Category Archives: Graduate Studies

3quarksdaily: Philosophy is a Bunch of Empty Ideas: Interview with Peter Unger

Philosophy: you either get it or you don’t. The field has its passionate defenders, but according to its critics, philosophy is irrelevant, unproductive, and right at the height of the ivory towers. And now, the philosophy-bashing camp can count a … Continue reading

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Finding Life After Academia — and Not Feeling Bad About It – NYTimes.com

According to a 2011 National Science Foundation survey, 35 percent of doctorate recipients — and 43 percent of those in the humanities — had no commitment for employment at the time of completion. Fewer than half of Ph.D.’s are expected … Continue reading

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How Academia and Publishing are Destroying Scientific Innovation: A Conversation with Sydney Brenner | King’s Review – Magazine

An interview with molecular biologist Sydney Brenner… In most places in the world, you live your social life and your ordinary life in the lab. You don’t know anybody else. Sometimes you don’t even know other people in the same … Continue reading

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Graduate Student Research Symposium – TWU Federation of North Texas Area Universities – Texas Woman’s University

The Federation of North Texas Area Universities is pleased to sponsor its fifth annual Graduate Student Research Symposium on April 25, 2014, at Texas Woman’s University (Symposium Location & Directions). At the Symposium, graduate students from Federation disciplines across the three universities–Texas A&M-Commerce, … Continue reading

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Public Books — Stop Defending the Humanities

Those who matter most to the humanities fall, I think, into two classes. The most important is that relatively small group of 18-year-olds (disproportionately few from poorer families) who are inclined to study the humanities. Our immediate future rests primarily … Continue reading

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Budget deal expected to alleviate automatic cuts to scientific research | Inside Higher Ed

The federal budget deal announced by Congressional negotiators Tuesday evening would largely alleviate cuts to research funding and campus-based student aid programs… The proposal does not lay out specific amounts of money for federal agencies but it would increase, from … Continue reading

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8 New Jobs People Will Have In 2025

New technology will eradicate some jobs, change others, and create whole new categories of employment. Innovation causes a churn in the job market, and this time around the churn is particularly large–from cheap sensors (creating “an Internet of things“) to … Continue reading

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Schoolhouse Block: Science Students and the Government Shutdown | The Student Blog

It’s Day 5 of the government shutdown and the Panda Cam is still off. What does this mean for American science students? One of the biggest effects making its way around the science blog-o-sphere is the cutting of funding for scientific research. … Continue reading

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Academy Fight Song | Thomas Frank | The Baffler

This essay starts with utopia—the utopia known as the American university. It is the finest educational institution in the world, everyone tells us. Indeed, to judge by the praise that is heaped upon it, the American university may be our … Continue reading

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Academic Sustainability

The academy may be filled with leftists–so we are told–but it has yet to apply its Marxist interpretive skills to its own situation. For the academy suffers from epistemic overproduction. We can expect a crash. This overproduction shows itself both … Continue reading

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The University Is in Real Trouble, Folks

This is news to no one who’s been paying attention, of course. But this morning I read two articles that highlight some of the difficulties universities are facing today. The first was from Al Jazeera, which seems to be on … Continue reading

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Thesis Hatement – Slate Magazine

Fair warning from: Rebecca Schuman – Slate Magazine. A guy came up to me in a coffee shop the other day as I was grading papers. He started up a conversation (not like I was busy or anything), asking me … Continue reading

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Philosophers In The Enterprise: As Bacon Says, Knowledge Is Power – semanticweb.com

Interesting piece forwarded to me by Holly Falk-Krzesinski: Philosophers In The Enterprise: As Bacon Says, Knowledge Is Power – semanticweb.com. Holly recently made the move from Academe to industry. It’s something all of us PhDs (not only philosophers, and not … Continue reading

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The looming spectre of differential tuition

Someone can do the relatively simple accounting and see that the humanities–”majors without an immediate job payoff”–are already subsidizing those which have a “job payoff.” In fact, this was already done at few institutions, including UCLA. But this is a … Continue reading

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Study shows gender bias in science is real… Scientific American Blog Network

Whenever the subject of women in science comes up, there are people fiercely committed to the idea that sexism does not exist. They will point to everything and anything else to explain differences while becoming angry and condescending if you … Continue reading

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5 New Technologies That Have Changed The Digital Classroom | Edudemic

In the past, the suggestion of getting a college degree without ever cracking a book meant paying a degree mill. It meant the degree was in name only, reflecting neither learning nor effort. Then distance learning meant correspondence courses, perhaps … Continue reading

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Carl Elliott – How to be an Academic Failure: A Guide for Beginners

How to be an academic failure? Let me count the ways. You can become a disgruntled graduate student. You can become a burned-out administrator, perhaps an associate dean. You can become an aging, solitary hermit, isolated in your own department, … Continue reading

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NCSES Trends in Interdisciplinary Dissertation Research: An Analysis of the Survey of Earned Doctorates – US National Science Foundation NSF

Working paper just posted on NSF website: nsf.gov – NCSES Trends in Interdisciplinary Dissertation Research: An Analysis of the Survey of Earned Doctorates – US National Science Foundation NSF. From the conclusion: The analyses contained in this report indicate that … Continue reading

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Robo-Readers Used to Grade Test Essays

A rather complacent article in Inside Higher Education touts a study out of the University of Akron that compares grades assigned to standardized test essays by humans and those assigned by computers. The news that they found no significant difference is … Continue reading

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Heart, Soul, and Social Science

Can the medical profession’s often myopic technophilia be reformed by incorporating cross-cultural, social, and ethical questions into the MCAT? Prof. Piers J. Hale knew something was up when his students at the University of Oklahoma were clamoring this spring to … Continue reading

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100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School

Is it too much to call a blog “magisterial?” Well, I’m going to do it anyway: 100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School is a magisterial effort. Nobody is going to agree with all (or even most) of what this … Continue reading

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Students’ Blogs | Science Communication

Thanks to Stephen Curry (@Stephen_Curry), students at Imperial College are being trained not only in how to conduct research, but also in how to communicate research to those outside their own areas of specialization. That, my friends, is education. Students’ … Continue reading

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An ‘Arab Spring’ of Free Online Higher Education?

In this article on the future of higher education, the ‘Arab Spring’ seems to be referenced purely for its cachet – the authors never make the case for the connection with transformations in higher education. It also strikes me as … Continue reading

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As Scholarship Goes Digital, Academics Seek New Ways to Measure Their Impact – Technology – The Chronicle of Higher Education

“It’s like we have a fresh snowfall across this docu-plain, and we have fresh footprints everywhere,” he says. “That has the potential to really revolutionize how we measure impact.” I agree with this. But combine it with Open Access policies, … Continue reading

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Hunter S. Thompson’s 1958 cover letter for a newspaper job – Boing Boing

Hunter S. Thompson’s 1958 cover letter for a newspaper job – Boing Boing.  Attention graduate students, and other job seekers: this is the way to write a job cover letter.

Posted in Basic News, Graduate Studies, Transdisciplinarity | 1 Comment