Links for 3/16/10

James Mulholland

We—adjuncts, full-time professors, researchers, administrators, politicians, and parents—must retool how we talk about graduate school in the humanities. We can no longer present it as a professional school or as career training, with the assumption that more education and advanced degrees always lead to better lives, more income, increased happiness. Instead, we must think of graduate school as more like choosing to go to New York to become a painter or deciding to travel to Hollywood to become an actor. Those arts-based careers have always married hope and desperation into a tense relationship. We must admit that the humanities, now, is that way, too…

In that sense, then, graduate school in the humanities is not a trap. It's a choice. But it is incumbent on us to make sure it is not a lie. We should not romanticize it…

Peter Schmidt

a jury has ruled that an associate professor of sociology at Iowa State University brought false charges of gender discrimination against two colleagues he had viewed as obstacles to his gaining tenure…

The two professors, Terry L. Besser and Betty A. Dobratz, alleged in their lawsuit that Mr. Krier had filed administrative complaints of bias and discrimination against them in March 2008 because they had been critical of his academic work, and he wanted to keep them off the panel that would be weighing his tenure bid and to intimidate other faculty members who might oppose promoting him…

Mr. Krier's letter accused Ms. Stewart, his former spouse, of contributing to the hostile work environment he faced…

All of the sociology faculty members might face challenging days ahead. Last week, the department learned that it faces a budget cut of 52 percent…

Paul Basken

Congressional Democrats are making plans to trim a proposed increase in Pell Grants, and to cut out other anticipated education-spending programs, in a rush to craft a final version of their long-awaited student-loan legislation.

Kevin Carey

Southeastern finally lost accreditation and shut its doors in August 2009. In researching the article I wanted to learn more about the historical back-and-forth with Middle States... I couldn’t ask Southeastern for the documents, because it didn’t exist anymore. So I asked Middle States, which said I couldn’t see the documents because…wait for it…Southeastern didn’t exist any more. Middle States only publishes documents about accredited colleges and universities, you see, and even then they only make their correspondence available, not the reports and responses that colleges send in return. Now that Southeastern is kaput, the whole sorry history is under lock and key (or through a shredder, who knows.) I replied by saying that I understood (albeit don’t agree with) the notion of concealing accreditation documents about colleges that actually exist, but whose interest was being served by hiding all the information now? I received no reply. Keep this in mind next time you’re told that the accreditation process is “transparent.”