To the Editor:

Your article on Aspiring Adults Adrift: Tentative Transitions of College Graduates (“Do Americans Expect Too Much From a College Degree?” The Chronicle September 2) begins: “In times like these, data points get wielded like cudgels. Student-loan debt tops $1-trillion. As many as half of recent graduates are out of work, earn trifling wages, or have jobs that don’t require college degrees. Clearly, such numbers suggest, college isn’t worthwhile.”

I hate to use a cudgel, but all o…

To the Editor:

I think that Catherine Stukel (“Is That Whining Adjunct Someone We Want Teaching Our Young?” The Chronicle, August 25) should work as an adjunct, in the economically depressed State of Michigan, and then let’s hear her opinion.

Marjorie K. Nanian
Political Science
Schoolcraft College
Livonia, Mich.

To the Editor:

“Presumed Guilty” (The Chronicle, September 1) is offensive and spins the discussion of sexual assault on university campuses in a way that is not only inaccurate but also potentially dangerous. Andrea Milne makes a valid point in her blog post that calls for an apology in response to the publication of the article:

“For the sake of argument, let’s just assume that Joshua Strange and the other ‘Men Fighting Back’ are among the two or so percent of men falsely accused of assaultin…

To the Editor:

“Presumed Guilty” (The Chronicle, September 1) covers familiar territory. Eighteen years ago The Chronicle published “Handling of Date-Rape Case Leaves Brown U. Policies in Dispute” (October 11, 1996) about a Brown University student, Adam Lack, who had been accused of date rape by a drunken woman who allegedly had consented to everything that happened. After being expelled, Mr. Lack did eventually get his degree from Brown but died tragically at 33 in 2008, in a single-vehicle ac…

To the Editor:

I have read “A Missionary for the Liberal Arts” (The Chronicle,, August 29) with great amusement. The reason is that I originated and ran Bard’s program in St. Petersburg practically single-handedly (with President Leon Botstein’s occasional but critical contributions, mostly in provided the meager resources that we used back then to run the program in Russia) and I still keep the original documents and drafts from those days to prove this.

None of the founding documents back then…

To the Editor:

In her letter to the editor (“Is That Whining Adjunct Someone We Want Teaching Our Young?” The Chronicle, August 25), Catherine Stukel bitterly chastised “whining” adjuncts who simply won’t just go somewhere else to find a “real job.”

I would like to point out that the arguments she advanced are exactly the same ones used when women began demanding equal opportunities in the workplace. We were called whiners, man-haters, lazy, complainers who lacked initiative and “executive func…

To the Editor:

Milton Greenberg, whom I once had the pleasure of meeting, claims colleges and universities “don’t need a search firm to hire a president” because sufficient talent exists on campuses to do it themselves (“You Don’t Need a Search Firm to Hire a President,” The Chronicle, September 1). That may very well be true in a few cases, but in many instances it is time and connections that the institution lacks, hence the need to employ a search firm. If a search firm does its job well, its…

To the Editor:

Milton Greenberg’s essay “You Don’t Need a Search Firm to Hire a President” (The Chronicle, September 1) is timely, refreshing, and encouraging. Only a respected and retired senior leader in higher education could have written candidly about the role of executive-search firms in presidential and other searches. I hope that other senior colleagues will follow his lead.

We are overdue for a serious examination of the reasons why executive-search firms have attained almost a monopoly…

To the Editor:

It is the lot of all service providers to be castigated for their extortionate fees and apparent lack of added value. Perhaps we all enjoy slinging brickbats at lawyers, management consultants, investment bankers, real-estate agents, even doctors.

There is no real point in my defending the profession against Professor Greenberg’s comments (“You Don’t Need a Search Firm to Hire a President,” The Chronicle, September 1) because, as the president of the Association of Executive Sear…

To the Editor:

“Mitch Daniels Isn’t Rebuilding Purdue’s Engine, He’s Tuning It” (The Chronicle, August 26) states that the Indiana Toll Road deal was “controversial because of the likelihood it would cause dramatic increases in tolls.” Actually tolls had remained unchanged for over 20 years, tolls have been frozen to commuters since this 2006 deal, and future toll increases are strictly regulated and cannot be increased more than inflation. In addition to the new toll increase cap, the road …