Departments

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higher education

  • SOURCE: Dissent
    10/4/2021

    The "Eds and Meds" Sector Needs a New Deal

    by Ian Gavigan and Jennifer Mittelstadt

    COVID has given university administrators license to escalate their war on unionized labor in all facets of operations, from instruction to food services. All university workers need to recognize their common interest and organize to make universities pay living wages, offer fair benefits, and support equitable community development.

  • 9/26/2021

    Group of Historians Recognized for Best SCOTUS Brief of the Year

    by Ronald A. Smith

    A group of six historians has been recognized by the Education Law Association for the best Supreme Court brief of the year. Their historical deconstruction of the myth of amateurism in college athletics influenced a unanimous decision that the NCAA cannot bar college athletes from profiting from the commercial use of their names, images, or likenesses.

  • SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
    9/20/2021

    Why a Liberal Education is Worth Defending

    by Steve Mintz

    Roosevelt Montas’s forthcoming "Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation" makes a powerful case for engagment with the Great Books as a way to subvert hierarchies and promote equity. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    9/14/2021

    Do Colleges have a Guy Problem

    "The imbalance reveals a genuine shift in how men participate in education, the economy, and society. The world has changed dramatically, but the ideology of masculinity isn’t changing fast enough to keep up."

  • SOURCE: The American Prospect
    9/20/2021

    The Failure of Financialized Higher Ed

    by Kelly Grotke

    "Higher education has been captured by a vicious circle of financialization, which is destroying it as an affordable and widely available right of the citizenry, and as an engine of social mobility."

  • SOURCE: TomDispatch
    8/17/2021

    Debt and Disillusionment

    by Rebecca Gordon

    "We know, in other words, that there are only a relatively small number of spaces in the cockpit of today’s economic plane. Nonetheless, we tell our young people that the guaranteed way to get one of those rare gigs at the top of the pyramid is a college education."

  • SOURCE: Washington Monthly
    8/4/2021

    How to Cure Colleges’ Adjunct Addiction

    by Holly Brewer

    "Rather than bring absurd administrative costs under control, administrators are going after the university’s core function by opting to hire the cheapest possible teachers." The solution is a government floor on instructor pay and a ceiling on the number of adjuncts a university can employ.

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    5/28/2021

    It’s Time to Break Up the Ivy League Cartel

    by Sam Haselby and Matt Stoller

    Ivy League institutions have an unfair hold on the distribution of opportunity and on the diversity of ideas in America and the world. 

  • SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
    5/18/2021

    Dropout Professors

    by Gretchen Soderlund

    Sharing the stories of professors who, like her, dropped out of high school, one historian argues that we need open-admission and affordable public colleges and an education system that does more to keep students in. 

  • 5/9/2021

    Are Campus Bookstores Undermining Student Learning?

    by Elizabeth Stice

    Today’s undergraduates are increasingly being cornered into ongoing financial commitments for everything, while they never take possession of anything. Rejecting digital book programs run by campus bookstores outsourced to third parties could help reverse this trend.

  • SOURCE: The Guardian
    5/1/2021

    Studying History Should not be Only for the Elite, Say Academics

    Professor Kate Williams said she was angry that the Tory government is “pushing a vision that only Stem subjects [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] matter and degrees are only worthwhile if you immediately move to a job paying a very high salary”.

  • SOURCE: Academe
    5/4/2021

    Visions against Politics

    by Eileen Boris and Annelise Orleck

    Historians Eileen Boris and Annelise Orleck are the guest editors of the spring edition of the AAUP's magazine focusing on the need for a New Deal for Higher Education. This is their introductory essay. 

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    4/22/2021

    The Crushing Contradictions of the American University

    by Chad Wellmon

    The proliferation of student loan debt reflects the acceptance by banks, borrowers, and the federal government of the idea that higher education is transformative and beneficial. Is this ideology bordering on magical thinking? 

  • SOURCE: Madison.com
    4/17/2021

    Two Madison Profs Make 'Collegeland' Podcast About University Life

    Historians Nan Enstad and Lisa Levenstein have produced a podcast that tells the stories of college campuses as places of learning, work, and socialization, seeking to counter both right-wing demonization of campus liberalism and the rose-colored view of university PR. 

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    4/13/2021

    ‘That Man Makes Me Crazy’: Neil Matkin's Reign at Collin College Draws Scrutiny

    Neil Matkin's regime connects several trends: the politicization of higher ed administration, the diminishment of faculty's role in shared governance, and the imposition of business logic in higher ed administration. But faculty and staff say that the personal element is what makes the situation truly intolerable.