Clipmarks | dmegivern's 'academia' clips

Considering Social Class in Grad Admissions

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:12:20 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

In Grad Admissions, Where Is Class?

In the debate over affirmative action in undergraduate admissions, some have suggested that colleges need broader definitions of diversity — and that they should consider socioeconomic class as well as such factors as race and ethnicity. Many colleges do so, and explicitly note that they are trying to recruit “first generation” students or those from low-income families.

Oldfield notes in the article that the political science association has repeatedly issued various reports and studies calling for the discipline to be fully inclusive and to consider issues of class. But there’s not much evidence of anyone paying attention, he finds, at least in grad admissions.

Oldfield stressed that he was not arguing that there is an either/or dilemma with existing measures of diversity and socioeconomic class. “I don’t think we should replace one with the other. I think diversity really means diversity and that class should be thrown into the mix,” he said.

Tags: academia, class

Hmm, Pothead Ph.D.

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:49:53 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: chronicle.com

Pothead Ph.D.

I never would have made it this far in graduate school without the aid of marijuana.

I think my pot smoking has helped smooth out the roughness of a Ph.D. program. And frankly, I think the disturbing issue with a younger generation of graduate students is that they don't toke up enough. Instead many indulge in things far worse, both for them physically and for the humanities.

I'm an insomniac who averages four to five hours of sleep a night. The best way to deal with a sleeping problem is with regular exercise. But it's nice to have a secret weapon to knock me out on days when I can't make it to the gym. I'm certainly better off than peers who have flirted with Xanax addictions, or who waste their stipends on genuinely worthless stuff like Ambien or Lunesta.

Of course I've often felt troubled, politically, by my marijuana use: Here I am in the comfort of my apartment while unfortunate people are incarcerated for selling it to me.

Tags: academia, marijuana

Diversity, Discourse, and the Working Class Student

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 21:56:20 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: www.aaup.org

Diversity, Discourse, and the Working-Class Student

Everybody likes "diversity." But, sometimes, all the talk about it hides complicated realities.

By Janet Galligani Casey

For example, the working-class student is not well served by our current discourses on big-d Diversity. Attending to the special circumstances of lower-class students brings to the fore the many ways in which our diversity rhetoric continues to gloss over certain forms of cultural difference, and continues, in an unreflective manner, to advance the middle-class ideology of the academy as the normative one.

We might think for a moment about the entirely negative proposition of "outing" oneself as the child of a janitor or, in some settings, merely admitting that one's parents did not attend college—types of difference to which virtually no social value adheres.

Tags: academia, working.class, diversity, college

Discrimination Based on Social Class in Academia

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 22:03:11 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: www.aaup.org

How Liberal Arts Colleges Perpetuate Bias

When you hire only those who have attended schools like yours, you practice discrimination.

By Michael J. Shott

Class bias persists in the academy. Class bias in higher education is not a recent phenomenon; it’s the reason we needed the GI Bill. In 1979, sociologists Seymour Martin Lipset and Everett Ladd concluded in an essay published in Qualitative and Quantitative Social Research: Papers in Honor of Paul F. Lazarsfeld that “prestigious, research-oriented institutions have drawn their professors disproportionately from the higher social strata.” Sociologists Robert McGinness and J. Scott Long wrote in 1988 in The Academic Profession: The Professoriate in Crisis that “the rewards of prestigious academic positions are much better correlated with measures of pedigree than of productivity.”

Class is the whale in the living room whose stinking carcass polite academic society politely ignores.

Tags: academia, social.class, college

American Academics

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:42:14 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern
clipper's remarks: I honestly believe that conservative rationale and thinking is less complex and evolved than progressive thought. It makes sense to me that places where highly intelligent people gather will therefore tend to be liberal.

Clip Source: chronicle.com

Few Conservatives but Many Centrists Found in American Academe

By DAVID GLENN

Conservatives are a small minority within the American professoriate, according to a major study whose results were released on Saturday. The study -- which is arguably the best-designed survey of American faculty beliefs since the early 1970s -- found that only 9.2 percent of college instructors are conservatives, and that only 20.4 percent voted for George W. Bush in 2004.

Tags: academia, liberal, progressive, politics

The Dark Side of Academia

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 18:33:31 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern
clipper's remarks: This article discusses academics who don't become "stars"

Clip Source: chronicle.com

Is Graduate School a Cult?

For all its claims to the contrary, graduate education does not seem to enhance the mental freedom of many students, some of whom are psychologically damaged by the experience. As Newhouse suggested -- perhaps more rhetorically than seriously -- graduate school these days seems to have a lot in common with mind-control cults.

For anyone who has been in graduate school, numerous portions of Hassan's outline of the mind-control practices of cults will seem weirdly familiar. Reading through it, your initial tendency may be to laugh out loud. But proceed down the list and the parallels between cults and the experiences of many graduate students can become mildly disturbing.

Behavior control:

Information control:

Thought control:

Emotional control:

Maybe thinking of graduate school as a "cult" is silly. What's the difference between indoctrination and professionalization, anyway?

There are jobs out there for smart, creative people that don't expect you to sell your soul.

Tags: academia, professorship, education, college, graduate.school