When approached for a letter in the bleak midwinter of recommendation-writing season, many of us wish for responsible ways to say, like Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener, “I prefer not to.” Yet in weak or guilty moments, we may accede to a student’s plea and then spend hours racking our brains for something to say.
It’s hard for a scrupulous teacher to resist the fear that, in declining to write a recommendation, you may be torpedoing someone’s professional life. Ultimately, though, a student’s application materials will speak for themselves and the professional world will make its own judgment, fairly or not. Disappointment, even heartbreak, is a reality from which even the deserving can’t always be shielded. And you aren’t obligated to make a case for a student whom you can’t, in good conscience, support.
When this semester started, I spent the first two weeks tracking down students — via email and other methods — so that I could invite them to use the digital tools I’ve assigned for my online survey course on U.S. history. I could have just sent emails to their university accounts but, in my experience, most students hardly ever check their campus email. Getting the address that they do check was the first step in trying to bring my course to where students live their already-busy digital lives.
Introducing education into their digital lives sometimes requires teaching students how to use new web tools. For example, I’ve found a messaging app called Slack to be much more effective than any existing learningmanagement system discussion board. A key reason why: It has a cell phone app that notifies users of messages at the very top of their screens. I certainly don’t expect students to respond to class messages instantly, but those notifications serve as a constant reminder: You are part of an online class, and that class requires your eventual participation.
Universities are intensely human places and are not immune from the worst impulses of human nature; and while violent incidents on university campuses may belie the ideal of the quad as a place of calm reflection and civil discussion, such incidents take place.
The Ministry’s consultation paper speaks to the risk of violence in the education sector, the sector in which the 15,000 professors and academic librarians we represent work.
I don’t want to feel out of place (pauses, searching for the “right” words). I don’t want to have my difference hinder me. But, help me if anything. So, I want to express myself so they can understand me—so, that I can communicate.
But, in Jamaica, when I was a little kid, you always heard crazy little things when you’re a kid (laughs). And, you’re like: “Oh, they act like this, and they do this. They’re so silly: They spell color without the u.” And they didn’t necessarily seem to make it a bad thing to be that way, but it was understood that we were different.
And, I liked being different. I liked being Jamaican.
Les étudiants français aiment le Québec : le coût de la vie y est abordable et les frais de scolarité peu élevés. En effet, depuis 1978, ils payaient le même tarif que les Québécois, contrairement aux autres étudiants étrangers, mais ce traitement de faveur a pris fin en septembre. Tous les nouveaux étudiants – ce qui exclut ceux qui ont déjà entamé leur baccalauréat et les étudiants aux cycles supérieurs – ont vu leur facture tripler, passant de 2 300 $ à 6 650 $ par année, soit le même montant que les étudiants venus des autres provinces canadiennes. Le gouvernement du Québec espère ainsi faire un profit de 30 millions annuellement.
Individualized programs, less coursework and scrapping comprehensive exams some of the options discussed at
Future of the Humanities PhD conference in Ottawa.
At the final panel discussion of the two-day Future of the PhD in the Humanities conference held at Carleton
University May 17 and 18, a trio of senior administrators took aim at the structure of PhD programs and completion
times. Despite it being the final event, the room was packed, prompting one speaker to quip that this is proof of how
eager the academic community is to review the state of doctoral education in Canada.
College presidents’ partners and spouses aren’t all wives hosting receptions in the president’s house.
Many work jobs outside of their role as presidential partners. A growing number are men. And many say the expectations placed upon them by a college or university influence their spouse’s decision to work as the institution’s president.
A new study from University of Minnesota researchers examines the role of the presidential spouse or partner at a time when it is becoming increasingly complex and challenging. Researchers called the survey, which was released Monday after being presented at the Council of Independent Colleges’ Presidents Institute last week, the “largest and most diverse known sample of presidential partners to date.” The results of the study, which involved the leaders of public and private colleges, were earlier presented at a CIC meeting.
The national high school graduation rate has continued to rise – but do students feel prepared for what comes next?
To help answer this question, YouthTruth analyzed survey responses from over 55,000 high school students. The data was gathered between September 2015 and December 2016 through YouthTruth’s anonymous online climate and culture survey administered in partnership with public school districts across 21 states. Our analysis looked at a subset of questions relating to college and career readiness and uncovered some key insights.
National Trends in Grade Inflation, American Colleges and Universities
In the past fifteen years, there has been a shift in the way researchers have conceptualized identity, moving from the “identity-as-thing” to an under-standing of “identity-in-practice” (Leander, 2002, 198–199). This is not necessarily a new concept, as earlier researchers recognized sociocultural influences on perception (Bartlett, 1932/1995; Vygotsky, 1978) and on the performative nature of identity (Butler, 1990; Goffman, 1959). New Literacy Studies theorists (Barton, 1994, 2001; Gee, 1996, 2000; Street 1995, 1999) began to examine identity-in-practice in relation to literacy. In addition, ethnographic accounts (Heath, 1983; Purcell-Gates, 1997; Taylor, 1983; Taylor & Dorsey-Gaines, 1988) began to document ways that literacies and identities were interconnected. There was an epistemolog-ical shift, underscoring the individual and community practices that help to shape one’s identity. Literacies included all activities inside and out-side school, highlighting the relationship between people’s literacy prac-tices and their situated actions, behaviors, beliefs, and values, or their Discourses (Gee, 1999, 2008, 2011).
