This should have been, if not easy, then certainly not a disaster. When I was in admissions I killed my peers in productivity because I spoke the same language as our students. While my history of poverty was comparatively shallow, it was not non-existent. I’ve used the oven to a heat a home and washedRead More “Presenting Selves: Race, Social Class, Gender and Intersectionality in Ethnography”
Story Behind The Story: Does HIgherEd Know Its Neediest Students During the Shutdown?
This week’s column at Counter Narrative picks up on the national discussion about the federal government shutdown. As a highered person I have kept an eye on how the shutdown will affect students. I’m not the only one. But by day two of the media coverage it did seem that I was the only oneRead More “Story Behind The Story: Does HIgherEd Know Its Neediest Students During the Shutdown?”
On Mentorship and Advice
I participate in a lot of college prep programs designed to help minority and first-generation students navigate academia. I also take any survey someone shoves in my face and answer any call for research participants for which I may be even remotely qualified. I do all of the above because of where I exist alongRead More “On Mentorship and Advice”
When You Forget to Whistle Vivaldi
Last week Johnathan Ferrell had a horrible car crash. He broke out the back window to escape and walked, injured, to the nearest home hoping for help. Ferrell may have been too hurt, too in shock to remember to whistle Vivaldi. Ferrell is dead. Social psychologist Claude Steele revolutionized our understanding of the daily contextRead More “When You Forget to Whistle Vivaldi”
A Quick Note on For-Profits and Policy Interventions
We have a theoretical conundrum when it comes to explaining the expansion of for-profit colleges. Gilbert, Saunders, and Stoddard (2013) sum up this conundrum as a puzzle of why so many would self-select (Chung 2012) into expensive, narrow career training with contested outcomes. That puzzle limits effective policy interventions. As you can see in theRead More “A Quick Note on For-Profits and Policy Interventions”
On Loving Libraries
I love libraries. I love librarians. A post from my friend at the Intellectual History blog brought to mind how my personal love of all things library-ish relates to some larger concerns about structure, intellectual capital, and public sphere. I have resisted considering my fetish for physical books as an object of serious inquiry. ItRead More “On Loving Libraries”
When Your Hired Guns Are Hacks: Big Thinkers on HigherEd
Look, I embrace that I am a nobody. It works for me. However, where and when possible, I extend what applied knowledge and expertise I have to issues that I think matter. This blog is an exercise in that activity. I do not do it because it pays well or because I think I haveRead More “When Your Hired Guns Are Hacks: Big Thinkers on HigherEd”
Fall 2013: Public Lectures
In my other life I research for-profit higher education and inequality. As a necessary complement to those interests I also study structural change, labor, and the morass that is today’s higher education “disruption” economy. MOOCs (C and X), DOOCs, badges, stamps, burn books and whatever else we’ve come up with lately. While I will beRead More “Fall 2013: Public Lectures”
On Arguments
I have this content highlighted throughout my blog but now seemed an opportune time to aggregate. I believe structure exists. If you do not believe in structure almost nothing I ever argue will make sense to you. Agency matters but is constrained by many processes beyond our immediate purview, much less our control. It makesRead More “On Arguments”
When Your (Brown) Body is a (White) Wonderland
This may meander. Miley Cyrus made news this week with a carnival-like stage performance at the MTV Video Music Awards that included life-size teddy bears, flesh-colored underwear, and plenty of quivering brown buttocks. Almost immediately after the performance many black women challenged Cyrus’ appropriation of black dance (“twerking”). Many white feminists defended Cyrus’ right toRead More “When Your (Brown) Body is a (White) Wonderland”