Category Archives: Academics

Whither art: vanity is killing social sciences and the humanities

Posted on October 29, 2009 by | Comments Off on Whither art: vanity is killing social sciences and the humanities

Times Higher Education: Whither art: vanity is killing social sciences and the humanities

Conference hears that scholarly narcissism is leading disciplines to ruin. Matthew Reisz writes

“Academic narcissism” and a focus on self-promotion over scholarly substance are being blamed for bringing the humanities and the social sciences to the brink.

At a conference on the future of the disciplines held in Brussels last week, scholars warned that they were on a self-destructive course.

One of those to sound the alarm was Sasa Bozic, associate professor of sociology at the University of Zadar, Croatia, who accused his peers of displaying narcissistic traits.

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Book review: Professing to Learn: Creating Tenured Lives and Careers in the American Research University

Posted on September 30, 2009 by | Comments Off on Book review: Professing to Learn: Creating Tenured Lives and Careers in the American Research University

Education Review:
Neumann, Anna. (2009). Professing to Learn: Creating Tenured Lives and Careers in the American Research University. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Univ Press.

Reviewed by Kathleen E. Fite, Texas State Univ-San Marcos.

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West Virginia: Emily, John Perdue discuss MU grades controversy

Posted on September 30, 2009 by | Comments Off on West Virginia: Emily, John Perdue discuss MU grades controversy

Charleston Gazette: Emily, John Perdue discuss MU grades controversy

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Emily Perdue said she did nothing wrong and got no special treatment when she earned two A grades this summer to replace two “incomplete” grades for courses she took during the spring 2009 semester at Marshall University.

During an interview on Sunday, Perdue said she received the incomplete grades after she withdrew from two courses taught by Laura Wyant, a professor of adult and technical education at Marshall.

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Grading scandal at Marshall U

Posted on September 29, 2009 by | 1 comment

Charleston Daily Mail: Debate over changed grades heats up

HUNTINGTON, W.Va.–The dean of Marshall University’s largest college changed two grades given to West Virginia Treasurer John Perdue’s daughter, and the classroom professor is asking for an investigation by the university’s Faculty Senate.

The allegations come in the wake of controversy at Marshall’s College of Education and Human Services, which has been beset by a number of complaints and formal grievance filings centered on its executive dean, Rosalyn Templeton.

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Columbia U. Provost Agrees to Meet With Critics of Palestinian Scholar’s Tenuring

Posted on September 21, 2009 by | Comments Off on Columbia U. Provost Agrees to Meet With Critics of Palestinian Scholar’s Tenuring

The Chronicle: Columbia U. Provost Agrees to Meet With Critics of Palestinian Scholar’s Tenuring

Columbia University’s new provost, Claude M. Steele, has agreed to meet with several Columbia professors critical of the institution’s recent decision to grant tenure to Joseph A. Massad, a Palestinian scholar who has been accused of anti-Israel bias, according to a letter posted online by the Manhattan Institute. In a letter sent to Mr. Steele in July, before he had started his job, 14 professors argued that the university had violated its own procedural rules in granting Mr. Massad tenure after a second review they view as unjustified. In a response sent to the professors this month, Provost Steele said it was important for Columbia’s faculty members to have faith in the integrity of the tenure process.

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Posted in Academic freedom, Academics, Tenure & Promotion

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Call for manuscripts: Critical Education

Posted on September 11, 2009 by | Comments Off on Call for manuscripts: Critical Education

Critical Education is an international peer-reviewed journal, which seeks manuscripts that critically examine contemporary education contexts and practices. Critical Education is interested in theoretical and empirical research as well as articles that advance educational practices that challenge the existing state of affairs in society, schools, and informal education.

Critical Education is an open access journal, launching in early 2010. The journal home is criticaleducation.org

Critical Education is hosted by the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy at the University of British Columbia and edited by Sandra Mathison (UBC), E. Wayne Ross (UBC) and Adam Renner (Bellarmine University) along with collective of 30 scholars in education that includes:

