Obviously The Adjuncts' Fault

The NYT (now registration free!) ran an article today about the decline in the number of tenure track faculty on college campuses across the country. The article had a very strong bias against adjuncts and basically blamed non-tenure track faculty for falling graduation rates, with quotes like "(researchers) analyzed 15 years of national data and found that graduation rates declined when public universities hired large numbers of contingent faculty" and "Several studies of individual universities have determined that freshmen taught by many part-timers were more likely to drop out."
So, obviously this means adjunct faculty are to blame for dropping graduation rates, right? This kind of logic reminds me of the reasoning in the classic article, The Dangers of Bread.

Yay for the Alma Mater

Yay for my old high school, which I hated with all the teenage passion I could muster at the time even though I was the one who chose to go there. They recently announced that a Phillips Exeter Academy "education will now be free to to any admitted student whose family income is $75,000 or less." I think that is awesome. Sometimes the girl and I discuss the possibility of her applying there when she gets to high school. She could be a day student.
Some people may think I never lived up to my potential since I graduated from a "fancy" high school and didn't go to an Ivy League college, nor did I chose to follow a lucrative career path. Of the many lessons I learned at that school, go out and make a lot of money really was never one of them. The importance of learning foreign languages and cultures was emphasized; as was the notion of teaching as a career option. I learned that it was okay to have a passion for learning and to love being in school. I think I took what I needed from the four years I spent there and along the way learned that having my own opinions and standing behind them ultimately is more valuable than following, or even leading, the herd.

Ohh, Edumacated

I found this while surfing the NaBloPoMo randomizer.
I think it means no one understands what I'm talking about but they nod in agreement because they think it' supposed to be making sense.

We can discuss my mistrust of and poor attitude towards Academia and Academics (the people) some other time, ok?