Links for 1/5/11

Publius Audax

Tie the salaries of professors and lecturers to the number of students they attract to their classes…

Completely eliminate all direct subsidies from the state to colleges and universities… In their place, we increase scholarships and college-loan subsidies that go directly to students

Abolish tenure…

Require every state college to provide third-party assessment of its students’ progress in meeting its stated educational objectives…

Jung Ha-Won

Almost 30 robots have started teaching English to youngsters in a South Korean city…

The robots, which display an avatar face of a Caucasian woman, are controlled remotely by teachers of English in the Philippines – who can see and hear the children via a remote control system…

Myra H. Strober

The three common explanations for a lack of faculty interest in interdisciplinary work are that the academic reward system militates against it (hiring, promotion, salary increases, and most prizes are controlled by single disciplines, not by multiple disciplines), that there is insufficient funding for it, and that evaluating it is fraught with conflict…

I found an even more fundamental barrier to interdisciplinary work: Talking across disciplines is as difficult as talking to someone from another culture… What is much more difficult is coming to understand and accept the way colleagues from different disciplines think—their assumptions and their methods of discerning, evaluating, and reporting "truth"—their disciplinary cultures and habits of mind…

MICHAEL VASQUEZ

Bachelor's degree recipients from the state's 11 public universities earned an average starting salary of $36,552 in 2009.

Meanwhile, those who received associate in science degrees from Florida community colleges earned an average of $47,708…

Stephanie Landsman

The American Bar Association has officially issued a warning on its website.

The ABA is now making the case to persuade college students not to go to law school.