Download or read book Academic Life in the Measured University written by Tai Peseta and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-18 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While a life in academia is still one bestowed with enormous privilege and opportunity, on the inside, its cracks and fragility have been on display for some time. We see evidence of this in researchers bemoaning time spent applying for grants rather than doing research; teachers frustrated at the ways student feedback data are deployed to feed judgements about them; and doctoral students realising that they have little chance of securing full-time academic work. Yet in the public policy domain, the opposite appears true: academics left to their own devices in their elite ivory towers, rarely ever do enough. This collection addresses the fact that academic life deserves to be rigorously researched. Its emphasis on the measured university traces how academic life had ceded itself to the logics of perverse measures, and raises questions about whether the contemporary university may well have become too measured to adequately counter the political times now upon us. The contributors explore the ways in which measurement inhabits paradoxical positions in these spaces. It sketches the contours and consequences of mismeasurement, including the personal costs to academic staff. It examines our desires and fumbled efforts at institutional transformation, and it puts on display our own ethical conduct. The collection concludes with a call to chart a course for a revitalized moral economy of academic labour. This book was originally published as a special issue of Higher Education Research & Development.
Download or read book Rhythms of Academic Life written by Peter J. Frost and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 1996-07-16 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This invaluable source book offers guidance, support and advice for those contemplating or involved in academic careers. The contributions provide rich, personal, sometimes poignant and often humorous accounts of shared and unique experiences of those in the world of academia.
Download or read book Life for the Academic in the Neoliberal University written by Alpesh Maisuria and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-08 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life for the Academic in the Neoliberal University investigates the impact of neoliberalism on academics in today’s universities. Considering the experiences of early career researchers as well as more experienced academics, it outlines the changing nature of working life in the university precipitated by the reality of de-professionalisation, worsening conditions of employment, and general precarious existence. The book traces the dramatic shift in the role and function of universities and academics over the last forty years. It considers how capitalist neoliberalism drives universities to operate like businesses in a cut-throat financialised education market place. Uniquely the book then provides a possible alternative in the form of the National Education Service (NES) and what this alternative system could look like. Thought-provoking and relevant, this book will be of use to postgraduate students as well as new, emerging, and established academics interested in the current state of higher education, academic life, and possibilities for the future.
Download or read book Reflections on Academic Lives written by Staci M. Zavattaro and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together reflections from seventy academics – everyone from doctoral students to a retired provost – who share their lived experiences in graduate school and beyond. Career seekers, adjunct professors, those in or considering graduate school, and tenure-track professors alike will find truths revealed through these shared experiences of struggle, triumph, loss and hope.
Download or read book Slow Professor written by Maggie Berg and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Slow Professor, Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber discuss how adopting the principles of the Slow movement in academic life can counter the erosion of humanistic education.
Download or read book Navigating Academic Life written by Steven M. Cahn and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This engaging collection of recent essays reveals how a professorial career involves not only pursuit of a scholarly discipline but also such unwelcome features as the trials of graduate school, the tribulations that may arise in teaching, and the tensions that may develop from membership in a department. The author, who enjoyed a distinguished career as a professor of philosophy and senior university administrator, draws on his extensive experience to offer candid advice about handling the frustrations of academic life. Combining philosophical principles, practical concerns, and personal observations, this book serves as a reliable guide for both new and veteran academics as well as for anyone seeking to understand the inner workings of colleges and universities"--
Download or read book An Academic Life written by Hanna Holborn Gray and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-10 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling memoir by the first woman president of a major American university Hanna Holborn Gray has lived her entire life in the world of higher education. The daughter of academics, she fled Hitler's Germany with her parents in the 1930s, emigrating to New Haven, where her father was a professor at Yale University. She has studied and taught at some of the world's most prestigious universities. She was the first woman to serve as provost of Yale. In 1978, she became the first woman president of a major research university when she was appointed to lead the University of Chicago, a position she held for fifteen years. In 1991, Gray was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in recognition of her extraordinary contributions to education. An Academic Life is a candid self-portrait by one of academia's most respected trailblazers. Gray describes what it was like to grow up as a child of refugee parents, and reflects on the changing status of women in the academic world. She discusses the migration of intellectuals from Nazi-held Europe and the transformative role these exiles played in American higher education—and how the émigré experience in America transformed their own lives and work. She sheds light on the character of university communities, how they are structured and administered, and the balance they seek between tradition and innovation, teaching and research, and undergraduate and professional learning. An Academic Life speaks to the fundamental issues of purpose, academic freedom, and governance that arise time and again in higher education, and that pose sharp challenges to the independence and scholarly integrity of each new generation.
