Links for 3/4/10

Edububble

visionaries at RPI looked at the options:

1. Keep the President in a nice, old mansion and use the money for something useful.
2. Build a new mansion that’s under 25 feet high and use the old mansion for a guest house.
3. Spend even more to tear down the old mansion first and then put up a 41-44 foot monstrosity.

RPInsider and Chris Churchill at the Times Union tell us that RPI chose door number three, the most expensive option that leaves them with the least amount of property for non-Presidents. Whoo hoo.

Jeffrey Vanke

If there is not already, there soon will be structural consequences in higher education for overproducing Ph.D. holders qualified only for academic jobs. Top talents will cease taking the grad-school gamble, and with less-talented instructors the quality of instruction will suffer. A tenfold increase in the labor pool will not make up for the top tenth dropping by a whole standard deviation in the relevant skill sets. Every doctoral program in the humanities and social sciences shares responsibility for this structural risk.

Martha C. Nussbaum

Radical changes are occurring in what democratic societies teach the young, and these changes have not been well thought through… If this trend continues, all over the world we will soon be producing generations of useful machines, rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves, criticize tradition, and understand the significance of another person's sufferings and achievements…

James Hamilton quoting Peter Gordon

There are intelligent adults in the world who go to bed each night believing that the other side tells lies, but their side is above all that.