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1 comment - Last on 01/21/2009
Video: Victor Davis Hanson, champion of Western civilization, addressed the NAS conference on January 9, 2009.
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Take Back the Classroom from PowerPoint
Restrict PowerPoint use in teaching to pictures and videos, writes Jason Fertig. Too much PowerPoint usurps professors' authority and accustoms students to lazy thinking.
Collegiate Press Roundup 9-2-10
Student journalists examine topics from presidential speeches to campus smoking bans.
Will You Promote Diversity? Virginia Tech Tests Faculty Candidates’ Commitment
A major public university has fashioned a “diversity” litmus test for faculty hiring
FIRE Educates for Free Speech on Campus
FIRE will offer a Free Speech Seminar in NYC on September 14.
University Speaker Series: Arab Feminism, Black Feminism, and "A Southern Queer Love Story"...No Comment
A program on gender and diversity at the University of Richmond will explore "emancipatory ideas of social justice" this fall.
How Scholarships Morphed into Financial Aid
This excerpt from Jackson Toby's latest book, The Lowering of Higher Education in America: Why Financial Aid Should Be Based on Student Performance, will appear in the forthcoming fall issue of Academic Questions (vol. 23, no. 3).
Common Reading Controversy at Brooklyn College
Is Brooklyn College using freshman reading for ideological goals?
Question of the Week: How Many Colleges Should You Apply To?
To answer, leave a comment on this article, email us, or respond via Facebook or Twitter (no more than 140 characters).
Atlas Black Shrugs
The first comic book textbook combines management jargon and theories and packages them into a story about a slacker student's attempt to become an entrepreneur.
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- Last on 08/27/2010
Collegiate Press Roundup 8-26-10
Student journalists have a look at the Ground Zero mosque controversy, reducing your carbon footprint and the pitfalls of "sexting."
A Regulatory Assault on For-Profit Higher Education
How the attacks on for-profit higher ed are squashing needed competition.
New Excellent Programs: Tocqueville Program and Center for Statesmanship
Check out our list of excellent programs as we add new ones at Indiana and Richmond.
The Glut of Academic Publishing: A Call for a New Culture
This article will appear in the forthcoming fall issue of Academic Questions (vol. 23, no. 3). A short version of this paper appeared under the title “We Must Stop the Avalanche of Low-Quality Research” in the June 13, 2010 Chronicle of Higher Education.
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- Last on 08/25/2010
Building a 21st Century Syllabus
Professors these days have to cover their backs when writing syllabi, writes David Clemens.
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- Last on 08/20/2010
Question of the Week: Why Did You Choose Your College?
We're starting a new "Question of the Week" series. We'll have a new higher-education-related question every week. To answer, leave a comment on this article, email us, or respond via Facebook or Twitter (no more than 140 characters).
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- Last on 08/20/2010
Dictatorships and Double Standards, Part II
Professor Paquette responds to the controversy generated this summer after Hamilton College sought to censor his NAS article.
Real Ethics Education
Ethics courses should make moral decisions personal, argues Jason Fertig.
Collegiate Press Roundup 8-18-10
Student journalists tackle gay marriage, weird psycholgy studies and state liquor regulations.
5 Consequences of Administrative Bloat
What happens to higher education when universities are dominated by administrators?
Ravitch Repentant
Peter Cohee reviews Diane Ravitch's book, a partial volte-face, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.
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Not to take away from the excellence of this speech, there is a point about "vocationalism" that needs to be addressed.
At least four times in our history, the people (through the government) expanded academia for strictly vocational purposes. The Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 created public colleges (now universities) to promote training in the agricultural and mechanical arts (A&M). At the time some believed that this was an exclusive charge, that the liberal arts could not even be taught at these "land grant" institutions. Wiser minds prevailed and these colleges became the great state universities of today.
At least in the East there were the so-called "normal schools' which were created for the vocational purpose of training schoolteachers. Specific examples that come to mind are Framingham State College (MA), Salem State College (MA), University of Maine Farmington and University of Southern Maine.
The first great expansion of higher education, the "GI Bill of Rights" was inherently vocational in intent, it was designed to prevent what had happened after WW-I with large numbers of unemployed veterans unable to find work. The second great expansion in the '60s involved the creation of the community colleges, institutions with an inherent vocational charge. (It needs to be remembered that half the students in higher education attend a community college.)
And one can not overlook the massive defense spending during fifty years of war (1941-1991) as we fought first the Nazis and then the Soviets. Arguably these efforts were of a vocational nature and while we enjoy great spinoffs (including the internet, designed as a means of military communication after a nucular war), the purpose of this funding (and the "National Defense" loans to students) was clearly directed to this purpose.
Hence, I argue, higher education has always had a strong vocational aspect and intent. Even back to Harvard being founded to train ministers, the vocational aspect was always present in most institutions of higher education. The deal was that this vocational training could also include a core curriculum, that while being trained in vocational skills, that the students could be exposed to the greatness of western culture. That being a citizen in a participatory democracy is itself a vocation and that training in the liberal arts is thus itself vocational.
First, how can we ask (or permit) students to borrow vast sums of money without including some vocational aspect to their education -- otherwise, how are they to repay these loans?
Second, the fact that academia has largely abandoned the teaching of Western culture, as so clearly articulated here, does not negate the almost faustian bargan that was struck in the late 19th Century, that public higher education would have a core curriculum of liberal arts and the Western tradition, but would also have an inherent vocational aspect and intent.
by Ed Posted on 01/21/2009