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The Rural Brain Drain

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Patrick J. Carr, Maria J. Kefalas - Sep. 24 (Special Report) - American youth are abandoning the Midwest's small towns. The sociologists Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas explore causes and remedies.

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Stop the Presses! Revamped Journalism Courses Attract Students - Curriculum

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Katherine Mangan - Sep. 22 (News) - At a time when the newspaper industry is in free fall and thousands of jobs are being cut each year, one would think that the halls of the nation's journalism schools would be awfully quiet. Think again.

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Understanding How Tenure Decisions Are Made

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Michael Bugeja - Jul. 04 (Opinion) - Some negative promotion and tenure decisions seem predetermined the moment a newly hired scholar signs a job contract. Chalk it up to a bad institutional match: The job candidate chose the college for the wrong reasons, rejecting another that would have better suited his or her talents. Other negative decisions can be traced to institutional and research variables that many candidates overlook.

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How a Student-Friendly Kindle Could Change the Textbook Market

Wed, 06 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Jeffrey R. Young - May. 06 (News Report) - Rumors that Amazon will introduce a wide-format Kindle have the news media and bloggers speculating about whether the new gadget will spark an electronic-textbook revolution and lighten backpacks nationwide.

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Colleges Using Technology to Recruit Students Try to Hang On to the Conversation

Sat, 02 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Sara Lipka - May. 02 (Special Report) - With social media, anyone can chime in. Colleges that were once occupied with staying on message are warily opening up to the e-masses—and trying to get used to that.

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Student Lending Would Change Under Senate's Budget Plan

Fri, 01 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Kelly Field - May. 01 (News Report) - The U.S. Senate last night gave final approval to a budget blueprint that sets the stage for an overhaul of student lending.

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Books Can't Compete

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Mark Bauerlein - Jan. 23 (Opinion) - Here’s a depressing and blunt comment from Larry McMurtry, speaking not only as a novelist but as a bookstore owner (it’s an interview): The end of the culture of the book. I’m pessimistic. Mainly it’s the flow of people into my bookshop in Archer City. They’re almost always people over 40. I don’t see kids, and I don’t see kids reading. I think little kids love to have stories read to them, but when they get to 10 or 11 or 12, they run into this tsunami of technology: iPod, iPhone, Blackberries. They don’t resist it, and it’s normal that they wouldn’t; it’s their culture. I’m not so sure they ever come back to reading. Some will, but most won’t. The tsunami metaphor is apt, and it points out the relationship between books and other media in kids’ lives. The list of options has grown, with books now joined by games, Web surfing, music downloading, Photoshop, YouTube, social networking, blogs, texting, IM, and the rest. Lots of folks think that the environment has grown more challenging and rewarding and enlightening, the addition of digital diversions fostering a rich plurality of texts and images and stories and sounds in which books maintain a central place.

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The Legacy of the Bush-Cheney Years: Trends That May Linger

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Karen J. Winkler - Jan. 04 (News Analysis) - New York — For the last eight years, progressive historians have been vocally critical of the Bush-Cheney administration’s war in Iraq, war on terror, stress on free markets, and push to privatize government services like charter schools and social-welfare programs. But at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association here, the collective judgment seems to be that those trends haven’t been all that new — and won’t be easy to change. In 2007 a group called Historians Against the War was successful in its call on the membership of the association to pass a resolution against the invasion of Iraq, over the objections of some historians that doing so would take a political stand as a group of scholars. The antiwar group has continued to meet, holding national conferences and sponsoring online publications that include an analysis of the historical record of the Bush administration and studies of the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the war in Iraq, and resistance movements in World War II. At this year’s AHA meeting, the group gathered to reflect on the legacy of the Bush-Cheney years. While the session was not advertised in the official program, it drew more than 100 scholars. “Much of my work as a historian has had to do with ideology and its role in shaping lives and policy,” said Alice Kessler-Harris, a professor of history at Columbia University. In the Bush-Cheney years, she said, three ideologies have had a major impact on American society. An “elusive concept” of terror has allowed the administration to wage pre-emptive war, support military force over diplomacy, and hide the human cost of the war in Iraq; the ideology of free markets has undercut government regulation of the economy and the workplace; and a “shift in the ideology of the individual” has emphasized that individuals need to have control over decisions — like what kind of health care they want.

