a breakthrough piece for the mainstream press: "Why pushing STEM majors is turning out to be a terrible investment" bit.ly/3TP2UKB
Christopher Newfield
13.6K posts
Christopher Newfield
@cnewf
Psychic life of culture, green political economy, critical university studies, knowledge-power struggles, epistemic justice.
- Replying to @LAHeffernanInsane capitulation on your University’s part
- Great @adamkotsko on forced literacy decline in college students. “we can, at the very least, stop actively preventing young people from developing the ability to follow extended narratives and arguments in the classroom.” @mattseyboldma slate.com/human-interest…
- this is a great piece by Asheesh Kapur Siddique on the humanities research funding crisis. Partly I'm thrilled to see someone write about this other than me :) but more to the point, to see the key points put together so well. Key points:
- this study is a big deal: evidence over time that the REF has narrowed methods and fields, tending to snuff innovative outliers like cultural studies and emerging fringes where new ideas come from bit.ly/3bSSPYW @AcademicDiary @GKBhambra @EricRoyalLybeck @J_Kom_
- these student work numbers are mind-blowingly high. If true, they'd explain all of the "limited learning" crisis that has been blamed on bad teaching and curricula. bloom.bg/2NDnk8k @saragoldrickrab @studentactivism @DebtCrisisOrg
- Gruesome tales of insurance company scofflaws in which people die still fighting their insurance companies for Treatments required by lawNew: Health Insurers Have Been Breaking State Laws for Years propublica.org/article/health…
- totally right Cathy. Magill replies, “no one at my university is calling for the genocide of Jews.” Stefanik then returns, “you do not see that ‘from the river to the sea” calls for the genocide of Jews.” then Magill would have to say, “no I do not.” she’s still fired, but U’s ok
- and the worst higher ed job losses are at Public Us. It's not Covid-19, it's policy to let the colleges with the most social impact do the worst. @aaup @zunguzungu @Aaron_Glantz @reclaimuc @sivavaid
U.S. Covid #highered job losses are the worst in history: down 7% since March. Do we have UK equivalent #s? @danbauman77 best overview so far. bit.ly/2SyhCVr @EricRoyalLybeck @Wonkhe @elliebothwell @RebsFE @CathyNDavidson - Universities are arguing that in-person education is essential AND that students should pay full tuition without in-person education. ?? Support in-person; discount remote; refund all activity fees; new fed stimulus to fill gap bit.ly/3fslMbM @sivavaid @saragoldrickrab
- one new UC regent asked why not just use GPAs instead of SATs to avoid the known problems with SATs. The provost's response was "we need to discriminate within tens of thousands of essentially equivalent students." This is the most damning thing he could have said.
- The explosive backstory @Caltech grad union movement: "The vast majority of papers Caltech come from grad students. We run the experiments, we collect the data, we analyze the overwhelming majority of the data, we publish those results, we write grants" bit.ly/48lNjGD
- big win for contingent faculty at CUNY: long term contracts! no at-will firing! bit.ly/2v4TlIT @NewFacMajority @saragoldrickrab
