who needs a liberal education?

Eric Hartman (Kansas State) and Antoinette Hertel (St. Joseph’s): Clearer Thinkers, Better People? Unpacking Assumptions in Liberal Education. Who needs a liberal education? Gilbert Meilaender on why we should stop pretending that the liberal arts are important frosting on the cake of an education that is in fact designed for other purposes. 

An excerpt from Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters by Michael Roth. Why Scott Samuelson teaches Plato to plumbers: Liberal arts and the humanities aren't just for the elite. The humanities aren't obscure, arcane or irrelevant — they awaken our souls, influence how we think about inequality, and help us adapt to a changing world. 

re-blogged from who needs a liberal education? - bookforum.com / omnivore ~ head on over and read the rest there

Who Ruined the #Humanities?

…revisited before returning to counting ACA hours, UI appeal strategies, organizing, #CEW2013, adjunct stories, HE and NTT in the news and other Future of HE concerns. 

Perspective and premise developed in this WSJ article may not sit well with humanities faculty, in particular those among us professing literature. Increasingly, NTT faculty teach more upper division and even graduate courses. The turn Lee Siegel anticipates so joyously would affect tenured faculty and lit teaching lecturers like +Joseph Fruscione and others. 

Yet, how many community college adjuncts teach literature, let alone their research specialty? Early cuts humanities offerings did not make much dent in graduate enrollments. Further, deeper ones might. Beyond the obvious and real concerns for professional futures, what then of the university as home to and primary patron of the humanities (and humanist scholars as gatekeepers and guardians)?

You've probably heard the baleful reports. The number of college students majoring in the humanities is plummeting, according to a big study released last month by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. The news has provoked a flood of high-minded essays deploring the development as a symptom and portent of American decline.

Fewer and fewer undergraduates are majoring in the humanities, and critic Lee Siegel couldn’t be happier. As he tells WSJ’s Gary Rosen, great poetry and novels are meant to be experienced in private and alone, away from the competitive pressures of the classroom.

Oh my, pundits & profs. Oh Humanities!

…let the juxtapositions speak for themselves…with zeugma like these, who needs more words?

You can also view Oh, humanities! on Storify.

yourself an academic

…it's been a while since we rolled out Omnivore's succulent & succinctly annotated links for a virtual visit to the Reading Room, which I've noticed that it is not the most popular NewFac chez Facebook item, hence dropping the tag from the title. I don't doubt that those who do click through will be pleasantly surprised, even delighted. 

A new issue of Academe is out, including Thomas P. Miller on the academy as a public works project; and Marc Bousquet on how we are all Roman porn stars now: Are we fighting the good fight through our service or just creating a spectacle of super-exploitation? The university as welfare state: Paula Marantz Cohen on why you should want kooks teaching your kids. 

Reading Room: Omnivore on #highered systems

...the whole collection as is. Some but not all sources are journals and media from the Mundo Bizarro of highered. Others are main steam media and studies from outside the profession. All are informed. Consider this homework, prep reading for bigger picture, context for whatever the #CFHE gathering yields and is willing to share and seeing other perspectives, perhaps even ourselves, our profession, as others see it.

Eli Meyerhoff (Minnesota), Elizabeth Johnson (Wisconsin), and Bruce Braun (Minnesota): Time and the University. Robert Rhoads (UCLA): The U.S. Research University as a Global Model: Some Fundamental Problems to Consider. Study abroad? Why American students head north. What country has the best higher education system?