From the Editor

From the Editor: Waiting for Norma Rae

The two main characters in Samuel Beckett’s most famous play have been the subject of much speculation. One eminent scholar noted that Vladimir and Estragon sounded as if they had earned PhDs.

“How do you know they hadn’t?” Beckett, the provocateur, replied.

From the Editor: Belts and Corsets

Feminist essayist Katha Pollitt has argued convincingly that just beyond the current attacks on reproductive health care lies a myriad of less visible ways that federal, state, and local government cutbacks, “touted as neutral and necessary belt-tightening,” will fall disproportionately on women.

And that is true in our universities as well. Contingent faculty are disproportionately women and are thus being laid off disproportionately. The same is true of staff. And it is also true of women’s and gender studies programs.

From the Editor: Loose Talk Of Tulips

There you go again, Ronald Reagan’s education secretary, William Bennett, scathingly told universities in a 1987 New York Times column, “Our Greedy Colleges.” Students don’t deserve tax support. “On average, college graduates earn $640,000 more over their lifetimes than non-graduates do. It is simply not fair to ask taxpayers, many of whom do not go to college, to pay more than their fair share of the tuition burden.”

Don’t Know Much Biology

For a decade, I’ve used zoological metaphors to capture the complex relationship between archconservative foundations and higher education. At times, I may have stretched the metaphors to where they lost both illustrative power and accuracy. I said things about how barracudas reproduce, for example, that I’m not sure would have passed muster with my fisheries-biologist father. As end-of-grade testing approaches, I’ve resolved to tighten my metaphors, even if some are left behind. If you all could sharpen your number-two pencils?

From the Editor: No Entrance

Three years ago, I became the editor of Academe. This is my last issue. Editing the magazine has been enormously rewarding.

Though I’m a pessimist, I often remain cheerful. Even when I think the glass is two-thirds empty, I can find ways to enjoy whatever juice is left in the bottom. Still, I’m shocked by how much worse off higher education is now than it was when I became editor. By almost every measure. Of all of the things that dismay and exercise me, of the multitude of scandals and crises in higher education, one subsumes them all.

Pictures of an Education

In “My Pedagogic Creed,” John Dewey writes, “I believe that the question of method is ultimately reducible to the question of the order of development of the child’s powers and interests. The law for presenting and treating material is the law implicit within the child’s own nature.” Teaching centers on the student, not on learning outcomes or assessment.

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