The Corporate City or the Scholarly Enclave?
Choosing a university isn’t about truth, beauty, or the quality of the dining hall. It’s about people.
Tagged: College
Thursday Night Bar Fight #8: The Darker Side of Higher Education in the 21st Century
Note: This post is part of our League Symposium on Higher Education in the 21st Century. You can read the introductory post for the Symposium here. To see a list of all posts in the...
System Failure: What David Brooks Doesn’t Get About Meritocracy — And Why He Never Will
David Brooks’s latest, this one on the meritocracy, is a good example of how all the right questions and smart anaylsis in the world is not going to make up for a totally wrong premise...
What I Wish My Students Knew
There was a really wonderful and moving article in the New York Times the other day about how for poor students, getting to college is only the beginning of the battle. They often fail...
The Kids Aren’t Alright
By James Vonder Haar When I took my first practice LSAT, the day after my father’s funeral, I scored in the 45th percentile. Six months of night classes, daily practice sections, and weekly practice...
“College is not for everybody”
A caller on NPR’s Talk of the Nation offered a very interesting story about whether a college degree is a sound investment. Note the reflexive defense from Kathleen Shea Smith, a student counselor who...
Debt and Career Choices
The President wants to keep student loans cheap. Because I believe in higher education with all of my heart and soul, it would seem natural for me to support this proposal. As the parent...
On the value of higher education
Here’s James Poulos on higher education, claiming things like: We fixate on higher education as the key to employment because no other institution but college really acculturates Americans into “legitimate” society. Those who do...
Undergraduate education and the aura of expertise
Rufus, our rogue classicist, has written a smart response to that Chronicle of Higher Education article on a guy who makes his living writing students’ papers. In the original post, I kinda-sorta gestured at...
An Education
There are many things that can be said about this incredibly depressing article – written by a guy who makes a living writing papers for college students – from The Chronicle of Higher Education....
Wes Anderson: The College Years
The New York Times digs up Anderson and Owen Wilson’s contributions to Analecta, UT’s student literary magazine.
Questioning educational patriotism
I’m a bit late to the great education debate, which is unfortunate because I did have a few thoughts on it. My own take isn’t really connected to the need to create a more...
The Demand-Driven Prestige Racket
The Washington Monthly’s college rankings issue is an excellent read, and I hope their list of dropout factories generates an appropriate level of heartburn for crummy administrators (their list of top community colleges is...
Padding Your Resume
Sometimes, I think I missed my true calling as a fabulist. TNR posts the hilariously overwrought resume of Adam Wheeler, a guy who literally conned his way into Harvard (and is apparently fluent in...
Does is it pay to attend college?
Maybe – but it helps if you go into science and technology…graphic after the jump…
Harvard as Hogwarts?
I’m a few years removed from the college admissions process, but this is a pretty novel selling point.
Corrugated Degree Factories
Over at the Daily Dish, Lane Wallace bravely defends the liberal arts (from whom, I wonder – colleges’ burgeoning admissions rolls?), arguing that a humanities degree is somehow necessary to grasp ambiguity and encourage...
