Links for 6/29/10

Robin Wilson

One of the most prominent scholars of policies promoting work-life balance in academe has just given up tenure for love…

It wouldn't be a story if I were a woman, because thousands of women do this every year…

Nick Perry and Justin Mayo

A Seattle Times investigation has found that at least 40 university or community-college employees retired and were rehired within weeks, often returning to the same job without the position ever being advertised. That has allowed them to double dip by collecting both a salary and a pension…

Aisha Labi

Konstanz is one of nine universities that have earned a coveted designation by the German government as being among the nation's strongest.

The project, which began in 2005, has unleashed a new dynamic that has reshaped German higher education, demolishing the pretense of egalitarianism and forcing universities to focus on defining their mission and sharpening their focus…

the country's once pre-eminent universities no longer commanded universal esteem, and the depths to which they had fallen was driven home by the relative dearth of German institutions in the top echelons of the newly influential global-rankings tables, dominated by American and British universities.

In 2004 the federal government proposed the Excellence Initiative in a bid to foster outstanding research and propel more German institutions ahead in the rankings…

Kartik Athreya on blogging

The real issue is that there is extremely low likelihood that the speculations of the untrained, on a topic almost pathologically riddled by dynamic considerations and feedback effects, will offer anything new. Moreover, there is a substantial likelihood that it will instead offer something incoherent or misleading…

[With blogger pushback from Scott Sumner, Brad DeLong, Tyler Cowen, and Matt Yglesias.]