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Blog:  Just Visiting I see we are in another cycle of concern for the academic humanities, this time triggered by a long article in the  New Yorker  by Nathan Heller titled “The End of the English Major.” Heller covers a lot of ground , and none of it will be novel (pardon the pun) to people who read a publication called  Inside Higher Ed .  One of the benefits of having been writing in this space for such a long time is that I can go to my own archives over these evergreen issues and see what I’ve had to say.  I see a piece from 2016  predicated on the decline of the number of humanities faculty in which I suggested that the humanities will not be killed as long as humans remain, but the academy may cease to become a good home for them.  I would call it prescient except noting the obvious doesn’t qualify as prescience. We shouldn’t be surprised that the decline in humanities faculty has led to a decline in humanities majors. Turn your workforce into a bunch of precariousl

Blog:  Higher Ed Gamma In 1997, Heather MacDonald, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of  The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture , published a blistering critique of the impact of identity politics on the museum world.  Her essay, in the  New Criterion , the conservative monthly review of artistic and cultural criticism founded by Hilton Kramer.  opened with a searing attack that is at once ferocious and amusingly sarcastic:    “Recent visitors to the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum were greeted with some unpleasant news: the museum was contaminated. Not by asbestos or toxic chemicals, mind you, but by far more noxious substances: racism, sexism, and anthrocentrism.”  She called out the overwrought warning labels strewn throughout the collection.  As one example, the text next to an exhibit of American hartebeests read:  “Female animals are being portrayed in ways that make them appear dev

Students at Connecticut College have occupied several buildings on campus, including part of the administration building, to demand the resignation of President Katherine Bergeron, Connecticut Public Radio reported. The students are angry about a planned fundraising event at Everglades Club in Palm Beach, Florida. The venue has a history of racial discrimination and antisemitism. The college's dean of institutional equity and inclusion quit over the fundraiser,  which has since been called off. Students also want more resources devoted to minority groups. John Cramer, Connecticut College vice president of marketing and communications, said in a statement that the administration is communicating with students. “College leadership supports the right to free expression and peaceful protest, and will continue to pursue constructive dialogue with students as well as faculty and staff as we address the important concerns they have raised,” Cramer said. Ad keywords:  admini

Today on the Academic Minute : Rachel Hadas, professor emerita of English at Rutgers University at Newark, examines what we can learn about political polarization from the ancient past. Learn more about the Academic Minute here . Is this diversity newsletter?:  Hide by line?:  Disable left side advertisement?:  Is this Career Advice newsletter?:  Trending:  Live Updates:  liveupdates0 from Inside Higher Ed https://ift.tt/c9mNeC4

A new state audit , called for by lawmakers in California, found that community colleges in the state hire too few full-time faculty members, EdSource reported. Some districts underspent or misspent state dollars intended for hiring full-time professors on part-time adjuncts, the audit found. It also suggests colleges need to do more to diversify their faculties. The audit scrutinized faculty hiring practices at four community college districts: Foothill–De Anza, Kern, Los Rios and San Diego. It found that the system over all fell short of its goal that 75 percent of community college classes be taught by full-time professors. Only 18 districts, out of 73, have ever reached this goal, and no district sustained it for more than several years, according to the audit. Some colleges are far from meeting the goal. For example, only half of the classes at the San Diego Community College District are taught by full-time faculty members. The audit also evaluated how the four districts si

Join us for this fantastic Weekly Wisdom conversation with the Interim Chancellor of the California State University Jolene Koester, CEO Bridget Burns of University Innovation Alliance (UIA) and Editor Doug Lederman from  Inside Higher Ed . Chancellor Koester shares her insights about drawing from her extensive career in leadership prior to and including this interim role and shares advice for those considering such an opportunity. The show was broadcast live on Monday, February 27, 2023. VIEW PREVIOUS EPISODES >> Section:  University Innovation Alliance Event's date:  Monday, November 15, 2021 - 12:45pm Insider only:  from Inside Higher Ed https://ift.tt/CYgE7BT

