Blogs

I’ve been in D.C. for the past few days at a Project Directors’ meeting for several Federal grant programs. The conference was heavy on plenary sessions, which I’ll admit is not my preferred style. Much of the oratory has been of the “hooray for us” variety, which keeps the peace but doesn’t really help us do our jobs better. That said, though, I found a useful breakout session about improving students’ financial literacy. The session was standing-room-only, which I actually took as a good sign; at least there seems to be widespread recognition that this is a real issue.

Is hosting your own webinar on your radar screen? Perhaps it should be. When I say webinar I mean a synchronous online event that is free to anyone who registers. An event where a subject matter expert presents something, and where (hopefully) there is time for questions, answers and discussions.

One of the most exciting aspects of grad school is the opportunity to engage with senior scholars in your chosen field. For grads of color, this can also be an opportunity to meet one of the few professors in your field that not only shares your research interests, but might or might not look like you, talk like you, or share a similar background. Using African-American professors as one of many groups of color, we can see that the academy has a different structure for people navigating it from this specific social location.

My previous post explained how a portion of the sustainability community is coming to view our challenge not primarily as an environmental issue but as a societal one. The difference is far more significant than just its effect on the wording we use in our job descriptions and performance reviews -- it fundamentally reshapes the relationship between higher education and issues of sustainability, and vastly expands higher ed's capacity to address the problem. Let me try to explain.

A thoughtful correspondent writes: "This is not hypothetical — I’ve had to deal with it a couple of times now. I keep asking for ethical advice but no one yet has offered me any that I find really satisfactory. We hire someone to work in a temporary position, and are thus able to do so without a national search. This person turns out to be extremely good, and we convince the administration to give us a new line so we can hire them permanently. University policy nevertheless requires us to conduct a national search to fill the position. So we find ourselves in effect recruiting for a slot that has already been filled."

Dear Dr. Matloff. Thank you for contributing to our community's discussion about the pros and cons of MOOCs. I thought that your critique of the limitations of the current MOOC offerings in your Bloomberg opinion column Dumbed-Down Math and Other Perils of Online College made many valid points about the challenges of bringing a college course to scale.

With all the talk about the unbundling of higher education, some recent developments have me wondering whether some of the newer developments we’re seeing are actually reinforcing the existing hierarchy in this market to the benefit of elite schools. . . and at the expense of everyone else.

I attended the Ann Arbor Film Festival (AAFF) this past weekend. Ken Burns, who was raised in Ann Arbor by a college professor dad, and claims to have seen his “first breasts” on the screen of the Michigan Theatre was also present. The festival is internationally known for showcasing experimental filmmakers such as Andy Warhol, Barbara Hammer and Pat O’Neill, whose work was featured this year. Historical documentaries by Burns, which cover a good swath of American history and are used in educational settings around the globe, are not typically included in the experimental or underground film categories.