Unsettled schools, two centuries ago and now
I could get used to days like this again, where I spend most of the day doing nothing but reading what I choose, in this case two books. My undergraduate papers are due next week, and so next weekend I will be swamped with other stuff, but I had the chance to finish two books […]
Distraction by pseudo-oracular press release
Paul Krugman has the same reaction I did to the Standards and Poor "warning" yesterday: meh. I know it can be spun as an attempt to influence X (for various values of X), but the debt ceiling will not cause an immediate default on government bonds even if the Tea Party caucus blocks the hike in […]
On laws and effects that aren’t so
There is a certain piquancy in the utter solemnity with which Wikipedia entries assume the truthfulness of Baumol’s cost disease and Campbell’s law. The first is a putative truism that labor-intensive fields have lower productivity increases by dint of that trait, and the second is another putative truism that all stakes on measures distort the trustworthiness […]
Watch, but ridicule
A blog entry today on the Inside Higher Ed site helped me realize what's bugging me about the conversations around Bill Cronon and the Wisconsin GOP's crass efforts to intimidate faculty: [Another reason to be skittish about working in public higher ed is] the open records request in Wisconsin for Bill Cronon's emails. Not that, […]
I’m sick of the “it’s tough applying to colleges” genre
Today, Rebecca Catalanello has a detailed, thoughtful story in the St. Pete Times all about getting rejected by private and flagship state universities. And I gritted my teeth through every paragraph because nowhere in the piece is there any discussion of a few facts: Every single one of the high school seniors she interviewed was accepted […]