to grades at some law schools, where grades are going up and up– in one case years after the courses have been completed. The reason for the grade inflation, reports the NYT, is to give law school [...]
Are there disadvantages to an elite education? Is William Deresiewicz merely a contrarian? Ivy Gate “the Ivy League blog [that] covers news, gossip, sex, sports and more at Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton and Yale” posted responses to his essay.
Anti-intellectualism is only one of the disadvantages of an elite education that essayist and critic William Deresiewicz lists in his take-down of Yale and Ivy League schools in general. Deresiewicz is a Columbia alum and –until 2008, the year of this essay– was an associate professor at Yale. In “The Disadvantages of an Elite Education,” [...]
A recently-released Request for Proposal (RFP) has folks wondering about the ethics– or lack of ethics– in the research being done at universities. The RFP in question is the “Cry Wolf” project. Scott Jaschik at Inside Higher Ed describes the project this way: The goal of Cry Wolf is to build an online database of [...]
A couple of days ago, David Brooks made the argument for studying the humanities even in this economic climate, when having a practical skill—Brooks offers accounting as an example– seems most likely to get you a job. Studying the humanities improves your ability to read and write. No matter what you do in life, you [...]
My alma mater Kent State University recently hosted Ohio’s first state-wide conference aimed at helping colleges better serve military veterans on campus. Topics at the conference ( “Ohio Universities Serving Those Who SERVE”) ranged from discussing ways to help vets manage education benefits and registration issues, to offering online courses, to making Vietnam and Korean [...]
Incoming freshman at UC Berkeley will be getting a couple of cotton swabs with their welcome-to-college packet. The swabs are for the voluntary DNA sample the university is collecting. The confidential process is being overseen by Jasper Rine, a campus professor of Genetics and Development Biology, who says the test results will help students make [...]
Here’s the problem. According to Business Week’s Daniel Golden, online universities are –depending on your point of view– seeking out, targeting, or victimizing people who live in homeless shelters or halfway houses. This is a problem for a couple of reasons. In the vast majority of cases, these potential students are poorly prepared for college [...]