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Classroom Clickers and the Cost of Technology

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Michael Bugeja - Dec. 02 (Investigative Report) - Last spring I received an e-mail message from my university's Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching that read like an advertisement: "If you are thinking of ordering personal response system units, or clickers, for your class next fall, be sure to attend the upcoming CELT session, Using TurningPoint Clickers to Engage Students in the Classroom." Staff members at the center provide valuable services to evaluate and improve teaching. Their first impulse is to help, a trait they share with information-technology and bookstore personnel. In this case, though, the center was helping a company by providing workshops and promotion for a device resembling a television remote control.

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Progressive Patriotism

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Warren Goldstein - Nov. 17 (Comment) - I was listening to my local NPR station when the host asked, "Is there a new progressive patriotism in America?" Calls flooded in proclaiming a resounding Yes, and I began figuring out how to put an American flag on my front door.

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Health Care: a Campaign Primer

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Chronicle of Higher Education - By David Glenn - Oct. 09 (News Analysis) - John McCain and Barack Obama have offered proposals that would — in very different ways — reshape the landscape of American health care. The Chronicle spoke with several scholars about how the study of health economics and health policy has evolved since the Clinton plan collapsed in 1994 — and whether this year's candidates seem to have learned anything from that scholarship.

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The Russians Are Coming

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Stephen Kotkin, Nina L. Khrushcheva, Edward Lucas, Ellen Carnaghan, Marshall I. Goldman, Sean Kay - Sep. 05 (Opinion) - When the Russian army invaded the former Soviet republic of Georgia last month, it was little surprise to many observers, who have noted for several years the increasingly assertive and aggressive foreign policy of Vladimir V. Putin, Russia's prime minister and former president. But is Russia as resurgent as its recent military posturing might suggest? The Chronicle asked several experts to comment on the country's likely political, social, and economic prospects over the next 10 years.

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Supply-Side Education

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Chronicle of Higher Education - By David Glenn - Jul. 25 (Review) - "There was enormous growth in educational attainment between 1900 and 1970," Goldin says in an interview. "But after 1970, the growth in attainment became much more sluggish. Putting those two parts together, you can explain a large amount of the story of wage inequality in the 20th century."

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New-Media Scholars' Place in 'the Pool' Could Lead to Tenure

Fri, 30 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Andrea Foster - May. 30 (News Report) - Re:Poste, a Web application that encourages academics to pick apart online articles from the mass media, is only in its infancy. But the program has already generated buzz on a social-networking Web site called the Pool. "The way you have thought this through is impressive," writes Jon Ippolito in the Pool. He is an associate professor of new media at the University of Maine at Orono. Re:Poste is one of 600 creative works -- games, art, and more -- by new-media students and faculty members, most of them on the Orono campus, described in the Pool, which also contains about 2,000 reviews of those works. Starting in June, the Pool will have a much wider reach, as people in general will be invited to add material to the site, rate others' projects, build on their ideas, and find collaborators for their own projects. The Pool, as yet little known, could provide a new avenue for new-media scholars to do their jobs. Eventually it could play a role in their tenure and promotion as well.

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How Did Honor Evolve?

Wed, 21 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Chronicle of Higher Education - By David P. Barash - May. 21 (Special Report) - people are, at least on occasion, inclined to do things that are detrimental to their personal benefit so long as their actions are sufficiently beneficial to the larger social unit.

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Israeli History at 60

Tue, 13 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Carlin Romano - May. 13 (Review) - No history of Israel's origins, however, can achieve definitive status for now. While Israel routinely declassifies much state material after 30 years, the Arab states that attacked Israel keep their archives comparatively closed. Rogan and Shlaim, writing in 2001, saw "no immediate prospect" for declassification of their key documents because "Arab scholars would find no support for critical revisions of their historiography." While the Israeli historian Anita Shapira has pointed out that Jordan opens its archives to a limited extent, materials that might resolve factual disputes -- such as the degree of sincerity or cynicism on the part of Arab leaders about Islamic jihadism -- are not available. Perhaps frustration fuels the hyper-aggression among Israeli historians.

