higher education 26
Things I Learned in Intermediate Greek Class
Reading ancient languages requires slow and careful thinking and processing of a sort that we do not normally utilize in our pressure-cooker fast-consumer world.
What I Learned in Grad School
Temperamentally and vocationally, I was in the wrong place. Yet I don’t regret a single day I spent there—not only because I met my wife, but because I learned to…
Virtue Signaling and Cheap Grace
Changing the phrase “field work” to “practicum” is, without more comprehensive action, a perfect illustration of cheap grace. It costs USC nothing more than some online eye-rolling to do.
Cancel War Stories
People often want to ignore the complexity of that process, downplay how often interests conflict, and avoid confrontation. In this essay, I suggest we throw ourselves into the mess and…
Putting Two Things Together: Reflections on Institution Building
I came away from Steubenville, as I came away later from Grove City, with the startling idea that things are possible. Small things; local things; putting two things together, not…
Spaces for Speech on Today’s College Campus
Reviving campus newspapers and radio stations and student-led clubs, and putting resources behind them, could create more space for speech, help foster campus community, and model a level of comfort…
Jessica Hooten Wilson, Doug Sikkema, and Christine Norvell on Rescuing Socrates
One gets the clear sense from Montás that these voices from the past are not just texts with trivial information, but real presences, real friends who have had a significant…
Liberal Learning for All: A Review of Rescuing Socrates
Montás deserves great credit for illuminating the perverse priorities of American higher education throughout Rescuing Socrates. It must be admitted, however, that the book suffers from occasional missteps. A fuller…
Why We Must Recover Thinking as a Practice
Thinking as a practice places a check upon the self. It offers us a way out of our "res idiotica." If our universities are faithful to their missions, they must…
Non-traditional: Community College Conversations
When I first started teaching at a community college, I had no idea of the types of non-traditional students I would meet. Their resilience and motivation made me wonder if…
From the Editor–Local Culture 3.2: The Higher Ed Issue
Jason Peters contrasts the traditional telos of education, what John Newman called "a great but ordinary end" with the current emphasis on utility and constant social change.
Teaching (or Cultivating) Sustainability (or Inhabitance), Ten Years On
As utopian as "religious education" and "local food tours" may seem, that doesn't mean we can't approach them with a hope for real formation work in mind.
Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man: How to (Actually) Save Humanity
An empathetic approach to the kind of lofty goals named by Princeton’s aspiration to serve “humanity” might empower talented young people to serve their communities rather than selling out for…
Education and Democracy in Disembodied Times: Emerson and Dewey on Humane Technology
In an age of knee-jerk innovation, the warnings articulated by Emerson and Dewey are more needed than ever. They advocated for applied knowledge, but they also insisted such technology must…
Poor Little Lamb
Colin Phelps is not the first to discover a graced thing in college: it’s the unchosen self-knowledge that is most liberating.
The Battle Rages On: Eric Adler’s Battle of the Classics: How a Nineteenth-Century Debate Can Save the Humanities Today
We all want students to think critically and to reflect on what they have encountered in the course of their education. In order to do that, however, they must have…
Saint Thinkery University for Unlimited Personalized Execution, or, STUUPE©
In my elder, more invulnerable years, when the Untied States had finally established a formal E. Unibus Pluram, I was appointed by lot to assume the position of SAT (Self-Actualizing…
With Students At Home, Let’s Make America Local Again
Perhaps we ought to hope that things won’t quite go back to what’s normal: rootless young folk siphoned away by elite universities and groomed to lead the managerial bureaucracies and…
Online Learning Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be
There is certainly a place for online learning in undergraduate education, but we should not undercut traditional higher education for the sake of innovation or profit margin.
Regional Universities Educate for Merit—It’s too Bad Our Elites Just Want Prestige
The Varsity Blues parents didn’t really care if their children learned anything; they were concerned that they got their ticket to success stamped by the right institution.
Dissecting Hospitality
The virtue of hospitality has enjoyed something of a minor renaissance. Over the last few decades, theologians and ethicists have sought to make a case for its recovery. The renewed…
The Formative Power of Metrics
Living in an age where information is merely a click (or swipe) away, we are inundated with metrics. Quantitative data is directed our way at alarming speeds leaving us unable to…
Loneliness, Rural College Students, and More
It's been a busy first week on the remodeled porch, and we have an excellent lineup of new essays coming next week. For now, though, here are some of the…
Do Conservatives Need to Belong to A Minority to Get an Academic Job?
Jonathan Zimmerman thinks the answer is yes (thanks to John Fea): At Columbia University, 650 employees wrote checks for the Obama campaign, while only 21 made donations to Mitt Romney.…
