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By tmcmahon on May 15, 2012
Critique of Key Figure in Series on Student Loans
Inside Higher Education
May 15, 2012 – 4:18am
“Degrees of Debt,” a series of articles in The New York Times this week, explores the impact of rising student debt with compelling stories of individual borrowers and their families. The series has generated considerable discussion among higher education leaders, many of whom don’t dispute the central premise that some students are borrowing more than is appropriate. But some are objecting to a key statistic and the choice of examples in the series. The series opens with an example of a woman who borrowed $120,000 for an undergraduate degree, and goes on to say that “nearly everyone pursuing a bachelor’s degree is borrowing.” Then it says that 94 percent of students borrow for an undergraduate education….
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/05/15/critique-key-figure-series-student-loans
Posted in Tim's Tips | Tagged Class, Higher Education, Tim's Tips
By tmcmahon on May 15, 2012
New Guidance on Disability Accommodation
Inside Higher Education
May 15, 2012 – 3:00am
To help colleges ensure that their approach to disability documentation and accommodations requests is appropriate and equitable, in the wake of multiple federal guidelines changes that have made the work more complicated, the Association on Higher Education and Disability released new guidance on Monday. “Although the amendments and regulatory revisions occurred through separate federal processes, together they reflect a more mature understanding of disability that is essential for fostering a positive campus perspective on disability,” AHEAD wrote. “The concepts described in this document are interrelated components of a comprehensive, professional approach to using disability documentation to make informed decisions.” The guidance notes that requiring “extensive” medical and scientific evidence of a disability is “inappropriate and burdensome,” and explains how accommodations should be made on a case-by-case basis using a “commonsense standard” and “relevant but not necessarily ‘recent’” information.
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/05/15/new-guidance-disability-accommodation
Posted in Tim's Tips | Tagged Higher Education, Students with Disabilities, Tim's Tips
By tmcmahon on May 15, 2012
Booms, Busts and College Ambitions
Inside Higher Education
May 15, 2012 – 3:00am
By Doug Lederman
Home prices soared in San Francisco in the late 1990s, boomed in Miami in the early 2000s, and rose throughout that period for many New York City residents. And many of the low- and middle-income home owners who saw the value of their houses climb in the several years before their children turned 18 used their newfound assets to enroll them in more selective (and more expensive) colleges than they would have otherwise, researchers at Cornell and Kent State Universities have found….
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/15/families-used-housing-windfalls-send-their-kids-pricier-colleges
Posted in Tim's Tips | Tagged Class, Higher Education, Tim's Tips
By tmcmahon on May 15, 2012
A Learning Environment for All
May 14, 2012, 11:46 am
The Chronicle of Higher Education
By Eliana Osborn
Do you ever have students who don’t fit in?
My community-college classes are both more homogenous and more diverse than I experienced in my undergraduate career; a slim majority of students are Spanish speakers and about two-thirds are Hispanic. But unlike my university life where we were almost all the same age, I teach classes with students from 16 to 60. That’s not even mentioning the vast disparity in terms of socioeconomic status….
(Note: May require subscription.)
http://chronicle.com/blogs/onhiring/a-learning-environment-for-all/31395?sid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en
Posted in Tim's Tips | Tagged Class, Higher Education, Race, Tim's Tips
By tmcmahon on May 15, 2012
May 13, 2012
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Student Loans Have Become ‘Pawn in the Latest Political Fight’
By Kelly Field
With the interest rate on federally subsidized student loans set to double just four months before the presidential election, efforts to avert the hike have reached an impasse, as both parties seek to score political points with voters….
