Opinion

A poem by Laurence Musgrove considers the state of student writing.

December is a cruel month for academics. More accurately, the stretch from Cyber Monday until Christmas is uniquely difficult.

Aaron Bady's excellent critique of Clay Shirky's thought provoking post "Napster, Udacity, and the Academy" provides a powerful window into our most important debates about how higher ed will evolve over the next few years. The comments to Bady's article, and Shirky's response to his critique, provide strong evidence of the power of an open exchange of ideas and views within an informed community.

I’ve written before about how helpful it is, as a teacher, to be a student, but this semester I had a very different experience with that than I’ve had before. Previously I’ve learned a lot about teaching when I took tae kwon do, a martial art with which I had absolutely no previous experience, or when I participated in faculty development seminars that focused on areas that I did have experience in but wanted to develop further. They were two very different cases—either I was a rank beginner, eager to soak up whatever knowledge I could get, or I was an advanced student, ready and able to polish my skills. In the first case, almost anything the instructor said was helpful because I knew nothing at all; in the second case, I had a good grounding of knowledge and understanding, and so, again, I could make use of almost anything an instructor said—or at least put it in some kind of context and, perhaps, decide not to use it.

In November, the Council of Presidents of Public Universities and the Federation of University Faculty Associations approved a collective bargaining agreement that defines a new structure for the teaching career at Argentine public universities.

When Eliza Woolf gave up on finding a good academic job, she landed one.

Could philosophy (or other disciplines) be improved by letting those outside the discipline play a role in judging its work? Robert Frodeman, J. Britt Holbrook and Adam Briggle consider the possibilities.

Johnny Manziel won the Heisman Trophy. Texas A&M intends to capitalize.