Florida budget environment degrades significantly
This story today from the Tallahassee Democrat makes clear how dire the Florida budget situation is, and the consequences for higher education in the state. I have to head to a meeting in a few minutes, but I’ll say the obvious very briefly: This is horrendous, both for people currently at universities (faculty, staff, and […]
Ranking creates perverse incentives; ranking of lunchtime and liberal-arts colleges, doubly so
Inside Higher Ed has a great article today, Potemkin Rankings, on how Washington and Jefferson College did everything you’d normally think is right to improve how they look to outsiders and still sank in the U.S. News & World Report rankings. The short story: W&J recruited like crazy to increase the applicant pool and managed […]
New desegregation lawsuit in Louisville… regarding teachers
My colleague Barbara Shircliffe is on sabbatical this year, researching teacher desegregation (after her book on the history of desegregation in Tampa). She just sent me a link to an article about a new lawsuit filed by a teacher in Louisville, objecting to Louisville’s personnel policies designed to encourage integration by teachers (not students at […]
The body or the culture on teenagers’ internal clocks?
Barbara from Las Cruces (NM) has the right question to ask in response to Nancy Kalish’s wailing about the late clocks of teenagers: I have contended for years with the inability of both of my sons to wake up any earlier than 7:30. However, it is not just the body’s inner clock that contributes to […]
Teaching about what humans do
I’ve been tagged by Craig Smith, who asks, Why Do You Teach and Why Does It Matter? after reading Dr. Crazy’s explanation of why she teaches literature. This comes on the heels of Stanley Fish’s boldly hedonistic Epistle to Philistines and the expansion on this, last night’s Epistle to Dumb-Ass Colleagues. (Okay, the posts were […]