The painful truth about hand-wringing over whether Affirmative Action “harms” racial minorities is that no one cares if Affirmative Action harms racial minorities. The faux concern for the well-being of poor put-upon non-white students who are promoted beyond their ability never extends to concern for the many more white students who are surely promoted beyondRead More “The Great Mismatch”
Tag Archives: #LowerEd
Open and Accessible to What and For Whom? Reflections on ICDE 2015
The International Conference on Open and Distance Education was hosted by the University of South Africa this month. Paul Prinsloo put together a truly remarkable set of keynote addresses and invited me to present the opening keynote. I have more than a few reflections, many of which are probably beyond the scope of a postRead More “Open and Accessible to What and For Whom? Reflections on ICDE 2015”
Becoming An Advisor
If you have been keeping track, I’m now an assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University. I’m also a faculty associate at the Berkman Institute for Internet & Society. And, I’m a contributing editor at Dissent and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. It’s a lot. I love it all. This post is aboutRead More “Becoming An Advisor”
Credit Scores, Life Chances, and Algorithms
There’s a great article in The Nation this week about social media and ad hoc credit scoring. Can Facebook assign you a score you don’t know about but that determines your life chances? Traditional credit scores like your FICO or your Beacon score can determine your life chances. By life chances, we generally mean howRead More “Credit Scores, Life Chances, and Algorithms”
Writing About Living: My Corinthian Comments
These are not the kinds of things that academics admit to. That is why I have spent two years tied up in knots about merging my lived experiences with my data. But, even if I didn’t have years of experience working in for-profit colleges I would be closer to recent stories than most. My cousinRead More “Writing About Living: My Corinthian Comments”
Creating #Havoc at #VCUSOCY
It may surprise you to learn that I live a great deal of my life off-line. I know, I know, hear me out on this fantastical possibility. Recently, I’ve been offline meeting some of the most brilliant scholars across the country and I am beyond pleased to say that I have found a home amongRead More “Creating #Havoc at #VCUSOCY”
A Year of Sociology, Higher Ed and Blood-letting
My dear friend and collaborator Audrey Watters writes a massive end of year review on education and technology at her place, Hack Education. I do not share Audrey’s stamina but I have dabbled in end-of-year retrospectives. At the start of 2014, I considered higher education research’s engagement with race theory and racial inequality. Almost ten monthsRead More “A Year of Sociology, Higher Ed and Blood-letting”
Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You but What Coursera Can Do For Your Country, Part 1
In my little corner of the world where I study credentialism, labor markets, technology and inequality today’s announcement from Coursera is pretty huge: The First Lady, Michelle Obama took to the stage as a keynote speaker at the Women’s Veterans’ Employability Summit today to announce Coursera’s new partnership with the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA). The jointRead More “Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You but What Coursera Can Do For Your Country, Part 1”
The Rebirth of Cool: Trust, Tech, and Dystopias
I did a cool thing today. I MOOC’d. That is, I joined Justin Reich’s massive open online course “Massive: The Future of Learning at Scale“. Justin is a guru at Harvard’s EdX and the class was being hosted on MIT’s “unHangout” platform. I don’t know exactly where the course is housed. I visited a classRead More “The Rebirth of Cool: Trust, Tech, and Dystopias”
New Gainful Regs: For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?
For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? — Matthew 16:26, something called The Bye-bul? Not to get all Old Testament on that thing, but this verse came to mind as I woke up to news of the new gainful employment regulations released today. It’s the kind of verse IRead More “New Gainful Regs: For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?”