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Category Archives: Academia
Pictures from an Institution 7 (Advising)
I would wager that if you could chart the most restlessly revised institutional systems at small liberal-arts colleges, you would find that advising would be one of the top two or three on that list at most colleges. Advising is … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Pictures from an Institution, Swarthmore
4 Comments
The Way Things Work (at Swarthmore)
I’m thinking of doing a series this fall of really basic, short and frank explanatory essays aimed at current Swarthmore students (and any other interested readers) about some of the college’s central structures and practices. My aspiration is to demystify … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Swarthmore
16 Comments
Pictures From an Institution 6 (Course Design)
I usually spend time in the last half of the summer, somewhere around the end of July onward, working on the design of upcoming courses. I think I’m probably at one end of a spectrum as far as making more … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Books, Pictures from an Institution, Swarthmore
3 Comments
Polenta Soup and the Terrible Awful No-Good Cost of Higher Education
While I don’t think there’s much I could say that could satisfy a recent commenter hereabouts, the question of the cost of higher education is an old theme at this blog, and longtime readers know that I worry about it … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Swarthmore
22 Comments
Some Small Ideas About Big Ideas
At first, I thought that Neal Gabler was singing my song in his ode (and eulogy) to the “Big Idea”. Part of his argument turns on a familiar theme at this blog, that overspecialization has its costs, and that one … Continue reading
Seven Days in the World of Books on Fire
I said it on Twitter but I’ll say it here. The relief for a stupid book review in which someone says something that is not only evaluatively stupid but actually empirically wrong is to say so. It’s not a 65,000 … Continue reading
Culture Fears
I’m completely in agreement with Claire Potter, writing at her blog Tenured Radical, that mocking Governor Rick Perry for his college grades and using them to explain Perry’s policies on education is a bad idea on several levels. As Potter … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Politics
2 Comments
More on Going to Graduate School
Notes for further revisions and additions to my old essay about whether graduate school is a good idea. Thanks to Paul Musgrave for helping me to think through some of these points, some of which involve the academic job market … Continue reading
Posted in Academia
8 Comments
Weighing the Market
Maybe it’s time for me to update my old essay on graduate school. In my old essay, I emphasized that the institutional culture of academia makes it very difficult to evaluate whether an academic career is a good idea or … Continue reading
Posted in Academia
4 Comments
Out, Out Damned Spot
Is there anything more grating than an interpretation whose language slips and innocently anoints its analysis with the status of a fact? I’m sure I noticed this pattern in the letters to the editor in this week’s New York Times … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Games and Gaming, Popular Culture
6 Comments