Monthly Archives: June 2012

Showing the Money

So I sounded a note of confidence in my Chronicle of Higher Education piece that faculty are perfectly capable of constructive participation in hard fiscal choices and being responsible custodians of the liberal arts ideal within resource constraints. How sure … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Swarthmore | 5 Comments

Etsy Education

Let me revive another point I’ve made before at this blog about online education of any kind, including blended learning and “flipped classrooms”. This thought may be a bit less comforting to folks at the University of Virginia, though it … Continue reading

Posted in Academia | 5 Comments

Trouble in River City

Let’s talk MOOCs, shall we? There’s evidence that one reason some members of the Board of Visitors at the University of Virginia decided they had to abruptly remove their president is that she didn’t have enough naive, heedless enthusiasm for … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Information Technology and Information Literacy | 8 Comments

Go Big Or Don’t Go

There are folks–oh, say, Matt Yglesias for example–who can’t seem to resist being prompted to rush to the spectator stands at Thunderdome when an academic department or discipline has been picked out by managerialist bean-counters as the esoteric waste of … Continue reading

Posted in Academia | 12 Comments

Would You Rather Be a Mule?

I have a soft spot for the song “Swinging on a Star”, first sung by Bing Crosby in the 1944 film Going My Way. Crosby’s character, a sort of proto-Vatican II priest who ends up befriending a group of wayward … Continue reading

Posted in Politics | Comments Off on Would You Rather Be a Mule?

Pictures From an Institution 12 (Archives)

Archival research is another of those jobs that some faculty do that isn’t particularly photogenic, like reading secondary literature or doing peer review. At least many scientists have a machine that goes ping or a cage full of fruit flies, … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Pictures from an Institution, Swarthmore | 1 Comment

No Fig Leaves

Going to try and catch up on a lot of blogging today. I just had a horrible week-and-a-half cold that really sidelined me. —————– Let’s start with the University of Virginia controversy. After reading Siva Vaidhyanathan’s commentary in Slate, I … Continue reading

Posted in Academia | 6 Comments