Links for 9/2/10

Mark Bauerlein (and James Seaton)

The NATC claims to deal with 'theory,' not with 'literary theory' and with 'criticism,' not 'literary criticism.' …. The strategic omission of 'literary' intimates (without explicitly declaring) that English professors who use the NATC are equipped to provide guidance to all those who employ any sort of theory…

English professors branched out…

It was a suicidal move…

English professors who expanded their focus came off as dilettantes. Once they dropped literary matters from the center of their aim, they lost their disciplinary grounding. Whatever thrills they gained by relinquishing those been-there-done-that canonical literary works and sallying into video and empire and the like, their standing on campus plummeted. Thirty years ago, no university could claim top status without a top English department. That is no longer true.

David Glenn

Mediocrity happens. At this very moment at an institution of higher education near you, a mildly hung-over student is finishing a mildly plagiarized paper on travel-industry marketing, for which he'll receive a B-plus. Across campus, an assistant professor is drafting a tepid scholarly article that will eventually be read by 43 people and cited by one. In yet another building, administrators are holding a five-hour meeting about how to spruce up the campus golf course, which is four more hours than they'll devote this month to discussing their stagnant graduation rate…

at many institutions, the incentives seem to be perverse: Students don't feel pressure to put much sweat into their academic work. Faculty members are rewarded for publishing flaccid research, not for teaching effectively. And administrators often feel stronger incentives to build glossy facilities than to lower costs or to improve student learning…

Justin Lahart

Michael Lovenheim… found that every $10,000 increase in housing wealth a family experienced in the four years before a child became college aged increased the chances of the child going to college 0.8%. That might seem like small potatoes, but when you consider that average home equity rose by $57,965 between 2001 and 2005, it becomes more than modest…
Now, declining housing wealth and rising tuition costs are posing a stiff challenge to many families ability to pay for a child’s education…