So, look, yesterday I linked to a report quantifying the fact that employers are increasing requiring college degrees for jobs that objectively do not need it. And over the weekend I speculated on how the financial aid system could be reformed, though I didn’t get very far. And before that I suggested that colleges have themselves to blame for helicopter parents, because they’ve raised tuition so high that parents can’t just sit back and hope for the best when they... Read more
Not much in the way of new developments since I first wrote about the Steven Salaita story — the board of trustees has now, by a vote of 8 to 1, rejected his candidacy, and Salaita says he’s going to sue. But in the meantime, I did find his dissertation online. Here it is: “The Holy Land in Transit: Colonialism and the Quest for Caanan.” This is imaged, rather than in html or another copy-able format, and I really only... Read more
Mondays, when the Trib features lots of wire reports and general human interest stories because its reporters had the weekend off. “Gun violence gave grandma heart-wrenching choice“: a report on a grandmother caring for her 3-year old grandson, who was severely damaged when his mother was shot and killed while she was 8 months pregnant. At birth, he was diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state, and doctors recommended she remove him from life support. Weeks later,... Read more
(This is just a draft, but I’ll post this for comment as I work on it.) Let’s do this step-by-step, starting with two conditions: 1. Student loans are dischargeable in bankruptcy. This seems common-sensical. We can add restrictions that loans must be a given number of years old, to try to limit abuse, or specify that they can only be a part of a debt-repayment plan type bankruptcy, rather than wiped out altogether. 2. Student loans are not government-issued or... Read more
(Note: I originally wrote this on September 11th, but I’m trying to get back to this and clean up some of the writing.) Ah, helicopter parents! It’s that time of year when, with kids starting/returning to college, there are routinely articles on parents who intervene inappropriately in high school and college, and beyond, horror stories in which they talk to professors about grades, RAs about bad roommate behavior, and prospective employers about the interview. But apparently we’ve entered a new... Read more
(I originally wrote this post this morning, and am now re-writing it in light of additional reading and thinking.) Last weekend, I read and wrote about a suspect study on college sexual assault, and another on sexual assault among women of all ages. Here’s a real-life story, from the local news section of the Chicago Tribune: “Local ‘Jeopardy!’ champ charged with child sex assault.” The basics of the story: a 28-year-old former Jeopardy champion, now working as a security guard... Read more
The short version of this story is that a professor who was slated to begin work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign had his job offer rescinded because of incendiary statements on Twitter about Israel, and is now, per this morning’s paper, threatening a lawsuit if he’s not reinstated. (Sample tweets: “If (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu appeared on TV with a necklace made from the teeth of Palestinian children, would anybody be surprised?” and “You may be too... Read more
Look, I know I’m late to the party. Everybody’s been busy mocking Amanda Marcotte for her piece in Slate calling for everyone to abandon the ideal of home-cooked meals because it’s too hard on the women who usually end up being the cooks of those meals. Everyone correctly observes that (a) cooking isn’t that hard if you have a basic understanding and some key go-to recipes and prepare in advance and (b) it’s healthier and cheaper than fast food, even... Read more
The other day, I had an idea for a project: rather than writing about whatever comes to mind or is in the news on any given day, I would read a an individual blogger’s posts and engage with and respond to them, one blogger at a time, for a week or so, with a focus on individual bloggers who are heavy on writing, light on links. How would I find them? My starting point was theothermccain.com, where Robert Stacy McCain... Read more
After reading through the CDC report that’s the source of the “1 in 5 college women are sexually assaulted” figure over the weekend, this morning, the Tribune had a brief article about a new CDC report. Looking online, I found this, from the Washington Post: “CDC: Nearly 1 in 5 women have been raped.” Having learned that the true figure from the report was more like “1.5% of women at large universities report being raped in a study of college... Read more
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