Download or read book Prestige in Academic Life written by Paul Blackmore and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The achievement of academic excellence is inherently competitive. Deliberate government policies, globalisation and changes in communication technologies mean that competitiveness in the academic world is sharper than ever before. At the centre of this is the seeking of prestige, at all levels from the national system to the individual. Prestige in Academic Life aims to increase understanding of motivation in universities by exploring the part that prestige plays, for good and ill. The book’s focus on motivation and prestige helps to answer fundamental questions that run through much discussion on universities, such as why some problems are never solved; why change can be so difficult to achieve; and how individuals and groups can enable it to happen. Issues explored include: • What role does prestige play in academic life? • How does prestige play out in the working lives of academics, students, administrators and institutional leaders? • How can the positive aspects of prestige be encouraged and the negative ones diminished? University leaders and managers, academics, administrators and students, indeed all who are interested in universities, will find this valuable reading. It will help those in leadership positions to enhance the efficiency, effectiveness and wellbeing of their institutions, and will support academic staff in negotiating their career path. Paul Blackmore is Professor of Higher Education in the International Centre for University Policy Research, Policy Institute at King’s, at King’s College London.
Download or read book The Case against Education written by Bryan Caplan and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 551 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why we need to stop wasting public funds on education Despite being immensely popular—and immensely lucrative—education is grossly overrated. Now with a new afterword by Bryan Caplan, this explosive book argues that the primary function of education is not to enhance students' skills but to signal the qualities of a good employee. Learn why students hunt for easy As only to forget most of what they learn after the final exam, why decades of growing access to education have not resulted in better jobs for average workers, how employers reward workers for costly schooling they rarely ever use, and why cutting education spending is the best remedy. Romantic notions about education being "good for the soul" must yield to careful research and common sense—The Case against Education points the way.
Download or read book Making Sense of Academic Life written by Peter G. Taylor and published by Open University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book helps academics to become players rather than pawns in the process of change. To do so it raises issues that might inform thinking about - and therefore reactions to - academics' experiences of their changing roles in changing universities. In universities, the tradition is to change. The author looks at the big picture of change in higher education, and in academics' work and work environments. The focus is on the emergent educational role of academics, and the relationship between academics and their institutions. In these times, the strategy of working harder will not work. Unlike books written about how universities might be better managed, this book explores issues of self-interested self-management for academics. It suggests new ways of thinking about the nature and future of academic work, particularly in terms of the relationship between academic and institutional values, priorities and practices. Making Sense of Academic Life makes fascinating reading for all those interested in the evolving roles of academics and especially for academics themselves, aspiring academics, and academic managers.
Download or read book How Will You Measure Your Life Harvard Business Review Classics written by Clayton M. Christensen and published by Harvard Business Review Press. This book was released on 2017-01-17 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spring of 2010, Harvard Business School’s graduating class asked HBS professor Clay Christensen to address them—but not on how to apply his principles and thinking to their post-HBS careers. The students wanted to know how to apply his wisdom to their personal lives. He shared with them a set of guidelines that have helped him find meaning in his own life, which led to this now-classic article. Although Christensen’s thinking is rooted in his deep religious faith, these are strategies anyone can use. Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.
Download or read book Behind the Academic Curtain written by Frank F. Furstenberg and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-09-23 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More people than ever are going to graduate school to seek a PhD these days. When they get there, they discover a bewildering environment: a rapid immersion in their discipline, a keen competition for resources, and uncertain options for their future, whether inside or outside of academia. Life with a PhD can begin to resemble an unsolvable maze. In Behind the Academic Curtain, Frank F. Furstenberg offers a clear and user-friendly map to this maze. Drawing on decades of experience in academia, he provides a comprehensive, empirically grounded, and, most important of all, practical guide to academic life. While the greatest anxieties for PhD candidates and postgrads are often centered on getting that tenure-track dream job, each stage of an academic career poses a series of distinctive problems. Furstenberg divides these stages into five chapters that cover the entire trajectory of an academic life, including how to make use of a PhD outside of academia. From finding the right job to earning tenure, from managing teaching loads to conducting research, from working on committees to easing into retirement, he illuminates all the challenges and opportunities an academic can expect to encounter. Each chapter is designed for easy consultation, with copious signposts, helpful suggestions, and a bevy of questions that all academics should ask themselves throughout their career, whether at a major university, junior college, or a nonacademic organization. An honest and up-to-date portrayal of how this life really works, Behind the Academic Curtain is an essential companion for any scholar, at any stage of his or her career.