At a conference in Ottawa, academics, policymakers, students and community leaders addressed the role universities can play in reconciling Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.
What role can and should universities play in reconciliation efforts between Canadian institutions and Indigenous communities? What’s working well and what needs to change? These questions were central to a two-day symposium of university administrators, students, policymakers and community organizers called Converge 2017, hosted by Universities Canada in Ottawa last week.
It is easy to silo away postsecondary education within the confines of our provincial borders. Our hope with this project is to shed light on an issue with which all students regardless of jurisdiction have to deal. The mental health of students is a unifying theme and priority for student organisations such as ours’ across the country.
Unlike some more-easily defined issues being tackled by student organisations, such as high debt
levels and youth employment, mental health-related problems remain somewhat of a taboo subject for legislators and university officials alike.
Traditional lack of awareness and a societal inability to separate mental illness from physical
ailments has contributed to a grossly underfunded and poorly-equipped postsecondary sector that, while well-intentioned, has failed to grasp the magnitude of the mental health challenges facing its students.
This policy paper showcases partnerships between universities, students, and the private sector, which is most commonly referred to as public-private partnerships. Partnerships between the public education sphere and the private business sphere have existed in the past but in recent years it has garnered more attention.
Online courses have for years driven enrollment growth at community colleges, but as more students take their
chances in the job market, institutions face new challenges to retain them, a new study found.
During the height of the recent recession, community colleges saw double-digit percentage growth in their online courses, according to the Instructional Technology Council, which is affiliated with the American Association of Community Colleges. But the ITC’s most recent survey of trends in online education at two-year colleges shows growth last academic year sat at 4.7 percent -- the lowest in about a decade.
This note demonstrates how life tables can be adapted from demography to studies of teachers’ careers. We provide an example using data from the Schools and Staffing Survey to compare teachers across rural, urban, and suburban locales. Using life tables, we estimate both retention rates and how long we expect teachers to remain at their school depending on their level of experience and find no difference across locales. This methodology could be applied to predict future school staffing needs.
In an increasingly competitive global marketplace, many learning institutions are re- evaluating the focus of the education they provide and embracing disciplines that provide hands-on learning and real-world experience. As a result, one can find an increasing emphasis on applied research at colleges—that is, research specifically intended to help businesses and industries find solutions to practical problems and to help develop products and services.
I got a job offer. Yay! But I only got one offer, and I’m a brand new Ph.D., so I assume I don’t really have the standing to negotiate anything. That’s only for people who have competing offers or amazing records, right?
This is one of the most common misunderstandings about negotiating. Every candidate has the potential to negotiate elements of a job offer. That’s true even if you have no competing offer, and are a brand new Ph.D. The only reason ever to hesitate on this front is if you’ve picked up red flags about the institution being one that possibly rescinds offers.
The ways in which university quality assessments are developed reveal a great deal about value constructs surrounding higher education. Measures devel- oped and consumed by external stakeholders, in particular, indicate which elements of academia are broadly perceived to be most reflective of quality. This paper examines the historical context of library quality assessment and
reviews the literature related to how library value is framed in three forms of external evaluation: accreditation, university rankings, and student surveys. The review finds that the library’s contribution to university quality, when it is considered at all, continues to be measured in terms of collections, spaces, and expenditures, despite significant expansion of library services into non- traditional arenas, including teaching and research, scholarly communica- tions, and data management and visualization. These findings are contrasted with the frequently invoked notion of the library as the heart of the university.
Good boards ask good questions, and great boards ask great questions. The ability to ask meaningful questions is an important skill in the boardroom and fundamental to effective governance. Said the chairman of Bain & Company, Orit Gadiesh, in a 2009 Harvard Business Review interview, “The most distinguished board is useless and does a real disservice to the organization, in my view, if the people on it don’t ask the right questions. If you’re not asking questions, you’re not doing your job.”
“Ideological diversity” and “intellectual diversity” are the buzzwords on everyone’s lips these days. Recently, when a student at a town hall asked Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg how he makes his company a “free and safe environment” for self-expression, he said, “We have a board member who is an adviser to the Trump administration, Peter Thiel. I personally believe that if you want to have a company that is committed to diversity, you need to be committed to all kinds of diversity, including ideological diversity,” an article on The Ringer reports. Meanwhile, since students shouted down the controversial sociologist Charles A. Murray at Middlebury College this month, many conservatives and some liberals have been quick to chide liberal students and academics for their intolerance and push for ideological and intellectual diversity on campuses, notes Kate Knibbs, a staff writer for the sports and popculture website.