Category Archives: higherEd
Professor, Heal thyself! On unprofessionalism and lack of empathy in (complaints about) student emails
A recent op-ed in the Guardian, entitled “I’m not LMAO at ridiculous student emails” lodges a familiar complaint: students don’t know how to communicate with professors in a professional manner, flaunting reasonable social codes and ignoring professors busy lives outside … Continue reading
Four thoughts about Student Evaluations (occasioned by sexism in RateMyProfessor.com)
This post is occasioned by Ben Schmidt’s wonderful tool for exploring gender differences on words used in student evaluations on RateMyProfessor. 1. RateMyProfessor is a huge, but awful data set. Why awful? First, I’d bet that well under 1% of … Continue reading
Thumb on the PayScale
In my last post, I took issue with the PayScale college rankings, as well as with how economics reporters framed these rankings, citing their low calculated Return on Investment as evidence that these colleges “make” students poor. Jordan Weissmann has graciously responded to my critique. … Continue reading
Posted in education, higherEd, psychology, science
Tagged college, college rankings, highered, PayScale
20 Comments
The Absurdity of Ranking Colleges by Graduate Salaries
Jordan Weissman has moved from the Atlantic, and is now covering economics at Slate. He has a post up provocatively titled (it is Slate, after all) “What College Will Leave you Poorest?” which covers the Payscale college salary rankings, in which … Continue reading
How much does it matter how students feel?
As I prepare my tenure portfolio, I am catching up on entering in my student evaluation data and comments into my big spreadsheet. While I don’t think student evaluations should serve as the only data by which to judge teachers, … Continue reading
Posted in education, higherEd, psychology
Tagged learning styles, psychology, student evaluations, teaching
7 Comments
Oh I get tenure, with a little help from my friends
To continue from my last post, one of the elements that disturbed me about defining scientist as “gets grants, has groundbreaking ideas” is not just that this narrow definition of scientist excludes worthy people, but also that it excludes certain … Continue reading
Student Learning and Labor Policies, follow up
My piece for the Atlantic ran yesterday, on how student learning is not directly connected to exploitative labor policies. I had some interesting conversations, on twitter and over email, so I thought I would share those with my readers. It … Continue reading
Teaching and learning, labor and fairness
It seems a requirement that any conversation about higher education in America must begin and end with costs and economic outcomes. Along the way, our economic analysts nod to the power of knowledge (economic research shows it improves career prospects!), … Continue reading
Posted in education, higherEd, politics, teaching
Tagged econometrics, highered, labor, learning, teaching
4 Comments
My Teaching Philosophy (part 327b)
I’m putting some finishing touches on my syllabi here the night before classes start, and I thought I would share with my blog readers a one-page statement of my teaching philosophy that I put on each of my syllabi. Anyone … Continue reading
Posted in education, higherEd, psychology, teaching
Tagged highered, psychology, syllabus, teaching
Leave a comment
