More Omnivore on HigherEd and Academic Life

From NYRB, a review essay on universities and academic life. From Minding the Campus, Naomi Schaefer Riley on highly stressed students and the aimless curriculum; Perry L. Glanzer on politics and the demise of the humanities; and The New Yorker takes on the US News College Rankings. From THES, a look at the Top Universities by Reputation 2011. College-rankings race goes global: Now even iPhone applications help calculate colleges' place in the Scheme of Things — far too much weight is placed on cracking the top 100 or 50 or name your tier. 

A look at how journal rankings are "a spectre haunting universities everywhere". Renovation Project: Academe is again awash in talk of a crisis in the humanities. From Wired, last year, a University of Alabama scientist gunned down six colleagues — here's a look inside the actions of Amy Bishop. From First Things, when choosing a graduate program in theology, the best is not always not the brightest; and Go With God: Stanley Hauerwas pens an open letter to young Christians on their way to college. Tea, shortbread, and 3 things worth knowing: If students aren't culturally literate, a welcome diversion can help fill in their gaps of knowledge. 

A review of The Lost Soul of Higher Education: Corporatization, the Assault on Academic Freedom, and the End of the American University by Ellen Schrecker. The escalating arms race for top colleges: SAT tutor, $125 a session; campus visits, $4,000 — why it now costs a fortune to do your parental duty. A review of Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College by Andrew Ferguson (and more and more and more and more and more and more). 

An anti-college backlash: Americans are finally starting to ask, "Is all this higher education really necessary?"

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Living la vida precaria in Temp Nation

East-West University's Chicago shenanigans, our own Unemployment Comp Initiative, US Social Forum (including but not limited to Adjuncts United at the opening day march and "voices for the voiceless" workshop) and are all necessary by-products of / reactions to living la vida precaria in Temp Nation. No study or academic press articles needed to figure that one out. "Lived experience" (Raymond Williams) suffices. 

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Not academia but relevant: Temp Nation, a four-part Global Post series on the structural changes taking place in Japan, the world's second-largest economy. With the demise of Japan, Inc.'s lifetime employment policies [cf tenure], more than a third of the country's workforce is now underworked and underpaid. This series examines how some temps are starting to fight back. It also investigates the impact on foreign workers, and the political response to this growing social and economic problem.

Times Higher Education reviews Nice Work If You Can Get It: Life and Labor in Precarious Times, which includes chapters on precarity in the university. Excerpts are also available on Google Books.