(Note: May require subscription.)
http://chronicle.com/article/Student-Loans-Have-Become/131849/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Posted in Tim's Tips | Tagged Class, Higher Education, Tim's Tips
By tmcmahon on May 15, 2012
Voices in Cyberspace
Inside Higher Education
May 13, 2012 – 7:28pm
By Liana Silva
On April 30th, Naomi Schaefer Riley, a blogger for the Brainstorm blog on The Chronicle of Higher Education’s website, argued (and poorly) that Black Studies as a discipline should disappear; her argument was based solely on brief descriptions of three dissertations by three PhD candidates from Northwestern University’s first cohort of Black Studies doctoral program, as seen in an earlier article in The Chronicle. (On May 7, 2012 Brainstorm Editor Liz McMillen posted a note to readers stating that Schaefer Riley had been fired from the blog.) I am not going to argue with Schaefer Riley because several have already argued with her post better than I ever could (for example, Tressie MC‘s guest post on fellow University of Venus blogger Lee Skallerup‘s IHE blog College Ready Writing). However, the kerfuffle that ensued online in response to Schaefer Riley’s post hit close to home and made me think about my role as an academic who blogs….
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/university-venus/voices-cyberspace
Posted in Tim's Tips | Tagged Higher Education, Race, Tim's Tips
By tmcmahon on May 15, 2012
Furor Over Student Paper at UMass Lowell
Inside Higher Education
May 14, 2012 – 3:00am
April 1 is typically the date many student newspapers run joke issues, and some of the jokes offend various groups. At the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, the tradition of The UMass Lowell Connector is to run a joke issue called The Disconnector on the last day of classes. The Lowell Sun reported that many students are outraged by an issue that was “rife with profanity” and “features a grotesque string of ribald tweets supposedly ripped from the actual Twitterverse, jokey items about gays, immigrants and race, a guide to the best brands of college booze, as well as an entire article filled with the excessive repetition of a derogatory term for a woman’s anatomy.” Megan Headley, the editor-in-chief, said she is sorry that some are offended, “but it’s just a joke paper, and it’s not meant to be taken seriously.”
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/05/14/furor-over-student-paper-umass-lowell
Posted in Tim's Tips | Tagged gender, Higher Education, Immigration, LGBTQI, Race, Tim's Tips
By tmcmahon on May 15, 2012
Gay Voices at a Christian University
Inside Higher Education
May 14, 2012 – 3:00am
By Scott Jaschik
Last week saw a vote against gay marriage in North Carolina and an endorsement of gay marriage by President Obama — both developments sparking considerable discussion nationwide.
But at Biola University, a nondenominational Christian institution in California, a very different kind of discussion was taking place — some of it in public, other parts only with the anonymous protection provided by the Internet. Biola, like many Christian universities, states that any sexual activity outside a marriage between a man and a woman is morally wrong and is a violation of the student code of conduct. While the university states that gay celibacy is entirely welcome, Biola’s policies have discouraged many gay students from publicly talking about their view that they can be good Christians and also have gay relationships….
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/14/underground-group-changes-conversation-about-sexuality-biola-u
Posted in Tim's Tips | Tagged Higher Education, LGBTQI, Tim's Tips
By tmcmahon on May 15, 2012
Occupy Anthropology
May 10, 2012, 6:05 pm
The Chronicle of Higher Education
By PageView Editor
The May issue of American Ethnologist includes essays that the journal’s editor says are among the first detailed ethnographic analyses to be published on the Occupy movements. And in the spirit of the 99%, AE has made its two Occupy articles and a related commentary piece free to non-subscribers for the duration of 2012….
(Note: May require subscription.)
http://chronicle.com/blogs/pageview/occupy-anthropology/30392?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Posted in Tim's Tips | Tagged Class, Higher Education, Tim's Tips
By tmcmahon on May 15, 2012
A Bad Week for Elizabeth Warren—and Affirmative Action
May 10, 2012, 4:48 pm
The Chronicle of Higher Education
By Richard Kahlenberg
On Sunday, the Washington Post declared that Massachusetts Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren had the “Worst Week in Washington.” News came to light that Warren, a Harvard Law professor, touted her Native American heritage (she is reportedly one-32nd Cherokee) in legal directories from 1986 to 1995, and that Harvard Law School claimed her status added to faculty diversity. Conservatives charged she had gamed the system to use affirmative action to advance her career….
(Note: May require subscription.)
http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/a-bad-week-for-elizabeth-warren-and-affirmative-action/32496?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Posted in Tim's Tips | Tagged Affirmative Action, Higher Education, Race, Tim's Tips
