1. Ask the job candidate to state his or her maternal grandmother's maiden name. If the candidate knows it, that candidate is a female.

2. Put a round rubber object on the table. If the candidate picks it up and simply looks at it, the candidate is female. If the person starts throwing the object into the air as high as possible or at the wall as hard as possible within 10 seconds, the person is male.

3. Make available several small "free" items -- such as packets of sugar, Band-Aids, Post-It notes, miniature Sharpies, and/or multi-colored paperclips. If the person fills up pockets, handbags, and cheeks with as many of these items as possible in order to take them home, that person is...

In response to my recent blog about the conversion to an all DL program, Kevin Carey, a person I admire and respect deeply (and with whom I almost always agree) countered with a compilation of his, Ben Miller's and Jason Delisle's thoughts. Since Jason and Ben are former colleagues, I appreciate that they both chimed in since I know that together they have spent a great deal of time and energy thinking about student loan issues.  This is precisely the kind of dialogue that the higher education policy world needs since people with deep knowledge of the topic and a similar appreciation for the benefits of higher education can have different opinions and thoughts about how to solve some of the great challenges we face.  Through this sort of dialogue, we might be able to rise above political posturing and actually come to some good solutions. 

I must remember that I am a man, and that consequently I am in the habit of sleeping, and in my dreams representing to myself the same things or sometimes even less probable things, than do those who are insane in their waking moments. How often has it happened to me that in the night I dreamt that I found myself in this particular place, that I was dressed and seated near the fire, whilst in reality I was lying undressed in bed! At this moment it does indeed seem to me that it is with eyes awake that I am looking at this paper; that this head which I move is not asleep, that it is deliberately and of set purpose that I extend my hand and perceive it; what happens in sleep does not appear so clear nor so distinct as does all this. But in thinking over this I remind myself that on many occasions I have in sleep been deceived by similar illusions, and in dwelling carefully...

Paul Basken's article, "Complexities Grow for the Student Loan Bill as Senate Action Finally Draws Near," provides an insightful update on the challenges that the Administration will face in eliminating the bank-based Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program and converting to the government-run Direct Loan (DL) program. The ironies associated with this effort are numerous. As Paul points out, on one hand the Administration is trying to garner support for another jobs bill, yet on the other, it wants to eliminate an entire industry. On one hand, the Department of Education is complaining about the horrible behavior of FFEL lenders, yet on the other, they will hire a few of them to be the contractual servicers of the loans issued by...

In response to the question Diane Auer Jones poses below about student loan reforms, my colleague Ben Miller (who has a frighteningly detailed understanding of the intricacies of federal loan policy) offers the following:

Because the piece has a lot going on, let's go through it one step at a time. Jones writes:

On one hand the Administration is trying to garner support for another jobs bill, yet on the other, it wants to eliminate an entire industry.

No matter how you run the numbers, the entire student loan industry will NOT be eliminated. In the doomsday scenario, about one-third of the 35,000 jobs--about 11,550--could be lost, but it's also

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial today on student protests in the UC system, entitled "California's College Dreamers." The piece opens by chastising students for not investigating the tuition hikes enough to discover "that compensation packages won from the state by unions were a big reason for the hike."

The editorial notes that the UC system lost out on $800 million dollars alone this year after the state diverted $3 billion to cover rising government worker pension costs. The skyrocketing costs the editors attribute to a 1999 bill in which state legislators refigured pension benefits on the assumption that "investment returns would grow at a 8.25% rate in perpetuity." Among other things, the bill refigured benefits for public-safety employees that had a...

How smart can a rock band be? Super-smart, that's how smart. If you have 2 minutes to spare, turn on your sound, click HERE, and enjoy a delightful rock n' roll romp through Western art history. The Franco-American band, Hold Your Horses, will delight anyone with even the least sense of humor and the littlest bit of knowledge about painting. I played this for my advanced painting class yesterday (a sort of on-the-spot midterm), and I’m here to report that my students passed this little exam with flying colors. My personal favorite is “Las Meninas,” but “The Raft of the Medusa" gives it a run for its money.

Ashley Thorne of the National Association of Scholars has written a response / rebuttal to my new Chronicle column, which argues that cash-strapped colleges and universities would benefit from a "Race to the Top" for higher education. She's friendly about it and agrees with some of my points, but in the end we have very different ideas about the appropriate scope of higher education. 

On the particulars, Thorne seems to share many of my views about the need to improve preparation, reduce remediation, facilitate credit transfer, help people learn and graduate and get good jobs and so on. But underlying her critique is a strong thread of conviction that too many people are going to college. And I just...

What's worse than David Horowitz's brand of right-wing drivel giving yellow journalism a bad name? A ghost-authored Horowitz sequel, padded with over 150 witless, tendentious summaries of courses that the compilers erroneously imagine will frighten middle America into hauling the faculty up the nearest telephone pole.

The current issue of American Book Review highlights their Top 40 Bad Books. Heading the list for me is One-Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America's Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine Our Democracy, by Horowitz and Jacob Laksin. Since I often can't make time to review excellent books, I don't usually waste pixels on bad ones. But one has to make an exception for the epic badness of Horowitz's failed hit job.

At least the first book in this series,...

The other day my sister the epidemiologist overheard me talking about the writing problems of undergraduates and she jumped in with, "It's a real problem for us, too." She outlined one instance.  When senior researchers conceive their projects, one of the first things they do is ask assistants of various types (interns, etc.) to conduct a "literature review." That means reading up on the topic and summarizing every relevant study, report, essay, etc. Each item gets a one-page synopsis, a clear and short and simple but comprehensive description. No critical thinking required, and no other "21st-century skills" needed, either. 

According to her, more and more young people rising in the sciences have a hard time with it, and it's blocking the progress of research.

Her conclusion agrees with a survey conducted by Hart Research Associates on...