Column:  Letters to the Editor To the Editor: Measures of quality in online education have been developed through decades of research in the field of instructional design and technology (IDT), informing best practices in the design, development, implementation and evaluation of contemporary online courses and programs. Your recent article,  “Online Classes Surge at Virginia Tech. But What About Outcomes?” by Susan D'Agostino, calls into question the quality of the online courses featured in the piece. Unfortunately, this article contains notable misconceptions about online education in general as well as misunderstandings about strategies for measuring the effectiveness of these courses. It is hoped that the opportunity to highlight these issues and share relevant, evidence-based resources from the IDT knowledge base may inform future publications which feature the topic of quality in online education. First, the author labels the courses featured in this article “ma

Blog:  Higher Ed Gamma In his autobiography, Mark Twain describes how he received word, out of the blue, that his favorite daughter had died.  “I was standing in our dining-room thinking of nothing in particular, when a cablegram was put into my hand. It said, ‘Susy was peacefully released today.’”  The great humorist later wrote:  “It is one of the mysteries of our nature that a man, all unprepared, can receive a thunder-stroke like that and live.” Susy, who, at the time of her death, was 24 years and five months old, had been, to her parents, “our wonder and our worship.” Twain went on living, but never really recovered from the blow.  He would spend years “trying to search out the hidden meanings of the deep things that make the puzzle and pathos of human existence” – to no avail, baffled and mocked by life’s cruelty. Human life is suffused with pointless, undeserved suffering.  No one ultimately escapes suffering that is unmerited, unwarranted, unearned, unjustified, and

Bethany College in West Virginia has put its presidential search on "pause" for a year, and will continue with Jamie Caridi as interim president, announced Ken Bado, chair of the Board of Trustees. Caridi's interim presidency began Jan. 1, 2022, with the departure of the previous president, Tamara Rodenberg. The board started a search, with RH Perry & Associates. a search firm. The search yielded nearly 90 applicants and they were winnowed down to four finalists. "Unfortunately, at the conclusion of the process, the consensus among the Board of Trustees is that none of the candidates are the dynamic leader Bethany currently needs as we continue to focus on executing the strategies and tactics of the ... strategic plan and move Bethany successfully into the future, " Bado said. As a result, the board has decided to pause the presidential search for a year, Bado said. Caridi has agreed to continue as interim president.     Ad keywords:  adminis

Most people don’t get accreditation. That’s OK. Most people don’t need to. But for all the students, parents and policy makers calling for a higher education reboot, know this—accreditation is one of the most powerful levers we’ve got to change what we don’t like about today’s higher ed. It’s one of our best ways to assure equity for students, quality programs and innovative new models. Accreditation naysayers don’t understand today’s accreditation . I know: I was one of them. For 30 years as a college vice president and president, I was on the receiving end of accreditation. In fact, in my third year of the presidency, the college I’d been brought in to turn around was given a financial warning by our accreditors. After running large operating deficits for years, the college now risked losing accreditation. At the time, it felt like the accreditors were making it that much more challenging for us to succeed. Their very public action made it hard to convince students to come to ou

Blog:  Learning Innovation The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America by Philip Bump Published in January 2023 Why are so many conversations about the future of higher education so pessimistic? Together, we could list many reasons to worry about the future of higher education. We might mention public disinvestment, student debt and stubbornly low graduation rates. Or we could talk about the mismatch between the supply and demand for tenure-track faculty roles and the growing proportion of all teaching done by contingent and adjunct faculty. While all of the above worries about the future of higher education are valid, they each share a common underlying source—demography. The university system that we have today was mainly built to serve the generation of Americans born between 1946 and 1964, otherwise known as the baby boom. What proportion of buildings on your campus were built to teach and house the students of this generation? How

Blog:  Higher Ed Gamma Ours is the golden age of creative nonfiction – a genre that recounts personal stories, memories, experiences, and observations using the literary techniques typically associated with fiction – voice, style, language, imagery, narrative, and more.   Personal essays written with grace and literary flair aren’t, of course, new.  Montaigne’s 16 th  century  Essais  certainly put the lie to any sense that creative nonfiction represents something novel or original.  Montaigne’s writings constitute a literary self-portrait of the essayist’s inner life, exploring topics as wide-ranging as cannibalism, childrearing, politeness, repentance, and suicide  By combining the historical, the philosophical, the topical, and the intensely personal (including his naps and bowel movements), he invented a new literary form, one that dominates writing in our time. Creative nonfiction is manifest especially vividly in  The New York Times ’s popular Modern Love column – with