I have five minutes before I wax poetic on qualitative interviewing in class. This is a serious drive-by post. Matt Yglesias over at Slate has an interesting blurb today about higher education, cheap-ocity and quality. (Thanks to Sherman Dorn for the signal). Ikea, for example, has not risen to power by manufacturing better furniture thanRead More “The “Ikea” Degree? A Value Proposition”
Monthly Archives: March 2013
How For-Profit Colleges Are Rebuilding The Middle Class?
That’s the title of this infographic using statistics from the professional organization that represents most of the country’s for-profit colleges and institutes: It is truly hard for me to know where to begin. So, let me begin at the beginning. Beginnings are funny things, empirically and theoretically. Where you choose to begin your analysis, temporallyRead More “How For-Profit Colleges Are Rebuilding The Middle Class?”
HigherEd Prestige Cartels: My Latest on MOOCs, 4profits in Inside Higher Ed
Last week when I asked a classroom full of Georgia State University students why they didn’t apply to Everest College, I got a range of giggles and choruses of “I don’t need to get off my couch!” That’s standard. So, too, was the inevitable response from the young woman in the back: “Because they’re, like…they’reRead More “HigherEd Prestige Cartels: My Latest on MOOCs, 4profits in Inside Higher Ed”
When You Are The Demographic You Study: Interrogation of Self versus Going Native
One of my least favorite academic concepts is the anthropological “going native“. This idea that one can become so immersed in the culture or phenomena one is studying that they lose objectivity is rife with cultural, imperialist, racist ideas of knowledge, understanding, and science. But, I have to give anthropology credit for at least articulatingRead More “When You Are The Demographic You Study: Interrogation of Self versus Going Native”
How “Admissions” Works Differently At For-Profit Colleges: Sorting and Signaling
In the dominant discourse you hear two lines about for-profit colleges. They are either the solution to expansion and access problems in the traditional college sector, which has ignored non-traditional students, or they are draining the federal coffers dry by accelerating the privitization of public education. Despite what some argue, I actually come down aRead More “How “Admissions” Works Differently At For-Profit Colleges: Sorting and Signaling”
On White Women’s Anger
I once wrote an article calling Barack Obama a fraud for his treatment of Shirley Sherrod. I may or may not have cussed him out, actually. That post got fewer angry emails, comments, tweets, and general responses than has my analysis of the white feminist response to The Onion’s attack on Quvenzhané Willis. Seriously. Certainly,Read More “On White Women’s Anger”