Opinion

Chile’s Ministry of Education has launched a web portal offering with unprecedented detail employment and earnings data to prospective applicants to higher education. The portal, called “Mi futuro” is a searchable database that lists hundreds of degree programs, professional and technical, from Medicine to Auto Mechanic, displaying for each program of every institution of higher education in the country the following information: drop-out rate, average time to degree, average earnings of the graduates after 4 years of graduation, current tuition fees for the program, and accreditation status of the program.

Given the corrupting influence of rankings, there is no cause for surprise by what happened at Claremont McKenna, writes William D. Adams. What the incident should inspire is a collective stand.

Apparently, a scholar of student success, Shaun Harper, has decided to turn around the usual methods of studying African-American men in college. Instead of the typical questions - what obstacles do they face, what prevents success, etc. -- he decided to focus on African-American men who have succeeded in college and to try to determine what worked for them.

Is "building" an essential part of digital humanities?

A reader emailed recently to alert me to the publication of a new study of working mothers, in the journal Gender and Society. (An aside: I hate the term “working mothers,” as I think it devalues the actual work of mothering. I’ll try to find other ways to say it as I write about the study, but to date I haven’t found a good substitute.) The findings didn’t really surprise me, but they were confirmatory: most working mothers, single or married, find value, fulfillment, and meaning in paid work outside the home.

What would you say if you were asked to list the 5 principles, ideas, actions, steps, or investments you would make to support and catalyze innovation in learning and scholarship at your institution?

The gaming of citation index measures has Gaye Tuchman wondering about how professors value themselves and their work.

The way to keep electronic communication under control is to set expectations for professors and for students, writes Nate Kreuter.