Author(s): |
Wilson, Robin |
Source: |
Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan 2013 |
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Pub Date: |
2013-01-21 |
Pub Type(s): |
Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive |
Peer Reviewed: |
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Descriptors:
Credentials; Academic Freedom; College Faculty; Tenure; Web Sites; Electronic Publishing; Financial Needs; Doctoral Degrees; Grants; Intellectual Disciplines; Computer Mediated Communication; Employment; Research
Abstract:
Independent scholars are a growing part of the academic landscape. They may have been jilted by the academic job market, or are uninterested in either being on the tenure track or in cobbling together full-time work as adjuncts. Like traditional professors, they perform research, secure grants, and publish books and papers. In some cases, their work is having an impact on their disciplines, challenging established views and advancing knowledge in the field. But independent scholars say their contributions are frequently discounted by tenured professors, who, as gatekeepers of scholarly conversations and the distribution of intellectual ideas, tend to exclude those who lack university credentials. Some prominent professors acknowledge that such scholars do important academic work. Yet professors question whether the blogs, podcasts, Facebook posts, and tweets that independent scholars sometimes depend on as alternatives to journal publishing are more harmful than helpful to the quality of scholarship. The work life of an independent scholar--with its freedom from the performance requirements of the tenure track--can be attractive to those with young children and those who can't or don't want to relocate for a faculty job. Yet theirs can be a spartan existence, lacking intellectual colleagues or recognition, a calling that most can afford to pursue only by working extra part-time jobs or relying on a partner's income. The financial needs of independent scholars can also get in the way of academic freedom by limiting the kinds of questions they are able to ask and the projects they are willing to pursue. "The Chronicle" talked with Ph.D.'s who work as independent scholars in anthropology, Asian studies, biology, education, English, evolution, history, political science, religion, and theater. Some set up shop on their own after they failed to earn tenure or grew disillusioned with the culture of large research universities, which they found too limiting, in terms of the kinds of projects they could pursue, or too competitive. Others sidestepped academe from the very beginning, some for jobs outside higher education, others because they didn't want to be tied down to a full-time position.
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Pub Date: |
2012-09-10 |
Pub Type(s): |
Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive |
Peer Reviewed: |
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Descriptors:
Nutrition; Hunger; Nonprofit Organizations; Colleges; Food; Tuition; Financial Needs; College Students; Models; Financial Exigency
Abstract:
Hunger on campus is part of a lingering national problem that grew after the financial crisis that began in late 2007. In an unforgiving economy, many students across the country struggle not only to pay tuition but also to buy food. Colleges and nonprofit groups have noticed, and more are reacting. Food pantries are cropping up on two-year and four-year campuses nationwide, including, in recent years, at Oregon State University, the University of Georgia, and Valencia College. At Bunker Hill Community College, volunteers from the Greater Boston Food Bank recently gave out truckloads of groceries to needy students. After hearing news reports that students around the country were going hungry, students and campus officials at West Virginia started the Rack in September 2010. In the past two years, campus officials have talked to representatives of more than 20 colleges interested in its model.
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Author(s): |
Silva, Jennifer M. |
Source: |
American Sociological Review, v77 n4 p505-522 Aug 2012 |
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Pub Date: |
2012-08-00 |
Pub Type(s): |
Journal Articles; Reports - Research |
Peer Reviewed: |
Yes |
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Descriptors:
Young Adults; Working Class; World Views; Identification; Adults; Maturity (Individuals); Social Psychology; Individual Development; Change; Developmental Stages; Therapy; Models; Moral Values; Behavior Standards; Social Behavior; Females; Males; Self Concept; Well Being; Locus of Control; Discovery Learning; Social Change; Financial Needs; Economic Climate; Context Effect
Abstract:
Past research in both the transitions to adulthood literature and cultural sociology more broadly suggests that the working class relies on traditional cultural models in their construction of identity. In the contemporary post-industrial world, however, traditional life pathways are now much less available to working-class men and women. I draw on 93 interviews with black and white working-class young people in their 20s to 30s and ask, in an era of increasing uncertainty, where traditional markers of adulthood have become tenuous, what kinds of cultural models do working-class young people employ to validate their adult identities? In contrast to previous studies of working-class identity, I found that respondents embraced a model of therapeutic selfhood--that is, an inwardly directed self preoccupied with its own psychic development. I demonstrate that the therapeutic narrative allows working-class men and women to redefine competent adulthood in terms of overcoming a painful family past. Respondents required a witness to validate their performances of adulthood, however, and the inability to find one left many lost in transition. (Contains 1 table and 10 notes.)
