This post is the transcript of an interview I did with Jon-Ryan Maloney for his blog Cerebral Conversations. Here's a link to the original. It's a discussion about the emergent nature of the American system of higher education, which draws from my book, A Perfect Mess. Issues we cover include: How to justify public investment … Continue reading The Emergent University — An Interview
This post is a paper I presented at a conference at the Catholic University Leuven (Belgium) in 2011, which was later published in a book of papers from that conference. Here's a link to the original. It draws on material that later appeared in 2017 in my book, A Perfect Mess. Here's an overview of … Continue reading Power of the Parochial in Shaping the American System of Higher Education
This post is a piece by philosopher Mitchell Aboulafia about the destructive emphasis on productivity in American higher education. It was published in 2018 in Chronicle Review. Here's a link to the original. The essay is a fresh take on a familiar problem in academic life, the pressure to publish or perish. He focuses in … Continue reading Mitchell Aboulafia — Higher Ed’s Real Productivity Problem
This post is a piece I published in History of Education Quarterly in 2006. Here's a link to the original, complete with footnotes. It's an elaboration on the presidential address I presented at the annual meeting of the History of Education Society in October, 2005. The theme is the complex interaction between the liberal and … Continue reading Mutual Subversion: A Short History of the Liberal and the Professional in American Higher Education
This post is a scorching essay by Caitlin Flanagan, "The Fury of the Prep-School Parents," which appeared two years ago in Atlantic. Here's a link to the original. I'm posting it here for two reasons. One is that it's a great case in point about the pathologies that arise from the new American meritocracy based … Continue reading Caitlin Flanagan — The Fury of Prep-School Parents
This post is a favorite piece by an old friend and terrific scholar, Harold Wechsler, who sadly died several years ago. Here's a link to the original, which appeared in Teachers College Record in 1981. In this paper, Wechsler explores a longstanding issue in American higher education. How do students and colleges respond when the … Continue reading Harold Wechsler — An Academic Gresham’s Law
This post is a lovely essay by Michael Lind, which was recently published in Tablet magazine. Here's a link to the original. In this piece, Lind provides a rich analysis of the history of the American elite. The key to this story is that the elite used to be plural -- a set of local … Continue reading Michael Lind — The New American Elite
This post is a collection of some favorite cartoons about life as a professor. All of them are from the website PhD, which stands for Piled Higher and Deeper. The author is Jorge Cham, who got his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford and then taught at Cal Tech. Enjoy!
This post is a piece by New York Times columnist Jennifer Senior, which was published on December 21. Here's a link to the original. It builds on the argument that Michael Sandel made in The Tyranny of Merit and nicely illuminates some of the issues I've been raising in this blog about the problems of … Continue reading Jennifer Senior: 95 Percent of Representatives Have a Degree. Look Where That’s Got Us.
This post contains all of the material for the class on the History of Higher Education in the US that I taught for at the Stanford Graduate School of Education for the last 15 years. In retirement I wanted to make the course available on the internet to anyone who is interested. If you are … Continue reading Class on History of Higher Education in the US
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 