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The Incomplete Revolution

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Bruce J. Schulman, Julian E. Zelizer - Mar. 18 (Opinion) - The reality of "conservative" America is that the federal government remains a large presence in American life. When disasters strike, we turn to government. When we retire, we turn to government. When we face external threats, we turn to government. Republicans failed to curb the growth of federal spending between 2001 and 2007, when they controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. In fact the Republican leadership developed new forms of government, ranging from the No Child Left Behind Act in education to a sweeping domestic-surveillance program. Notwithstanding the hawkish rhetoric flowing out of Washington, Americans are not flocking to volunteer for the war effort in Iraq. Public opinion of the president's military programs remains at historically low levels. With all the talk about the power of the religious right, popular culture is replete with the brash sexuality that conservatives have repeatedly decried. Such racy material is just as popular in the so-called red states as it is in the coastal cities of New York and Los Angeles.

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For Professors, 'Friending' Can Be Fraught

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 11:31:45 -0800

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Sara Lipka - Dec. 05 (Special Report) - For all its pitfalls, Facebook can prompt meaningful exchanges. Some professors look up students who e-mail them with questions or are scheduled to come to office hours. What the professors learn, they say, makes them better advisers. Comments that students have posted -- concern over a bad class presentation, for example -- can provoke a thoughtful conversation. One professor knew to go easy on a student when he saw his status change from "in a relationship" to "single."

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What We Don't Know About Gambling, but Should

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 15:16:29 -0700

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Alan Wolfe - Oct. 11 (Opinion) - Do religion and gambling both flourish wherever uncertainty exists? That, it seems to me, is a worthwhile question for scholars to ponder.

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Journal-Publishing Giant Will Halt Lucrative Business in Weapons Bazaars

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:44:03 -0700

Chronicle of Higher Education - Jun. 05 (News Report) - Despite the profitability of the company's five shows -- including the Defense Systems & Equipment International Exhibition, which bills itself as "the world's most prestigious defense exhibition" -- Reed Elsevier's chief executive, Sir Crispin Davis, said in a written statement that "it has become increasingly clear that growing numbers of important customers and authors have very real concerns about our involvement in the defense exhibitions business."

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Fears for Democracy in India

Fri, 18 May 2007 13:14:08 -0700

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Martha C. Nussbaum - May. 18 (Opinion) - What has been happening in India is a serious threat to the future of democracy in the world. The fact that it has yet to make it onto the radar screen of most Americans is evidence of the way in which terrorism and the war on Iraq have distracted us from events and issues of fundamental significance. If we really want to understand the impact of religious nationalism on democratic values, India currently provides a deeply troubling example, and one without which any understanding of the more general phenomenon is dangerously incomplete. It also provides an example of how democracy can survive the assault of religious extremism.

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Fears for Democracy in India

Fri, 18 May 2007 21:12:22 -0700

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Martha C. Nussbaum - May. 18 (Opinion) - While Americans have focused on President Bush's "war on terror," Iraq, and the Middle East, democracy has been under siege in another part of the world. India -- the most populous of all democracies, and a country whose Constitution protects human rights even more comprehensively than our own -- has been in crisis. Until the spring of 2004, its parliamentary government was increasingly controlled by right-wing Hindu extremists who condoned and in some cases actively supported violence against minority groups, especially Muslims. What has been happening in India is a serious threat to the future of democracy in the world. The fact that it has yet to make it onto the radar screen of most Americans is evidence of the way in which terrorism and the war on Iraq have distracted us from events and issues of fundamental significance. If we really want to understand the impact of religious nationalism on democratic values, India currently provides a deeply troubling example, and one without which any understanding of the more general phenomenon is dangerously incomplete. It also provides an example of how democracy can survive the assault of religious extremism.

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The Social Responsibility in Teaching Sociobiology

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 10:00:12 -0800

Chronicle of Higher Education - By David P. Barash - Nov. 17 (Other) - Although the study of evolution is, in my opinion, one of the most exciting and illuminating of all intellectual enterprises, there is at the same time, and not just in my opinion, something dark about the implications of natural selection for our own behavior.

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