I have just returned from the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. I was there to participate in a small conference honoring Edward O. Wilson, the well-known evolutionist. Although he spent his working life at Harvard, Wilson comes from the South and is a graduate of the University of Alabama. These days, Wilson (who celebrated his 80th birthday last year) has moved beyond straight science. His big interest is in biodiversity and the threat that modern life poses to the earth’s natural habitats, especially the destruction of the tropics and even more especially the Brazilian rain forests. For Wilson, this is a personal campaign, because as a world-leading expert on the ants, he has spent many a summer foraging in the forests, looking for and examining these tiny (and very abundant) creatures.

Wilson has written many books, but I am sure that posterity will highlight one above the...

Last month I wrote about how Southeastern University in Washington, DC finally collapsed in de-accreditation after being allowed to persist in mediocrity and failure for far too long, leaving a trail of dropouts, loan defaults, and frustrated students in its wake. Now comes news that seven of those students have sued the university for fraud in DC Superior Court--or to be more precise, sued the Graduate School, which absorbed the remnants of Southeastern after the university's doors shuttered last fall. The plaintiffs are asking for $10-million in punitive damages and millions more in compensation. You can read the complaint here.

I don't know how strong the case is from a legal standpoint. But its's worth considering some excerpts from the particulars, all of which ring true:

In exchange for the promises made by the Defendant, the Plaintiffs paid substantial amounts of money in...

I'm always asked by grad students who have just finished or who are about to finish their dissertation how it "feels to be done."

Here's a version of my response. I'd like to hear yours.

It takes a moment, so stay with me for this one, okay?

Consider the following scenario presented by Brides magazine: "After months of planning, endless phone calls, and entertaining relatives from out of town, the big day was all over. Rather than feeling relieved, as she'd anticipated, [the bride] was depressed. 'I'd put my heart into it, and it was like someone had just died,' she recalls. It might have helped [her] to know that such feelings are not only normal, but also healthy, according to Professor Edward Bader, M.A., of the department of family and community medicine at the University of Toronto. 'Any event has some letdown, because you've channeled your energy in that direction. Afterward, there...

The National Association of Colleges and Employers has released Winter 2010 results of its ongoing survey of starting salaries for different bachelor degrees. Here are the top ten:

Petroleum Engineering $86,220

Chemical Engineering $65,142

Mining and Mineral Engineering $64,552

Computer Science $61,205

Computer Engineering $60,879

Electrical/Electronics & Communications Engineering $59,074

Mechanical Engineering $58,392

Industrial/Manufacturing Engineering $57,734

Aerospace/Aeronautical/Astronautical Engineering $57,231

Information Sciences & Systems $54,038

A...

Although I’m not Catholic, I’ve followed the sex-abuse scandal in the Catholic Church with a fair amount of interest. Reading Maureen Dowd’s column, “A Nope for Pope,” in yesterday’s New York Times, I was struck by the gap between the way of thinking within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and the way of thinking in the modern world.

To the Church, the sex-abuse scandals that have emerged over the past couple of decades are a temporary blight—a bad thing, to be sure, but one that’s been blown way out of proportion by the media. To Dowd, a modern woman brought up as a Catholic, the sex scandals add up to something rotten in the state of the Vatican itself. In a column that is both poignant and futile, Dowd offers a pie-in-the-sky solution for Catholics: Elect a “Nope” (a darling neologism meaning a “a nun who becomes a pope”).

If the Catholic Church consisted of monks living in...

The Obama administration's "Blueprint for Reform" was released a couple of weeks ago to much fanfare. It hasn't attracted much attention in the higher-education world because it's a plan to reauthorize the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act. But if you're in the teacher-preparation business or you work for a university-based school of education, a couple of provisions are worth noting.

First, on top of page 15, is a call for "state-level data systems that link information on teacher- and principal-preparation programs to the job placement, student growth, and retention outcomes of their graduates." Translation: the administration wants to keep track of where students go to work after they leave teacher-preparation programs. Then it wants to gauge how effective those former students are at teaching, by measuring how much their students' scores grow over the course of a year...

The American Association of University Women recently released its new report, Why So Few?, which aims to identify the causes of the gender gap in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, graduate programs and careers.  The report highlights the progress that has been made in closing the gap in some fields, yet expresses concern that in other fields, most notably engineering and computer science, the gap remains pronounced. 

Not only do fewer women than men make it to the upper echelons of academic STEM careers, but a higher percentage of women than men leave the field by midcareer (although I would guess that men with children and professional wives may leave the field at a rate that approaches that of women with children, as opposed to men who have children and stay-at-home wives).

What are the reasons for this persistent gap?  According to the report, social and...

Here's a notice in Business Week about a study whose findings are published in the April issue of Psychological Science.  The study covered 64 boys age 6 to 9, giving one group a video game system at one point in time, the other group a system four months later.  Researchers gave boys reading, writing, and math tests at the beginning, then after the first four months.

The finding: "Boys who received and started playing video games right away spent less time doing homework and other after-school activities than the boys without video game systems, the study found.  They also did not do as well on follow-up reading and writing tests, although no difference between the groups was found in the math scores."

It should be no surprise that kids who play video games at home will cut down on homework and related activities such as book reading.  As one expert in the piece put it, "It's a...

Last night my wife and I went to a terrific performance of David Mamet's  early play, American Buffalo, at  the McCarter Theater here in Princeton.  This is a classic of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater.  The production was superb and the acting was first-rate, though there were a majority of empty seats in the balcony, where we were seated.  Both the play and the performance deserved a full house, and I hope last night was an exception, especially since the New York Times had given the show high marks.

The last time I had been in the McCarter, about two weeks ago, was for a very different sort of performance -- a public discussion of the state of arts funding in the United States.  The occasion was a visit by Michael Kaiser, the President of the Kennedy Center for the Arts (Washington, D.C.) as part of his tour of all 50 states to touch base with local arts organizations.  I gather that...

Am I the only one who doesn't read many of the emails I get announcing no-doubt fabulous things going on around my campus?

I feel bad about being a bad citizen, but not bad enough to read most of them all the way through. I hate myself for not taking advantage of everything that's being offered, but not enough not to go home when I'm done with my classes, office hours, and my own research.

One of the many unreasonable fantasies I had as a graduate student was that when I became a full-time faculty member and would therefore have all the time in the world (my first mistake because of course things never get easier, just more complicated) I would go to all sorts of events happening in the glorious community of which I would be a part. I...