the rest of it

 another one from my 2006 academic blog... the student-eye view I've recently finished reading  My Freshman Year  by "Rebekah Nathan",  an ethnography of American university student culture written by a 50-something-year-old anthropology professor who went undercover, becoming a freshman in her own university. She was subjected to the induction, took courses, lived in the dorms and ate in the dining commons. While on the one hand I really enjoyed reading it, on the other hand it ended up being something of a disappointment. I can't say that it told me a lot that I don't know (students have pragmatic, career-oriented outlooks toward university, many cheat, they glorify belonging while thinking of themselves as individualists), but it would've been more interesting and given more insight, I think, if there had been more of the students' voice in it. In an epilogue, Nathan talks about the restrictions she put on herself in writing about the people she lived a...

Blogger has just told me that they're retiring a blog I haven't logged into since 2006. It's the anonymous academic blog I wrote (and no one read) before Separated by a Common Language. The economics of higher education are worse than then, but I think it still holds up.  I may move more of these posts over to this blog as I go through it... economic determinism A friend pointed out  an article in Slate  that discusses an economic study of what happens to PhDs who graduate to a good job market versus those who graduate in a bad market. The upshot is: in good job markets, talented people get hired by good universities and have productive careers. In bad markets, talented people get hired by mediocre universities and don't produce much. Not really a surprise--the people at the 'top 50 universities' (i.e. in the US) they're talking about generally have much lower courseloads than those at Podunk State--not to mention more pressure to produce and the infrastruct...