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POPSHarvard's decision on financial aid puts other colleges in a tough spot
Harvard has pledged that no family making under about $180K will have to pay more than 10% of its income in tuition. This makes other college administrators very nervous, since they can't come close to duplicating that deal, especially without raising tuition for other students. One tuition-payer's advocate says it's a step in the right direction because it "puts pressure" on other institutions to start cutting costs, such as in areas of faculty salaries and "internet services," and adds that schools should operate more like businesses. Sorry for the rant, but that's a crock of shit. Only in America, where everything is supposed to be a saleable commodity, and where education is treated as a consumer product, do people go around saying this kind of crap. Why on earth is "operating like a business" a sensible ideal for a college to aspire to? It's not a fucking business, it's an institution of learning. It's not like a Wal-Mart or a travel agency, okay?
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POPSUK educator decries domination of education by management-oriented language An Oxford professor examines the gradual takeover of all policy writing on education by the language of business management: "efficiency," "providers," "audits," "performance indicators," etc. This kind of thinking, he says, has gradually obscured any legitimate answer to the question of what education is really supposed to accomplish.
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POPSA scientist and a mother on plastic baby bottles Ursinus College biologist Rebecca Roberts writing on the presence of the compound bisphenol-A in many plastic products for babies. An excellent, reflective article on the dilemmas involved with integrating science in everyday concerns. From PubMed.
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POPSRav Joseph Soloveitchik: a few links Soloveitchik was one of the towering figures of the Modern Orthodoxy movement in Judaism, the author of Halakhic Man and The Lonely Man of Faith. I've always wanted to learn more about him.
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POPSProblem-based learning (PBL) in a biochemistry course Hal White of the University of Delaware (a major center for developing PBL strategies) gives an informal introduction to his style of using current and classic research to develop the "problems" that his students will tackle in the classroom.
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POPSFlickr + Library of Congress: Flickr Commons What a great idea. Collaborative tagging and description for publicly-owned, historic photos. Some creative thought re copyrights as well -- they've introduced a new designation, "No known copyright restrictions." Cool.
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POPSSwift's Tale of a Tub (complete e-text) The classic, surreal, bizarre work of satire by Swift. I've clipped (part of) my favorite section, where he talks about the way "vapours" from the gut rise to the brain and inspire supposed genius (e.g. political, military, religious leadership).
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POPSSlavoj Žižek on the Matrix This is Žižek's famous 1999 essay, "The Two Sides of Perversion." I'm clipping it because I intend to read it; the bits I've looked at are very good.
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POPSSlavoj Žižek on the Matrix, #2 Another Žižek essay, "Welcome to the Desert of the Real," from 2001. Also on my reading list. Looks more closely at the images of violence and devastation and their role in the popular, post-9/11 imagination.
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