Blogs

When I first started working in academia as full-time staff, I was 24 years old, and had graduated only 18 months earlier. I envisioned myself still a student, and technically, since I was enrolled in a part-time graduate program, I was. My friends were still students, some undergraduate, some had moved on to graduate programs. I thought I was able to offer the “older” staff relevant opinions on what students would or would not like, which I hope was partly true.

I had a terrific experience as a doctoral student. The courses, the faculty, the other students all made for a wonderful educational journey.

GradHacker began as a bootcamp to introduce grad students to social media that would improve their lives. Most of our authors use a myriad of tech on a daily basis. All of us have Twitter, many are also on Google +, we own a diversity of smart phones, and our laptops are more an extension of our person than a tool. Technology is increasing important to academia, with online discussion and electronic publication becoming a frequent practice. Personally, I wouldn’t be where I am without Twitter and Wordpress opening a number of important windows of opportunity to me.

Google Scholar Citations allow scholars to track how frequently their journal and book articles are cited. But the program, which just opened to the public, has a few problems.

What can the MLA and other organizations do to work towards taking higher education back.

As an industry, we’ll be in serious trouble as long as it’s taboo to speak the truth. The responses to these two pieces suggest that we aren’t yet ready to come to grips with reality.

While Niall Ferguson's new book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, is mostly about the past, it true importance is what it says about our future. Nowadays it is hard not too worry about the future, as we struggle from one funding crisis to the next, watching resources for public investments (like education) erode.

What’s New With Our Writers