This post is a collection of some of my favorite cartoons about academic life, many of which come from the Jorge Chan website PHDComics.com. Enjoy.
Category: Research
Max Roser — The Limits of Personal Experience and the Value of Statistics
This post is an essay by Max Roser from the website Our World in Data. Here's a link to the original. Roser is the founder of that website, which I have found an invaluable source for valid data on all manner of subjects relevant in today's world. I check it out every day to check out … Continue reading Max Roser — The Limits of Personal Experience and the Value of Statistics
Hilarius Bookbinder — In Praise of Frivolous Research
This post is an essay by Hilarius Bookbinder recently published in his Substack. Here's a link to the original. I posted another piece of his here recently. He is my favorite read these days in my favorite new medium, Substack. He’s got a great nom de plume, don’t you think? Based on a few clues in … Continue reading Hilarius Bookbinder — In Praise of Frivolous Research
How Not to Defend the Research University
This post is a piece I published in 2020 in the Chronicle Review. Here’s a link to the original. It’s about an issue that has been gnawing at me for years. How can you justify the existence of institutions of the sort I taught at for the last two decades — rich private research universities? These institutions … Continue reading How Not to Defend the Research University
Perils of the Professionalized Historian
This is a short piece about the problems that professionalism poses for the academic historian. History is a different kind of subject, and too often academic rigor gets in the way of telling the kinds of historical accounts that we need. An earlier version was published in 2017 in the International Journal of the Historiography of Education. Perils … Continue reading Perils of the Professionalized Historian
Carly Ann York — In Defense of “Silly” Science
This post is an essay by Carly Ann York recently published in the Chronicle Review. Here's a link to the original. The topic could not be more timely: A defense of the value of basic research. This is the kind of research that is not aimed at solving a particular problem but at simply exploring an … Continue reading Carly Ann York — In Defense of “Silly” Science
Doctoral Study as a Transformative Experience
This post is a piece I just wrote about an issue I've been mulling over for years. It's about how getting a doctorate is not just another in a long chain of degrees. It's a transformative experience, and prospective doctoral should prepare to strap themselves in for the ride. Doctoral Study as a Transformative Experience … Continue reading Doctoral Study as a Transformative Experience
The Lust for Academic Fame
This post is an analysis of the engine for scholarly production in American higher education. The issue is that the university is a unique work setting in which the usual organizational incentives don’t apply. Administrators can’t offer much in the way of power and money as rewards for productive faculty and they also can’t do … Continue reading The Lust for Academic Fame
Perils of the Professionalized Historian
This is a short piece about the problems that professionalism poses for the academic historian. History is a different kind of subject, and too often academic rigor gets in the way of telling the kinds of historical accounts that we need. An earlier version was published in 2017 in the International Journal of the Historiography of Education. Perils … Continue reading Perils of the Professionalized Historian
Cartoons about Academic Research
This post is a collection of some favorite cartoons about the nature of academic research. 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!
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 