Faith Ann Agostinone, Aurora University
Wayne Au, California State University, Fullerton
Marc Bousquet, Santa Clara University
Joe Cronin, Antioch University
Antonia Darder, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
George Dei, OISE/University of Toronto
Stephen C. Fleury, Le Moyne College
Kent den Heyer, University of Alberta
Nirmala Erevelles, University of Alabama
Michelle Fine, City University of New York
Gustavo Fischman, Arizona State University
Melissa Freeman, University of Georgia
David Gabbard, East Carolina University
Rich Gibson, San Diego State University
Dave Hill, University of Northampton
Nathalia E. Jaramillo, Purdue University
Saville Kushner, University of West England
Zeus Leonardo, University of California, Berkeley
Pauline Lipman, University of Illinois, Chicago
Lisa Loutzenheiser, University of British Columbia
Marvin Lynn, University of Illinois, Chicago
Sheila Macrine, Montclair State University
Perry M. Marker, Sonoma State University
Rebecca Martusewicz, Eastern Michigan University
Peter McLaren, University of California, Los Angeles
Stephen Petrina, University of British Columbia
Stuart R. Poyntz, Simon Fraser University
Patrick Shannon, Penn State University
Kevin D. Vinson, University of the West Indies
John F. Welsh, Louisville, KY

Online submission and author guidelines can be found here.

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UK: Students get marks just for turning up

Posted on September 10, 2009 by | Comments Off on UK: Students get marks just for turning up

Times Higher Education: Students get marks just for turning up

Universities accused of “bribing” undergraduates. Rebecca Attwood reports

Universities have been accused of “bribing” students with marks simply for attending seminars, a move critics say encourages them to adopt casual and cynical attitudes to academic work.

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Independent Antioch College to Be Created

Posted on September 7, 2009 by | Comments Off on Independent Antioch College to Be Created

Inside Higher Ed: Independent Antioch College to Be Created Friday

A final deal to revive Antioch College — independent of Antioch University — will be signed Friday. The agreement was announced by the Great Lakes Colleges Association, which has helped promote the negotiations between the alumni leaders who will be managing the revived college and the university’s board.

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U of Illinois’s Global Campus staffers given notice of layoffs

Posted on August 31, 2009 by | Comments Off on U of Illinois’s Global Campus staffers given notice of layoffs

News-Gazette: UI’s Global Campus staffers given notice of layoffs

URBANA – Virtually the entire University of Illinois Global Campus staff, which services about 500 students in the online education program, has been notified of layoffs.

Meanwhile, the leader of Global Campus has moved back to faculty status but retains the $344,850 salary he earned as administrator, at least for the next year.

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Posted in Academics, Budgets & Funding, Corporate University

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Senator Moves to Block Medical Ghostwriting

Posted on August 24, 2009 by | Comments Off on Senator Moves to Block Medical Ghostwriting

The New York Times: Senator Moves to Block Medical Ghostwriting

A growing body of evidence suggests that doctors at some of the nation’s top medical schools have been attaching their names and lending their reputations to scientific papers that were drafted by ghostwriters working for drug companies — articles that were carefully calibrated to help the manufacturers sell more products.

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Reputation without Rigor: US News Rankings

Posted on August 24, 2009 by | Comments Off on Reputation without Rigor: US News Rankings

Inside Higher Ed: Reputation Without Rigor

The form submitted by the provost at the University of Wisconsin at Madison deemed 260 of its 262 peer institutions to be of “adequate” quality. A survey from the University of Vermont’s president listed “don’t know” for about half of the universities. The forms provided by Ohio State University’s president and provost were virtually identical. And the University of Florida’s president, like his highly publicized colleague at Clemson University, rated his own institution well above many of his competitors.

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‘Harlem vs. Columbia University’

Posted on August 24, 2009 by | Comments Off on ‘Harlem vs. Columbia University’

Inside Higher Ed: ‘Harlem vs. Columbia University’

In 1968 and 1969, students at Columbia University protested against a number of the university’s policies and plans, accusing the institution of racism and imperialism — the latter for the military ties that connected the university to the Vietnam War. Most notably, they opposed Columbia’s intended construction of a gymnasium in nearby Morningside Park, a small green space utilized by the area’s largely black and Puerto Rican residents.

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‘Gross academic fraud’ at U Texas at Brownsville rocked Office of Distance Education

Posted on August 3, 2009 by | Comments Off on ‘Gross academic fraud’ at U Texas at Brownsville rocked Office of Distance Education

The Brownsville Herald: ‘Gross academic fraud’ at UTB-TSC rocked Office of Distance Education

A two-month UTB-TSC police investigation found school employees in 2008 had committed “gross academic fraud” after student employees and regular staff used their positions to steal test answers, according to a UTB police report obtained by The Brownsville Herald.

