Last week I had the chance to chat by Skype with some 8th grade social studies students in Kalispell, Montana. Their teacher, Mr. Ferda (one of my favorite Bethel alums), had each student draft a question ahead of time, and while we didn’t quite get to all of them, the questions were so good that … More Good Questions: Did Your History Teachers Make You Want to Be a Historian?
There are several reasons that my employer is currently going through something of a budget crisis; one that’s hard to complain about is that our president and board adopted a new faculty compensation plan that would raise salaries, particularly at the level of full professor. (Some years ago the problem was that we weren’t competitive … More How Well Paid Are Christian College Faculty?
Today’s not-quite rerun revisits one of my favorite hissy fits, directed against an op-ed arguing that those of my profession don’t work hard enough. Original post: “Do college professors work hard enough?” Follow up: Nate Kreuter, “The Math Doesn’t Work” (Inside Higher Ed, April 22) It took me about a year, but sometime during spring … More Following Up: How Hard Do College Professors Work?
Another not-quite rerun: this week I’m following up on topics that I’ve blogged about before and recently received new attention from other media or blogs. Original Post: “A Grand Experiment: Why Sports Belong in Higher Education” Follow Up: “Room for Debate: Dropping the Ball” (nytimes.com, April 22) Last summer the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) … More Following Up: Should Colleges Drop Competitive Sports?
I’ve got to make some serious progress on some other projects, so I don’t plan on a lot of blogging this week. But instead of just going into my “Best of The Pietist Schoolman” reruns, I thought I’d point readers to some recent articles or posts elsewhere that follow up on some topics I’ve blogged … More Following Up: The Return on a College Investment
In last week’s historical sketch of the closures of American colleges, universities, and other institutions of higher learning, I closed by noting an oddly symmetrical pair of statistics: Of schools that closed between 1950 and 1979, 36% opened before 1945 Of schools that have closed since 1980, 37% opened before 1910 Much of the attrition of the … More When Colleges Close: Recent History
When I first started teaching Bethel’s Christianity and Western Culture class, we went all the way from ancient Athens through the 20th century. We’ve since decided that that might be two or three too many centuries for one semester, but I do miss the week where we read through three 19th century Christian responses to … More The Love of Libraries
Mutual admiration society: (idiomatic) A group of two or more people, in a workplace or other social environment, who routinely express considerable esteem and support for one another, sometimes to the point of exaggeration or pretense. So says Wiktionary, and I fear that a picture of Messiah College history chair John Fea and I … More Must Watch: John Fea’s Virtual Office Hours
Last Friday afternoon I posted the following graph, promising that I’d come back to it this week: Let me pick up by reiterating that “institutions of higher learning” includes everything from Research I universities to “colleges in name only” and lots of post-secondary diversity in between. I didn’t have the time to code things so … More When Colleges Close: A Historical Sketch
I don’t often do posts like this, but it’s Friday afternoon and I’m out of steam… Let me just frame and pose a question, show some data, invite comments, and then come back to the subject next week. If you haven’t heard, my place of employment is going through a fairly significant financial crisis. Still, … More How Many Colleges and Universities Have Closed, Decade by Decade, Since 1900?
The Pietist Schoolman 