This post is an overview of the book I published last spring. It’s available on Amazon both as an e-book and a paperback. The title is Being a Scholar: Reflections on Doctoral Study, Scholarly Writing, and Academic Life. Below is the book’s introduction, which provides the rationale for the book and summarizes the eleven pieces that you will … Continue reading Being a Scholar
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
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 Lust for Academic Fame
This post is a preview of my new book, which I recently published with Kindle. It's available on Amazon both as an e-book and a paperback. The title is Being a Scholar: Reflections on Doctoral Study, Scholarly Writing, and Academic Life. Below is the book's introduction, which provides the rationale for the book and summarizes … Continue reading My New Book: Being a Scholar
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? … Continue reading How Not to Defend the Private Research University
This post is a collection of some favorite cartoons about life as a professor. Most 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! ARTOONS ABOUT THE LIFE OF … Continue reading Cartoons about Faculty Life
This post is a short piece I wrote in 2011 for a special issue of the journal Teacher Education and Practice on “Enhancing Teaching and Learning Through Scholarship.” My own take is that research in education is not necessarily well positioned to enhance education; on the contrary, it often does more harm than good. See what … Continue reading Do No Harm: Reflections on the Impact of Educational Research
This post is a piece I just wrote. I tried unsuccessfully to publish in five different venues and gave up, so I'm posting it here. I focus on an issue that I've been thinking about for quite a while: How to understand the core business model that governs American universities. The answer is in the … Continue reading Universities Give Away Knowledge and Sell Degrees
This post is an essay of mine that was just published in a book -- Production, Presentation, and Acceleration of Educational Research: Could Less Be More? -- edited by Paul Smeyers and Marc Depaepe. An earlier version appeared in Aeon in 2018. Here's a PDF of the chapter. Here's the setup for the argument: The … Continue reading The Lust for Academic Fame
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!
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 