Posts
March 26, 2013
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The Chicago Public Schools announced that they will be removing Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel memoir Persopolis about growing up during the Iranian revolution from the shelves of seventh-grade classrooms and from the curriculum. The section in question is its portrayal of torture, which the Chicago Public Schools argues is too intense for seventh grade students to be exposed to but not eighth, ninth or tenth grade, The original ban also allowed AP students access to the book but not […]
March 25, 2013
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What explains last Wednesday's Senate vote on NSF funding for political science projects? Well, one factor might be just where the awards are currently going. NSF's website has a convenient tool for mapping where the awards go. Below is a map showing the total number of active NSF political science grants by state. Darker states are receiving more awards.
The awards are, unsurprisingly, going to states with lots of large research universities. Notice another pattern? With the notable […]
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On Wednesday Senator Mikulski (D-MD), the floor manager to H.R. 933, a bill to fund federal agencies for the remainder of the fiscal year, accepted an amendment (#65) offered by Tom Coburn (R-OK) to increase scrutiny of National Science Foundation grants in political science. According to the Library of Congress website, Coburn’s amendment was cosponsored by John McCain (R-AZ) and Mark Begich (D-AK). As adopted, the amendment states:
On page 193, between lines 11 and 12, insert the
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4:38 PM | Luddites of the world unite
Adrian Ely reports from the World Forum on Science and Democracy, finding it somewhat critical of technology's role in our futureFar from an anti-technology jamboree, the third World Forum on Science and Democracy illustrates the diversity of global debates around education, research and the scope for science, technology and innovation to help build what some like to talk of as "another world".When the dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Tunis says "Vive la démocratie! Vive la science!" they
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March 22, 2013
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10:29 PM | Texas: Where Anti-gay Meets Pro-business
Texas's conservative social culture is running into its economic development efforts. And it’s happened, no big surprise, because of gay partner benefits.
The Texas insurance code currently does not allow the state’s public universities to offer benefits to the (unmarried) partners of university employees. A bill in the state legislature would change the code to allow “certain qualified individuals,” including same-sex partners of Texas professors, to qualify for […]
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9:58 PM | Some Creative Ways to Avoid College Debt
Joseph Welch does push-ups and sit-ups to help pay for his college education.
He runs obstacle courses, participates in leadership seminars and occasionally has to attend functions like dinners and dances -- all so that he can ease the $50,000 it costs to attend Stonehill College in Easton, Mass.
Welch is a member of the Army The Reserve Officers` Training Course (ROTC), which will save him about $150,000 by the time he collects his diploma from Stonehill in 2016.
Colby Donovan washes, […]
March 21, 2013
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It turns out America’s education schools, long derided for lax admissions standards and low quality research, might be more demanding than we knew.
According to a new report issued by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education:
Contrary to many perceptions, teacher preparation programs are admitting academically competitive candidates into their programs.
Extensive clinical experiences are being incorporated in higher-education-based teacher preparation programs. […]
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7:23 PM | Win $1,000 for Binge Drinking?
The American Spectator sponsors an annual collegiate essay contest. This year’s subject?
ESSAY PROMPT: Binge Drinking: The Pros and Cons
The winning op-ed will appear in the print edition of our magazine, and we’ll write its author a check for a cool $1,000.
$1,000 sure buys a lot of beer. [Image via]
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4:53 PM | A Real Innovation in Academic Publishing
In academic publishing, there is a long tradition of “The Big Book of Everything”. These edited, multi-authored tomes have titles like “The Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine”, “The Comprehensive Textbook of Substance Abuse” and “The Annual Review of Psychology”. They comprise a huge number of chapters written by respected figures in the field.Having your field’s Big Book of Everything on your shelf or in your department library is
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11:27 AM | The technofix is in
We used to worry about hubristic technological visions. They haven't gone away. According to Evgeny Morozov, we just need to look in different placesAlvin Weinberg was an unashamed technological enthusiast. He was from the generation of American boffins, brought together by the Manhattan project, who convinced themselves that modern science made almost anything was possible. As director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Weinberg led American post-war science policy debates. And even though
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March 20, 2013
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8:51 PM | College Ranking "Professionals"
The United States isn’t the only place obsessed with college rankings. According to a piece by Andrew Trounson at The Australian:
Some Australian universities are paying about $100,000 a year each to employ full-time managers dedicated to working with ranking agencies and developing strategies aimed at climbing league tables.
The University of New South Wales recently advertised for a manager of strategic reputation, while La Trobe University was seeking a manager of institutional
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8:29 PM | Why College Costs Too Much
There’s basically one reason. From the Atlantic:
State colleges, which educate about 80 percent of American undergraduates, make up for these cuts with tuition hikes.
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The parents of college-age children have some pretty interesting ideas college costs. Big takeaway: the sticker price of college matters a lot.
According to an article by Scott Jaschik in Inside Higher Ed:
Only about 16 percent of parents are sure they won't restrict colleges to which their children will apply because of concerns about costs (although another 14 percent said that it was "not very likely" that they would do so), the results show. Parents are also likelier to see vocational
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Our panel of science and innovation policy experts digests the details of George Osborne's budget statementIn today's budget speech, George Osborne described research and development as "absolutely central to Britain's economic future". But is he doing enough to get us there?The science budget is one area of public spending to have escaped the worst impacts of austerity. In the 2010 spending review, a ringfence was placed around £4.6bn of annual funding, to the relief of many in the research
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March 19, 2013
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8:08 PM | Fishing for an Argument
The affirmative action case of the day, with stark implications for the future of college admissions, is Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. In the case, which is currently before the United States Supreme Court, two women are suing Texas’s flagship state university, arguing that the school’s affirmative action program constitutes a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The lead plaintiff, Abigail Fisher (below), argues that her rejection from […]
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The U.S. Department of Education is now encouraging American colleges to seek federal approval for “competency-based” programs. Competency-based means institutions could grant degrees based on student demonstration of actual knowledge and skills. This would allow students to obtain college degrees based directly on what they know and can do, not how many hours they spend in class.
