Higher Education Observer

Anyone else get that survey from Chronicle of Higher Ed about tenure of presidents? I took it, although I couldn't answer every question. While I have my suspicions, I did want to skew the data with feelings rather than thoughts (I make a big distinction between the two even though it appears others do not do so any longer.)

I am tenured so I can complain about it. The adage, "The reason the fights in academia are so bitter is because the stakes are so low" is one of my favorites. I have been embroiled in one that hinged on a few hundred dollars a year in pay. I would have gladly paid that to not have lost all this sleep. Tenure is a good thing--I'm not giving mine up--but it has unintended consequences. It means faculty are disincentivized. We know that a lot of faculty "rest" (euphemism) after getting it. We also know, but don't want to admit it, that tenure discourages faculty from looking elsewhere even when doing so would be a good thing, because they don't want to go through tenure again (it can be hellacious and risky). And because faculty are discouraged from leaving, they stay. They have institutional memory. A good thing, but also the grounds for long-standing grudges and bitterness over really small things to fester and become the reason for payback. I...

Fascinating article on Access college students. Some hidden assumptions here that access students are less than, and that access colleges don't provide access to elitist circle. Maybe some of us don't want to be in them.  https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/05/23/pew-study-finds-more-poor-students-attending-college?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=52d50b2bd6-DNU_2019_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-52d50b2bd6-198482621&mc_cid=52d50b2bd6&mc_eid=ab27a3f05f

This is a fabulous essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education (need to subscribe). As he says, the "undead texts" will be the ones remembered longest, even when in graduate school the professors try to destroy and deconstruct them. https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Books-That-Wouldn-t-Die-/245879?key=yc0panBLrqCSy_jQRBofjCgEAHJ5yaQsqWLc_SlQbBRY3HYRT5ZklZvC2-IGcR6WYk5GT0VWR3djVk0tRmluUlA3VVBVajV0U2N2ejJOdmpIcnUwb2JlWmgwaw

There is so much to say about this I don't know where to start. My only regret here is that I don't have at hand the real statistics of access institutions in higher ed, but those are easily available from the National Center on Education Statistics if one wants them. The worst part for me personally is that what my colleagues and I do will be conflated with this crime. I work in an access college. We have no prestige like a Yale or Stanford or UCLA, despite doing great work. We take everybody and put them through the boot camp of higher education. A lot don't make it; access institutions have lower graduation rates. We cost less--less than 20% of these prestige places.  We don't have luxurious dorms. We don't have professors who appear on cable news shows and Good Morning America . We don't have Division I athletics teams and we don't have lazy rivers for students to float down when they should be studying.  We work hard. We actually teach....

Fascinating article: I don't agree with all of it, but it gives some food for thought and discussion. https://aeon.co/essays/schools-love-the-idea-of-a-growth-mindset-but-does-it-work

 I confess to not having blogged here for quite a while.  I will be in the future--I'm doing some relevant writing. My current research interest is gratitude, in general, in communication, in spiritual development, and in higher education. Although not quite linked to that, this article is thoughtful and reminds us of "the secret life of college students." https://diverseeducation.com/article/138698/?utm_campaign=DIV1902%20DAILY%20NEWSLETTER%20FEB15&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua