Working Man’s PhD

In my Indiana-North Carolina postmortem, I noted my hatred for the term "working class" because "it implies that those putting in 60 hours a week at high paying jobs don’t work." Recently promoted full professor Dan Drezner, who is about to enjoy three months off from work ("if you don't count editing one book, writing part of another book, prepping ...

Dan Drezner Makes Professor

It seems like only yesterday that Dan Drezner was denied tenure at Chicago for publishing too many articles that people would actually read. Today, he's made Full Professor at Tufts. Congrats, Dan. Personally, I still think an article in Foreign Affairs is more valuable that one in an obscure journal that will only be read by the nine other ...

Deconstructing the Brady Bunch

Jeffrey Breinholt reflects on a "Deconstructing Islamaphobia" conference at Berkeley, presumably aimed at deconstructing the myths of Islamophobia and wonders if they will actually deconstruct Islamaphobia and thus prove it does not exist. Along the way, he provides this amusing example of textual deconstruction: Remember the Brady Bunch? What did we know about them? It was a story about a man ...

Professor Refuses to Sign Loyalty Oath

A pacifist Quaker professor was refused a job because she refused to sign a loyalty oath pledging to defend the Constitution. When Wendy Gonaver was offered a job teaching American studies at Cal State Fullerton this academic year, she was pleased to be headed back to the classroom to talk about one of her favorite themes: protecting constitutional freedoms. But ...

Student Evaluation of Teachers

My former Troy colleague Steven Taylor notes that it's end-of-semester student evaluation time, where amateurs give their opinions on how well professionals are doing their job and impact the latter's prospects for promotion. Citing several recent stories confirming, once again, that how students evaluate their professors correlates very highly with the grades students are receiving in said ...

Teaching Math: Abstract Equations Beat Reality

Students learn math better if teachers stick to abstract equations rather than trying to bring in real world examples. [M]any educators in recent years have incorporated more and more examples from the real world to teach abstract concepts. The idea is that making math more relevant makes it easier to learn. That idea may be wrong, if researchers at Ohio ...

Keeping Troops Out of College and On the Battlefield

Earlier this month, my collegue James expressed his bafflement that John McCain wasn't supporting Jim Webb's expanded GI Bill. At the time, McCain hadn't expressed a reason for not supporting the bill, but now he has announced why: he is concerned that expanded educational benefits would lower overall retention rates.Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has suggested ...

Texas Tech Profs Revolt Over Teaching

Some professors at Texas Tech are warning of dire consequences if the university goes forward with a massive increase in enrollment, especially if it is achieved by forcing teachers to teach more. Some of Texas Tech's most prestigious professors are concerned about their chancellor's drive to increase the student body from 28,000 to 40,000 by 2020. They especially are concerned about ...

Michelle Obama and Public Schools

The Hotline On Call Quote Of The Day: "I want people to know when they look at me, to be clear that they see what an investment in public education can look like." -- Michelle Obama Now, I'm in favor of investment in public education. I went to seven different public schools growing up, including three on American military ...

Virginia School Bans Tag and Touch Football

An elementary school in McLean, Virginia (an affluent D.C. suburb) has banned tag and touch football. Robyn Hooker, principal of Kent Gardens Elementary School, has told students they may no longer play tag during recess after determining that the game of chasing, dodging and yelling "You're it!" had gotten out of hand. Hooker explained to parents in a letter this ...

Education and the Good Old Days

David Brooks makes two observations about education: An information revolution has increased the economic rewards of education and punished those who lack it. A pedagogical revolution has led to ferocious competition to get into the top universities but a decline in quality at the primary and secondary levels. For the first time in the nation’s history, workers retiring from the labor ...

USC Cuts German to Make Room for Arabic, Chinese

The University of Southern California is at the cutting edge of what may be a trend: Making cutbacks in teaching non-English European languages in order to devote more resources to Arabic, Farsi, Chinese, and others thrust into the spotlight by world events. When the Modern Language Association released its study last year on trends in language enrollments, the figures ...

G.I. Bill Needs Updating

Wes Clark and Jon Soltz take to the op-ed pages of the LAT to urge John McCain to support a massive increase in educational benefits for our veterans. The Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act, sponsored by Sens. Jim Webb (D-Va.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), will restore the promise of a cost-free education to those who serve in the military. The ...

Professor Ordered to Take Down Cartoons

A tenured, conservative professor has been ordered to take cartoons off his door because they offended someone. Getting one’s own office can be a rite of passage right up there with defending a dissertation or receiving tenure — and many professors’ lairs are reflections of their own attitudes and beliefs. Usually, it takes just a quick glance at the door, ...

Sending Engineering Students Abroad

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is initiating a program to allow engineering students to study abroad for a semester to get the sort of cultural benefits usually reserved for liberal arts students. I find this rather amusing since, increasingly, engineering students come from overseas to begin with.