If kids aren’t ready for college, what hope for humanities?
The future of education just got a little bleaker: New York State officials released data this week indicating that more than half of all the high school students in the state are not ready for college...
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Let’s talk about Shop Class
Last fall I finally got around to reading Matthew Crawford’s 2009 book Shop Class as Soulcraft: an Inquiry Into the Value of Work, a rich and compelling meditation on American education, “knowledge”...
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The ‘former majority’ wants a break
Photo by Kelly West for The Statesman A student at Texa s State University has a bone to pick with higher education: white men, he says, are under-represented on today’s campuses. The Iraq War veteran...
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Let kids rule the school, indeed
A classmate and professor of mine, in 1996, studying Boreal Ecology in Canada. As Mark Twain famously said: "All you need for learning to take place is a teacher, a student, and a log to s it on."...
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Evaluation fixation
In his critique of higher education — how it began in this country versus what it’s become — for last week’s New Yorker, Louis Menand makes clear a few unfortunate facts of college today. Namely, that...
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The paradox of global education
When I started college, in 1993, there was a notion going around that education was subversive. It allowed those of us lucky enough to be studying the liberal arts to engage with serio us texts, ask...
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An education, not a credential
Imagine taking a class on n on-Euclidian geometry. Now imagine that your professor doesn’t know anything about geometry at all, let alone an obscure, archaic branch of it. Inste ad, she h as a PhD in...
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Running ecstatically towards nothing
When the topic of running comes up, I have a favorite line I tell people: “I run because it gives me the illusion that I’m getting somewhere.” They usually laugh, and I laugh with them. Except it’s not...
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A student’s death, mediated
On Friday, I woke up early, around 5:15 a.m. and checked my email. There, amid the junk mail, was a subject line that left me stunned. It informed me that a student I’d had for two courses at Hunter...
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The audacity of Udacity
Much of education is aesthetic: The architecture, the “look” of the student body, the general vibe of a university. Such considerations may be superficial, but they aren’t trite. The feel of a school...
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Your thoughts on Adrienne Rich, please
I first learned about Adrienne Rich, who died on Tuesday at her home in Santa Cruz, CA, at the age of 82, in college almost 20 years ago. I was 18, and many of my professors adored Rich. They taught...
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The endless, perplexing, and ultimately essential question of whether writing...
In this month’s Atlantic, Peg Tyre writes about a school on Staten Island that has “revolutionized” writing pedagogy: by going back to basics. Judith Hochman, who originally developed the very...
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The ironic death of postmodernism
I am currently teaching a class at Hunter College titled Journalism & Society, which analyzes the impact of journalism on culture and vice versa. We discuss corporate consolidation, the so-called...
View ArticleBill Gates on the higher-education crisis
While state funding for higher education plummets, tuition soars to make up the difference. As a result, young people are often being saddled with insurmountable debt, all in the name of getting that...
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Can we love fiction once we’re no longer seeking answers?
I once asked my father, who had majored in English, gotten his master’s degree in English, and for years had dreams of being a full professor of English before he decided (wisely) to pursue a more...
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The fallacy of the 10K B.A.
In an Op/Ed for today’s New York Times, Arthur Brooks offers himself as evidence that cheap, zero-residence higher education not only works, but is a moral imperative. The moral imperative has less to...
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The disillusioned and the lost, or, Frances Ha’s life lessons
Noah Baumbach’s latest film, Frances Ha, takes us into the world of a young woman a few years out of college. The effect is startlingly accurate, at times painful, and generally brilliant. The subject...
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You don’t need to study the arts. Or do you?
He was the last person you’d expect to say that people don’t need to study the humanities. He’s made an entire career out of them — as an educator, as an organizer of public programs, and as a widely...
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Writing your way into college
Bard College announced this week that it was introducing a new admissions option for prospective students, one devoid of GPAs, test scores, and other stone-cold metrics that, some say, do little to...
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To save the humanities, try a little tenderness
Did you know that only 8 percent of undergraduates major in a humanities discipline like English or philosophy? Or how about the fact that more than half of college professors today are adjunct, or...
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Confessions of a standardized test writer
In the fall of 2011, I was invited to prepare an essay for the American College Testing exam, better known as the ACT. If you live on the East or West Coasts, you’ve probably never heard of it; if you...
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Is the university over?
Minerva — hardly a word you’d associate with higher education. It sounds more like a brand-name medication designed to treat anxiety — Minimize your nerves with Minerva! Or maybe a South American root...
View ArticleThose pesky “whining adjuncts”
Two days ago, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a letter to the editor by one Catherine Stukel, who teaches at a community college in Cicero, Illinois. The point of Stukel’s letter was...
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English majors fare just fine on the job market, but in what jobs?
A few days ago, a friend of mine with a tenure-track English professorship at a large southern university posted an article on Facebook that argued, basically, that humanities majors fare no worse in...
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