At times generalizations serve a useful purpose, perhaps as shorthand to convey an important idea. At others, they tend toward hyperbole, at best, and become divorced from reality at worst. In our aggregated blog and in the media, there has … Continue reading
How often have you heard something akin to the following: “to succeed in our fast-paced, constantly changing, interconnected world, students must excel at teamwork and collaboration”? Have universities placed too much emphasis on group projects? As Susan Cain notes in … Continue reading
Should it be the duty of faculty to be honest with doctoral students about their prospects of securing a tenure-track position in academia? As a recent article (The disposable academic: Why doing a PhD is a waste of time) in … Continue reading
Given the prevalence of grade inflation (and the incentive professors have to inflate grades in exchange for more favorable evaluations or simply to avoid dealing with students who are upset about receiving a B+ rather than an A), why haven’t … Continue reading
If student evaluations, as designed currently, fail to provide the type of substantive feedback that would be beneficial in evaluating teachers, how can they be improved? The thought off the top of my head was simply to require students to … Continue reading
How will the demand for PhD-educated (scholar-) teachers be impacted by the inevitable growth of free online education (see M.I.T. Game-Changer: Free online education for all and Online course start-ups offer virtually free college)? Of course, some students will always … Continue reading
Hatshepsut raised some interesting questions in a recent blog post that contained an opinion piece by David Evans that was posted in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Evans noted that “a vast majority of people earning doctorates who are fortunate … Continue reading