Filter & Sort
'Plan B' and Bob Dylan
Felicia B. LeClere rejects the idea that the only reason to get a Ph.D. is for an academic career.
Ride a Pale Horse
It infected a third of the world's population and killed tens of millions. Scott McLemee reads a new book recalling the influenza pandemic of 1918.
Candor and Candidacy in Social Media
Navigating the internet as a doctoral candidate becomes a bit more difficult than it did for some of our straight-to-work peers. Seven-ish years in school provides for a lot of time for status updates that might offend or alienate a future employer, and cleaning up a Facebook profile can involve more than merely taking down a couple of photos from the undergrad years. The arrested development of graduate education often leaves us feeling like we can live large on the internet, up until the moment when those seven years of tweets suddenly become a topic in an employment interview. As a result, acting professional on personal social networks seems to be an often elusive goal for doctoral students, and I have watched peers struggle after mis-judging their abilities to network, sometimes with professionally damaging consequences.
Editing Academic Work
Do you like being an academic editor? Honestly, I have many important reasons for a ‘no’ answer.
Internships, from the Other Side
Internships are a mixed blessing. At their best, they offer valuable exposure to the work world, and can give students both experience and a sense of whether the field they think they want is really for them. (A well-timed internship in college taught me that I didn’t actually want to be a lawyer.) Ideally, they can help students blend the real world with theory in a way that enriches both.
What Mark Cuban Would Do If He Really Cared about Higher Ed
Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and technology and media investor, is getting some buzz around the web for his blog post "The Coming Meltdown in College Education & Why the Economy Won't Get Better Any Time Soon".
Freedom of civil religion?
A friend of mine has pointed out repeatedly that, while Environmental Studies graduates can talk about the environment, Environmental Science graduates can actually do something. (Of course, the guy's an Environmental Science professor. No surprise, there.)
Inkling Strikes a Deal with Follett to Have Its Titles Sold in More College Bookstores
In the last few weeks there have been several big announcements about digital textbooks: Microsoft's investment in Barnes & Noble's spinout of its NOOK and college bookstore divisions, for example, and news today that Inkling is partnering with Follett, which runs some 900 college bookstores. Will we see a "format war" between publishers and hardware makers over control of the higher ed textbook market?