Download or read book The Myth of Achievement Tests written by James J. Heckman and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Achievement tests play an important role in modern societies. They are used to evaluate schools, to assign students to tracks within schools, and to identify weaknesses in student knowledge. The GED is an achievement test used to grant the status of high school graduate to anyone who passes it. GED recipients currently account for 12 percent of all high school credentials issued each year in the United States. But do achievement tests predict success in life? The Myth of Achievement Tests shows that achievement tests like the GED fail to measure important life skills. James J. Heckman, John Eric Humphries, Tim Kautz, and a group of scholars offer an in-depth exploration of how the GED came to be used throughout the United States and why our reliance on it is dangerous. Drawing on decades of research, the authors show that, while GED recipients score as well on achievement tests as high school graduates who do not enroll in college, high school graduates vastly outperform GED recipients in terms of their earnings, employment opportunities, educational attainment, and health. The authors show that the differences in success between GED recipients and high school graduates are driven by character skills. Achievement tests like the GED do not adequately capture character skills like conscientiousness, perseverance, sociability, and curiosity. These skills are important in predicting a variety of life outcomes. They can be measured, and they can be taught. Using the GED as a case study, the authors explore what achievement tests miss and show the dangers of an educational system based on them. They call for a return to an emphasis on character in our schools, our systems of accountability, and our national dialogue. Contributors Eric Grodsky, University of Wisconsin–Madison Andrew Halpern-Manners, Indiana University Bloomington Paul A. LaFontaine, Federal Communications Commission Janice H. Laurence, Temple University Lois M. Quinn, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Pedro L. Rodríguez, Institute of Advanced Studies in Administration John Robert Warren, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Download or read book Leaving Academia written by Christopher L. Caterine and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide for grad students and academics who want to find fulfilling careers outside higher education. With the academic job market in crisis, 'Leaving Academia' helps grad students and academics in any scholarly field find satisfying careers beyond higher education. The book offers invaluable advice to visiting and adjunct instructors ready to seek new opportunities, to scholars caught in "tenure-trap" jobs, to grad students interested in nonacademic work, and to committed academics who want to support their students and contingent colleagues more effectively. Providing clear, concrete ways to move forward at each stage of your career change, even when the going gets tough, 'Leaving Academia' is both realistic and hopeful.
Download or read book The Privileged Poor written by Anthony Abraham Jack and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-01 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An NPR Favorite Book of the Year Winner of the Critics’ Choice Book Award, American Educational Studies Association Winner of the Mirra Komarovsky Book Award Winner of the CEP–Mildred García Award for Exemplary Scholarship “Eye-opening...Brings home the pain and reality of on-campus poverty and puts the blame squarely on elite institutions.” —Washington Post “Jack’s investigation redirects attention from the matter of access to the matter of inclusion...His book challenges universities to support the diversity they indulge in advertising.” —New Yorker “The lesson is plain—simply admitting low-income students is just the start of a university’s obligations. Once they’re on campus, colleges must show them that they are full-fledged citizen.” —David Kirp, American Prospect “This book should be studied closely by anyone interested in improving diversity and inclusion in higher education and provides a moving call to action for us all.” —Raj Chetty, Harvard University The Ivy League looks different than it used to. College presidents and deans of admission have opened their doors—and their coffers—to support a more diverse student body. But is it enough just to admit these students? In this bracing exposé, Anthony Jack shows that many students’ struggles continue long after they’ve settled in their dorms. Admission, they quickly learn, is not the same as acceptance. This powerfully argued book documents how university policies and campus culture can exacerbate preexisting inequalities and reveals why some students are harder hit than others.
Download or read book Making the Grade written by Howard Saul Becker and published by Transaction Pub. This book was released on 1995 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on three years of detailed anthropological observation, this account of undergraduate culture portrays students' academic relations to faculty and administration as one of subjection. With rare intervals in crisis moments, student life has always been dominated by grades and grade point averages. The authors of Making the Grade maintain that, though it has taken different forms from tune to time, the emphasis on grades has persisted in academic life. From this premise they argue that the social organization giving rise to this emphasis has remained remarkably stable throughout the century. Becker, Geer, and Hughes discuss various aspects of college life and examine the degree of autonomy students have over each facet of their lives. Students negotiate with authorities the conditions of campus political and organizational life--the student government, independent student organizations, and the student newspaper--and preserve substantial areas of autonomous action for themselves. Those same authorities leave them to run such aspects of their private lives as friendships and dating as they wish. But, when it comes to academic matters, students are subject to the decisions of college faculties and administrators. Becker deals with this continuing lack of autonomy in student life in his new introduction. He also examines new phenomena, such as the impact of -grade inflation- and how the world of real adult work has increasingly made professional and technical expertise, in addition to high grades, the necessary condition for success. Making the Grade continues to be an unparalleled contribution to the studies of academics, students, and college life. It will be of interest to university administrators, professors, students, and sociologists.
Download or read book The Academic Life written by Burton R. Clark and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