According to a letter released by the department today:
Instead of using credit hours or clock hours
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We're all agreed that the issue of teaching climate change schools is political, but where do the political divides lie?A couple of weeks ago Joe Smith from the Open University posted a draft submission to the consultation on National Curriculum reforms (closes 16th April, if you want to have a pop too). Smith traced the 221 page document for mentions of climate change and sustainability, but they seemed to be entirely absent. He was angry and didn't hold back in his reaction:Their removal
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March 18, 2013
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Last week a California legislator, Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, introduced legislation to begin offering community college classes via massive open online courses (MOOCs), which are designed for large-scale participation and open access via the Internet. All University of California and California State University campuses would have to accept those courses for credit, as they currently do for courses earned at California community colleges.
Many proclaimed this legislation a
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Teachers and school administrators often complain about standardized test used to evaluate learning and school quality. They argue that such examinations are disruptive and often fail to capture what really goes on in the classroom.
But there’s often another, more fundamental, problem: It might be more cost effective just not to administer them. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times:
A plan to suspend California's standardized testing for certain grades while new computerized
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Some of you who know me or my work will be aware that I value a creative title for an article, especially if it involves a pun or play on words. My dissertation was entitled It’s the Economy, Comrade!, Adam Meirowitz and I have an article called “Run, Boris, Run!”, and Ted Brader and I recently published a piece called “Follow the Leader”. (To this date, I am disappointed that I couldn’t come up with anything better for my book than Regional Economic
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Engineers save lives. They should stop swaddling their education in PR fluff from arms manufacturers and oil companiesSitting in the pub with some friends last year, one of them pulled out a toy submarine they'd picked up at a science education event. It was one of those squishy stress reliever things, and had BAE's logo on the side. BAE make a range of products, including real nuclear submarines, not just toys. And drones, fighter planes. That sort of thing. We passed it around the table,
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1:31 PM | Some other top British innovations
Innovation is not just about scienceMy copy of the Metro tells me that "in the dim and distant past, Britain led the world in science and engineering. We invented the reflecting telescope, the steam engine, the glider…" etc. etc. Well done us. The piece refers to a survey, closing at the end of the week, launched by a consortium of science organisations. The aim is to find the top British innovation in order, I imagine, to generate some more news pieces trumpeting our scientific prowess.
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March 15, 2013
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7:23 PM | Regulating the Repo Man
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the institution created by President Barack Obama in 2011 to protect and inform Americans with regards to financial products and services in the United States, announced yesterday that it plans to regulate student loan debt servicers, AKA the repo men of college debt. As the bureau explained:
CFPB proposed a rule today that would allow it to federally supervise certain nonbank student loan servicers for the first time. The rule would bring new
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Yesterday I wrote a piece over at Political Animal about the structural problems facing recent law school graduates. They’ve assumed too much debt for jobs that don’t pay well and often aren’t available.
But the racket continues. On Tuesday U.S. News & World Report released its much-anticipated annual ranking of law schools. On top, unsurprisingly, were the law schools of Harvard, Yale, and Stanford.
This resulted in another annual event; pushback from the schools not […]
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The new-found interest of Manchester's city fathers in science and technology is welcome, but in making strategies for economic development it is important to remember what it is that strengths in science and technology can, and cannot, buy usRecently, builders have broken ground for the new Manchester-based National Graphene Institute. Graphene, of course, is a new material extracted from graphite, a two-dimensional sheet of carbon a single atom thick. The properties of graphene have excited
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Calls for social scientists and historians to be given formal advisory roles in government may distract from the task of integrating insights from all disciplines.Sir John Beddington, the UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser, was in an upbeat mood as he gave evidence to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee this week. With just days left in the job until he hands over to Sir Mark Walport, Beddington joked with committee chair Andrew Miller MP: "I share your hope that we will
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March 14, 2013
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The University of Colorado at Boulder, apparently worried about criticism that its professors were too liberal (plus, you know, being the site of student events like this) has decided to hire conservative faculty.
Well, one of them. According to a press release by the school:
Steven Hayward has been appointed the first Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy, the University of Colorado Boulder announced today.
Hayward is tentatively scheduled to teach four undergraduate courses,
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1:50 PM | The “bridge” fuel that wasn’t
Among those who spend their working lives and/or spare time worrying about climate change, there are many subjects that still provoke heated debates, so to speak. Chief among them is the wisdom or folly of turning to natural gas as a “bridge” between the carbon-intensive oil- and coal-dominated present and the clean renewable future that…
March 13, 2013
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8:32 PM | Mississippi's Low Standards
In another truly awesome move, Mississippi, which earlier this week introduced legislation that would “bar counties and towns from enacting rules that require calorie counts to be posted, that cap portion sizes, or that keep toys out of kids’ meals,” is now working on education counter reform.
The Associated Press:
House members want Mississippians to keep their elected school superintendents.
And they don't think would-be teachers should need to score 21 on the ACT.
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In a surprising development, the state of California, unable to raise the necessary funds to meet full demand for its community colleges courses, may begin offering community college classes via massive open online courses (MOOCs), classes designed for large-scale participation and open access via the Internet.
California Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat, today introduced legislation that would, as Kevin Carey explains, allow
Waitlisted students... to take online
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