Comments on Quick Takes: Uncertainties Over Concussions in College Football, MIT's High School Site, Secret Ticket Wishlist, Push for Independent Universities in Cuba, Ivy Bashing, Harvard Bashing

• Spitting in the Wind
• Posted by Higher Ed Diogenes on November 29, 2007 at 8:35am EST

• Concussions among football players--not to mention other serious injuries that leave "student athletes" maimed for life--should spark a debate among leaders in higher education on whether such a sport is consistent with the noble purposes of colleges and universities. It isn't, of course, and there are few leaders in higher ed who would have the courage to raise the issue. Perhaps there is no need to do so. The Ivy League initiated the Roman circuses, and they still sponsor them. So why debate the issue? After all, they are looked to for leadership. In their defense, the Ivie players probably come closer to meeting the real definition of student athlete than others. But it would be encouraging to see collective higher education come closer to matching its behavior with its rhetoric. Does anyone want to join me in a spitting in the wind exercise?

  Higher Ed Diogenes

• Ghostwriting Scandals
• Posted by John K. Wilson at collegefreedom.org on November 29, 2007 at 9:06am EST

• The Harvard ghostwriting scandal article is very important. Ward Churchill's worst offense, after all, was his ghostwriting, and Harvard shows us how little academia cares about it unless you're a controversial professor. It's time for academia to take a strong stand against ghostwriting, and to require proper credit (perhaps a secondary credit line) for research assistants. In the sciences, they manage to credit a long list of people who work as research assistants; why can't it be done in other fields? Those of us who manage to write books without research assistants probably deserve some credit, too, for the work we do.

• Ghostwriting---The Implications
• Posted by Tim Lacy on November 29, 2007 at 1:55pm EST

• I'm with Mr. Wilson in that this is important.

  In higher education, reputation is everything. Schools sell themselves on the real and imagined achievements of their faculties. Even if you know, as an incoming student, that you'll likely be taught by graduate students, you might be willing to pay to rub shoulders, once-removed, with the best. You're hoping that success can be learned, and that the institution---the collective whole---will do something for you.

  So, when an institution with history, like Harvard, suffers from scandals such as ghostwriting, plagiarism, or whatever, it hurts higher education on the whole. Students lose confidence that they're rubbing shoulders with the best: if it can happen at a place with a solid reputation, it can happen anywhere.

  While my words above come at this from the student perspective, I also see Mr. Wilson's point. It's bad enough that many courses are no longer taught by professors, but is it also the case that even their research can be questioned? I mean, what's real in higher education if we can't trust that professors are doing their own research?

  In sum, if professors are not forthright about their research, the whole higher education establishment in America is a farce, a joke.

  All instances of cheating in higher education---whether by ghostwriting, over-reliance on research assistants, plagiarism, etc.---must be forcefully stamped out. It goes to the integrity of the idea of education on the whole. - TL