Interesting essay (as always with WRM & Co.) saying that Humanities professors should be generalists and that narrowness is killing our disciplines.  To be frank, if you teach in core or frosh programs, you are a generalist already.  But the point is well taken.

Jargon at Jefferson's Place

Here is President Sullivan's Rotunda speech at UVA.  Problem is, sympathetic as I want to be, she's making it difficult.  She says she's against the corporatization of universities (huzzah for that -- it's why schools are awash in various layers of bureaucracy, aka the "administrative bloat" that is helping drive up tuition) -- but stoops to using terms like "opportunity costs" and phrases like "Sustained change with buy-in does work."

A Management Professor could have said that.

All the Washington Post's Men

Can you imagine this type of article being written in the 1970s, never mind as recent as twenty years ago?  The creditable and intriguing push-back against all the shibboleths of Watergate warms this historian's heart.

Follow the Bouncing Ball

How apropos at Euro 2012 this week -- Germany versus Greece.

It's not just students and Joe Biden

From the Providence (RI) Daily Post, 8 May 1858

Plagiarism by a Governor


Lot M. Morrill, Governor of Maine, recently issued a fast day proclamation, a good portion of which was copied, nearly word for word, from a sermon preached several months ago by Dr. Chapin, and recently published by Dewitt & Davenport of New York.  Governor Morrill must have had a very diminutive idea of the "reading propensities"of the people of Maine, if he supposed this larceny would not be detected.  We can only excuse his conduct by supposing he found his subject too big for him, but he could not condescend to ask assistance.

Where the problem lies

This article in the WSJ points in a direction too many conservatives aren't happy to admit: tuition cost increases are linked to the rise of the for-profit education industry.

What I don't understand is why this should be shocking to anyone.  We already know that pro-profit grads are burdened with higher average debt and are often in jobs (and situations) insufficient to pay back what they've borrowed -- borrowed after persuasive and aggressive promises by the schools that prove illusory.  I've longed believed that higher education cost increases have little to do with faculty salaries or even extravagant building programs of new dorms or student centers.

We have returned

After a forgetful and thoughtless hiatus of three years (shame on me), I have returned and reclaimed the old blog.  I will endeavor to be more consistent in posting this time.  Really.