No one believes us, but here it is again: at least in Canada, humanities grads make more money three years out than social and physical & life science grads.
My pitch to the parents of potential students: We're not the worst! Just imagine your kids' future if they studied psychology or physics.
Today, learn about the 32 U.S coastal cities, affecting up to 500,000 people, that are at an increased risk of experiencing one or more major flooding events in the next twenty years, due to land subsidence and sea-level rise. https://news.vt.edu/articles/2024/01/research-sinkingcoasts.html
Yet another project we cannot prioritize highly enough with our limited spoons:
Track the % of times newspapers cover University and HS sports vs the % of times they cover actual important education issues at the same institutions and with the same level of long-term interest and detail.
#UK#HigherEd#Humanities#Universities#Goldsmiths: "More sinister is the sense that Freedman describes: “It’s hard not to think that a culture war is being evoked against you simply for trying to think independently and critically.” Science minister Michelle Donelan’s recent shameful attack on two academics, reporting them to UKRI (the national research-funding body) for extremism and blighting their lives over an accusation that was wholly without foundation, springs to mind – but then so does almost everything Donelan and education secretary Gillian Keegan say about the sector in general, and humanities in particular. All those references to “woke ideology”, “intolerant woke bullies” and “cancel culture” are increasingly accompanied by defunding of the humanities, using increased accessibility to education as a fig leaf, as Keegan announced last week.
“Your subjects are mocked and called low value,” Freedman says. “Arts, humanities and social sciences haven’t played the instrumentalist game, so they’re seen as easy targets by tabloids, by GB News. We would laugh it off, but this is a huge asset to the British economy.” More importantly, he continues, “it’s not just a tragedy – it’s almost like a crime to shrink those spaces that provide a home for the inquisitive, the experimental. If the space disappears, it’s very hard to recreate it.”" https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/apr/11/the-goldsmiths-crisis-how-cuts-and-culture-wars-sent-universities-into-a-death-spiral
I own the #copyright for the lectures I give to college students, but for some reason the #FBI has not yet contacted me with offers to prosecute anyone recording all or portions of my lectures without my written permission. I'm seriously considering putting an FBI warning at the beginning of every lecture. I think it might start good conversations about whose interests the cops choose to protect in American society.
🧵 A phenomenon keeps happening both online & in person that angers, saddens, & devalues me. So I'm attempting to explain why it has this effect & what I'd hope people would do instead.
When I arrived at UC Davis to prepare to start grad school in summer 2019, I found the first of many damaging ableisms - the cycle racks were not accessible to the types of cycles I ride. Yet I'd be cited & my bike impounded if I didn't park there. 1/? #Cycling#UCAccessNow#BikeTooter#Urbanism
Left-handed abled folks finding out that rationing accessibility doesn't work as well as making a highest common denominator accessible design in the first place.
Not that they'll notice that the accessibility they crave is actually part of a broader topic.
"The last poem read aloud was titled “If I Must Die.” It was written, hauntingly, by a Palestinian poet and academic named Refaat Alareer who was killed weeks earlier by an Israeli airstrike. The poem ends: “If I must die, let it bring hope — let it be a tale.”
Soon after those lines were recited, the university administration shut the reading down"
A pointed article about what is going wrong, in part, with academia.
“The growth of managerial and administrative grades responsible more and more for controlling academics rather than supporting them is one of the most important trends in the modern university. That structure emits a constant white noise and static of demands that don’t seem connected to lecturers’ training or aims”
#UK#London#Goldsmiths#Universities#Humanities#HigherEd#Neoliberalism#Austerity: "The most immediate and seemingly tangible rationale for these closures and reductions in provision is falling student numbers. But to focus on this is as if it was just a matter of student ‘choices’, market forces and the ebb and flow of fashionable and unfashionable subjects, is to obfuscate a series of interrelated factors that have made so many institutions and departments vulnerable to cuts. Turning to my own institution (where I am an active emeritus professor), there is a poignancy running through the words that follow. Quite independent of the intricacies of managerial decision making, Goldsmiths, University of London exemplifies all the admirable strengths and now the fragilities of the sector. It is not so much that Goldsmiths is such an exceptional case that it deserves singling out for special support (though that would be welcome). But rather, with a large number of compulsory redundancies announced in the last week alone, we not only need to pay critical attention with people’s livelihoods and family lives on the line, but we also need to take stock of what the future of higher education looks like in this increasingly bleak landscape. It is shocking news to us all, as the management are looking to lose 130 full-time equivalent positions across 11 departments. With so much at stake there must surely be other ways to secure financial stability. The reality is that Goldsmiths is a microcosm. It has always been something of an experiment in higher education (in the best possible sense) and now it stands to lose much of its identity and of the wider value it has delivered as an egalitarian institution dedicated to combining international research with a socially inclusive education." https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/a-goldsmiths-diary
“We aim to create a free, #OpenSource tool that will empower everyday users of social media to increase the diversity of information and posts in their social media feed,”
Bryan Boots, Ph.D.
Henry W. Bloch
School of Management
University of Missouri-Kansas City
I want a more current book on human evolution for freshman/sophomore college students to read that has the sensibilities of Chris Stringer's Lone Survivors: How We Came to Be the Only Humans on Earth
UT Austin bows to political pressure from white supremacist state senator Brandon Creighton and begins to purge staff involved in equity and diversity work.
Any other neurodivergent folks get every question wrong in the university's cyber security training or is that just me? I can almost always think of an exception to an answer and am currently failing mine.
"In response to a grad student worker strike, the school recommends that staff utilize generative AI tools “to give feedback or facilitate ‘discussion’ on readings or assignments.”"
"Columbia University is investigating a student event where speakers expressed support for Palestinian terror groups and encouraged students to back 'armed resistance' against Israel. The event on Sunday, titled 'Resistance 101,' was led by Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of student organizations."
"Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed an executive order Wednesday to combat antisemitism at universities in the state amid a surge in the problem across the nation and the world."