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If you want to understand the material reality of contemporary academic labor, skip the glossy recruitment brochures featuring tweed jackets and ivy-covered stone arches. Walk out to the far edge of the commuter parking lot at your local community college around 9:45 PM on a Tuesday. Look for the 2011 Honda Civic with peeling clear…
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For decades, Western academics have enjoyed a comfortable sense of moral and intellectual superiority when looking across the Pacific. Whenever the conversation turns to higher education in the People’s Republic of China, Western scholars shake their heads with sympathetic pity. Everyone knows the setup: at every Chinese university, from Peking University down to the provincial…
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If you happen to take a stroll through the quad of almost any British university right now, you might notice an odd chill in the air. It’s not just the damp English weather. It’s the distinct smell of an entire national tertiary education sector quietly burning its own furniture to keep the central heating on.…
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If you spent any time logged into the virtual ether of The Chronicle of Higher Education’s flagship festival, “Building Trust During Change,” you were treated to one of the greatest spectacles in modern corporate theater. For days, thousands of senior university administrators, provosts in bespoke eyewear, and deans broadcasting from mahogany-paneled home offices gathered in…
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If you want to witness true, cinematic panic, don’t look at horror movies. Look at the public comment section of a federal regulatory docket when university presidents realize their golden moat has a leak. This week, the American Council on Education (ACE)—flanked by a coalition of 45 major higher education lobbying associations—submitted a scathing set…
