Alkahest

I can’t turn around anymore without hearing something new about how colleges and universities are public enemy number 1 with the copyright industry.  In early February, the Recording Industry Association of America released a top 25 list of the schools to which they have sent notices of alleged copyright infringement.  Right after that, they started [...]

A few years ago, I was an assistant research professor in a department whose college was undergoing its accreditation process. This happened, I believe, every five years or so and was a generally grueling process. Faculty were asked to maintain student work and submit it, anonymously, to the accreditation committee. We were [...]

There’s a saying about education (I would call it a joke, but it hits too close to home for that), the process of education is learning more and more about less and less until finally, you know absolutely everything about absolutely nothing. This is pretty close to the truth. For a period of [...]

I mentioned several months ago how academic journals were mostly a scam perpetrate by the publishers on universities.  One of the things that I briefly discussed was how the entire editorial staff of the journal Topology had announced their resignation.  Well, 2006 wrapped up and the former editors of Topology have announced that they will [...]

It’s taken me a bit to write about Admiral Poindexter’s visit and the small group talk we had with him. Let me start by reminding folks that here’s a guy who was convicted of lying to congress. The conviction was later overturned on a technicality. He’s also very politically savvy. I [...]

In case you are looking for something interesting to do next week, go to Love Auditorium at Duke University on November 15th at 5pm. Admiral John Poindexter will be giving a talk: “A Vision for Countering Terrorism Through Information and Privacy Protection Technologies for the 21st Century.”  It should be an interesting and thought [...]

Publishers of academic journals have a sweet deal going. The content is written by researchers. The publisher hires a few academics to edit the journal. The editors then identify reviewers in the academic community. The reviewers cull the wheat from the chaff and make suggestions to help turn the later into [...]

The Chronicle of Higher Education today notes a report from Harvard regarding the number of women being offered tenure track faculty positions and the number accepting.  In 2005-2006, women were offered 39% of the tenure track faculty positions.  Unfortunately, only 20% of those accepting positions were female.  This compares to 2004-2005 when 40% of those [...]

Last week a friend pointed me to a comic that accurately described my life for four and a half years. Piled Higher and Deeper is a PhD comic strip. After reading just a few, I couldn’t help but think, “how did I miss this for all these years?” It turns out that [...]

You can bet that any article written by a conservative that starts with “Liberals don’t value a college education?” will be full of crap. The only relevant question is “what kind of crap will it be full of?” In the September 22nd issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Chronicle Review,” Anthony P. [...]