Digests

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| Recalibrating Our Understanding of Failure | In a nutshell, Tony Carnevale and his colleagues at CEW lay out data that illustrates that poor kids with higher intelligence and aptitude are less likely to succeed in school than more well-to-do kids with lower intelligence and aptitude. Let me put that another, less diplomatic, way. Despite our best efforts and intentions, when it comes to academic success and persistence to date, schools tend to sort kids by income and zip code, not aptitude, and colleges complete the job.Continue Reading

Arcane Cage | Kindle Edition

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Historical Fictionistas (group) on goodreads.com graciously offered the authors among its membership to nominate their own works for the group read in March 2020. I submitted my fictional work, Arcane Cage, believing it qualified per the rules. The moderators however disqualified it as “fantasy,” which I thought meant fantasy elements.Continue Reading

Digests

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In: Higher Education News

| How College Became a Commodity [subscription required] | Neoliberalism was a diverse but coherent and influential body of theory championed by neoclassical economists and politicians — including, of course, the authors’ own intellectual progenitor, James Buchanan. The reimagining of education as a commodity purchased by individuals, rather than a universal public good provided by the state, was an explicit project of neoliberal economists and politicians on both the right and left as they moved to slice and reorganize the welfare state along leaner, more punitive lines. Neoliberalism hardly explains everything about contemporary higher education, but it explains a lot. [Exhibit A — Nearly every article in this week’s news digest speaks of higher education almost exclusively in terms of the private benefits (or burdens) of college education.]Continue Reading