I hope I'm not alone in this - I own multiple #college#textbooks that were assigned in my classes and I read them now, 15+ years later. In many cases, we were not assigned the entire book, just select chapters, so this is the first time I've read them cover to cover.
It's interesting to read them in light of experiences since college. Also to read them in their entirety, see all they had to say.
Data from @chronicle: "Nearly 80% of [Americans] with a #college degree said the cost was worth it…[But] the positive attitudes…tend to follow salaries. About 88% of higher earners — those with a household income greater than $100,000 — said their degree benefits outweighed the cost…Only 63% of graduates in households with incomes less than $50,000 said their degree benefits outweighed the cost." https://www.chronicle.com/newsletter/weekly-briefing/2023-09-09
(#paywalled)
Durkheim: The negative cult cannot exist without causing suffering. Pain is one of it's necessary conditions.
Why yes, I do believe that my big fekkin' research paper for this class (REL580 Theories of Religion - capstone class) will be Autistic Masking as a Means of Devotion to the Negative Cult of “Normal”
It is surprising to me that colleges desperate for enrollment aren't doing everything they can to build actual relationships with students, not transactions masquerading as relationship. Creating pathways for soft exits when adult students have to leave (unexpectedly) mid-term/semester would be a start. Any schools you know doing this?
Labor Day weekend is always a time of both anticipation as well as trepidation.
Apart from the usual variables, COVID has brought us new generations of high school students who learned under very challenging different conditions from their predecessors.
I am delighted to report that when I met with entering students to discuss the common reading on Friday, they were very engaged, interested, and interesting. A good omen for the first-semester seminar I have to teach
As the new semester begins, we hope students will be eager & successful, but we know we may occasionally shake our heads at some decisions Admissions has made.
But as I like to say: it could always be worse.
Sometimes Admissions guesses wrong.
But we don't see the potentially disastrous candidates they do successfully weed out.
"The Court also ruled that colleges and universities may consider in admissions decisions “an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.” We will certainly comply with the Court’s decision."