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Outsourcing Teaching, Overseas

Posted on July 25, 2009 by | Comments Off on Outsourcing Teaching, Overseas

Inside Higher Ed: Outsourcing Teaching, Overseas

In Utah State degree program in Asia, “lead professors” (from Utah) design the course work and assign the grade, but “local facilitators” (from partner universities) deliver much of the course content.

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Who Profits From For-Profit Journals?

Posted on June 12, 2009 by | Comments Off on Who Profits From For-Profit Journals?

Inside Higher Ed: Who Profits From For-Profit Journals?

WASHINGTON — It’s time to shake loose from commercial journal publishers. That was the message here Thursday at the meeting of the American Association of University Professors, which urged academics to seek nonprofit venues for their work.

The proliferation of nonprofit publishing options should be driving down submissions to corporate journals, according to Salvatore Engel-DiMauro, professor of geography at the State University of New York at New Paltz, who, along with Rea Devakos, information technology services coordinator at the University of Toronto library, discussed the “Corporate Appropriation of Academic Knowledge” at the annual meeting of university professors yesterday. But that’s not happening.

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Taylor & Francis reverses controversial publication deal

Posted on June 11, 2009 by | Comments Off on Taylor & Francis reverses controversial publication deal

Inside Higher Ed: Et Tu, New Publisher?

Nearly four years after an academic journal nixed plans to publish a piece about sex between adult and adolescent males of antiquity, the controversy is erupting again. This time, however, it’s not conservative critics yelling the loudest. A group of classicists, now twice thwarted in efforts to publish on the provocative subject, have taken aim at one of the world’s largest publishers, saying Taylor & Francis Group has placed reputational concerns above the legitimate scholarly pursuits it ought to promote.

The story dates to 2005, when Haworth Press announced amid heavy criticism that its Journal of Homosexuality wouldn’t publish an article or book chapter about sexual relationships between men and boys in antiquity. Critics had learned of a particularly controversial piece in the forthcoming collection, which would argue that such relationships “can benefit the adolescent” in certain circumstances, prompting allegations that the author was advocating child molestation. Those allegations were trumpeted first and loudest by the Web site World Net Daily, whose readers vigorously complained to Haworth.

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For Adjuncts Only: A New Literary Magazine Denies Tenure

Posted on June 4, 2009 by | Comments Off on For Adjuncts Only: A New Literary Magazine Denies Tenure

The Chronicle: For Adjuncts Only: A New Literary Magazine Denies Tenure

For once, it pays to be an adjunct. Well, wordriver, a new literary magazine, doesn’t actually pay its contributors, but tenured or tenure-track professors need not apply.

Beth McDonald an adjunct professor of English at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, has spent years trying to think of a way to spotlight the literary work of adjunct instructors. She and Susan Summers, a member of the English department’s support staff, found a way this April, when the first issue of a magazine they expect to publish annually came out.

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What plagiarism looks like

Posted on June 3, 2009 by | Comments Off on What plagiarism looks like

plagiarism

What plagiarism looks like

Inside Higher Ed: In Living Color

A picture says a thousand words, but whose words are they?

That’s the question that resurfaced Tuesday, when a compelling graphic popped up on Internet blogs illustrating “what plagiarism looks like.” The graphic shows dozens of instances where a dissertation written by William Meehan, now president of Jacksonville State University, used verbatim passages from another professor’s research. Meehan has denied any wrongdoing, and he’s backed by Jacksonville State officials who say they’ve reviewed the work.

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Do College Rankings Belong on the Sports Pages?

Posted on May 19, 2009 by | Comments Off on Do College Rankings Belong on the Sports Pages?

The Chronicle News Blog: Do College Rankings Belong on the Sports Pages?

Washington — College rankings may not be to blame for the decline in the quality of higher education in the United States, but they are doing little, if anything, to help. That was the nearly unanimous consensus of a panel of speakers from across the ideological spectrum who gathered here today at the American Enterprise Institute to discuss how the nation assesses the performance of its colleges.

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Captive knowledge: The funding for academic research has been taken over by business

Posted on May 12, 2009 by | 1 comment

Guardian: Captive Knowledge

May 12, 2009 By George Monbiot

The funding for academic research has been taken over by business

Why is the Medical Research Council run by an arms manufacturer? Why is the Natural Environment Research Council run by the head of a construction company? Why is the chairman of a real estate firm in charge of higher education funding for England?

Because our universities are being turned by the government into corporate research departments. No longer may they pursue knowledge for its own sake: now the highest ambition to which they must aspire is finding better ways to make money.

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