Links for 4/29/10

Lloyd Armstrong

many of our competitor nations are using this downturn to accelerate needed educational reform. We should do the same, instead of demanding more resources to support the status quo

Chad Aldeman

Blame the Baby Boom generation and the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education in California for the widespread use of admissions tests for college. With the passage of this document 50 years ago yesterday, California became the first state to codify which students were to be eligible for which higher education institution.

MARGIE MASON HT: Tyler Cowen

According to a 2008 study on tobacco revenue in Indonesia, smokers spend more than 10 percent of their household income on cigarettes; that's three times more than they spend on education-related expenses such as school fees and books.

Kimberly Vanderlaan

the analogy of marriage when he speaks about the tenure process…

the faculty member is generally expected, at least tacitly, to do more to uphold her end of the prospective union than the institution—like any "good" wife. But I find myself wondering why any right-minded woman would subject herself to the kind of relationship that, quite frankly, would be considered abusive by any rational, healthy, objective standard of assessment in the real world…

My "fiancé" is selfish and unreasonably demanding; he enforces inequitable distribution of labor; he is fiscally, physically, and emotionally unsupportive; and he treats me with callous indifference at best and outright abasement at worst….