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Pub Date: |
2012-09-09 |
Pub Type(s): |
Reports - Descriptive |
Peer Reviewed: |
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Descriptors:
Urban Environment; Urban Schools; Goal Orientation; Educational Improvement; Instructional Leadership; Empowerment; Funding Formulas; Educational Finance; Financial Needs; Financial Policy; Resource Allocation; School District Spending; Student Needs; Accountability; Public Schools; Educational Change; School Based Management; Educational Equity (Finance)
Abstract:
Superintendent Andres A. Alonso arrived in Baltimore in 2007 with a vision for improving the city's struggling schools. His vision included empowering school leaders and creating accountability for student learning through a series of reforms that center around a new system for giving resources to schools, called Fair Student Funding (FSF). FSF attempts to create equity across schools and students by targeting resources according to student needs--academic and social-emotional--and build a system of school-based autonomy and flexibility focused on fulfilling those needs. Instead of awarding employees to schools based on staffing ratios, under the leadership of Alonso in 2008-2009, Baltimore City Public Schools (City Schools) adopted a per pupil funding formula. This gave dollars to schools with the amount weighted to vary based on estimates of student learning need and the schools' respective needs. Since the rapid implementation of FSF and related reforms, City Schools has moved off the federal "needs improvement" list. The district has celebrated a 50% decline in the drop-out rate (from 9% to 4%), a notable improvement in student performance, and the reversal of a decades-long enrollment decline. With the rapid implementation and encouraging results, FSF and related reforms continue to be a work-in-process, as Baltimore City Public Schools adjusts student weights, renegotiates contracts and builds capacity and support at the school level. At the request of Carnegie Corporation of New York and with the cooperation of City Schools, Education Resource Strategies (ERS) set out to examine Baltimore's implementation of FSF and the reforms that accompanied it. In this summary, ERS shares the extent to which City Schools has met the objectives of FSF and related reforms and summarizes key lessons learned. (Contains 1 footnote.)
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Full Text (518K)
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Pub Date: |
2012-00-00 |
Pub Type(s): |
Journal Articles; Opinion Papers; Reports - Evaluative |
Peer Reviewed: |
Yes |
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Descriptors:
Community Organizations; School Community Relationship; Financial Needs; School Community Programs; Behavioral Objectives; Educational Objectives; Educational Principles; Democratic Values; Politics of Education; Change Strategies; Educational Change; Educational Philosophy
Abstract:
The ideal of community engagement suggests that both a student's career and his college's mission are (or ought to be) inextricable from the community in which they are embedded. That students, faculty, and academic institutions should serve community purposes, actively engage in community affairs, and network themselves in real and virtual communities relevant to shared goals is taken to be an obvious point. It remains uncertain to what extent this alignment of objectives between institutions of higher learning, community organizations, employers, and government is directed by pedagogical principle and to what extent it serves the changing structural and financial needs of increasingly financially stressed colleges and universities. What is certain is that there is a growing resistance to the suggestion that the individual and social functions of education should remain separate. Rather, higher education is now often considered not merely an end in itself, nor primarily an enrichment of the student as an end in herself, but as a process of training and development in which the student is figured as the means of satisfying employers' demands, communities' needs, and the nation's political and economic aspirations. What the author finds remarkable is how profoundly this vision of education differs from that of the Ivory Tower, an emblem for elite learning environments where privileged students master abstruse topics of little discernible significance to daily life. In this article, the author argues that the aloofness, abstraction, and distance from reality that characterize the Ivory Tower serve as important correctives in teaching students to think beyond the demands of their own time and place. He discusses a critical approach to community engagement. (Contains 8 endnotes.)
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Pub Date: |
2012-06-00 |
Pub Type(s): |
Journal Articles; Reports - Research |
Peer Reviewed: |
Yes |
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Descriptors:
Action Research; Organizational Development; Foreign Countries; Educational Change; Knowledge Economy; Financial Needs; Universities; Cooperation; College Faculty; Educational Administration; Surveys; Interviews; Strategic Planning; Teacher Attitudes; School Business Relationship
Abstract:
The UK's university sector is seeking to improve its participation in the knowledge economy and meet policy and financial imperatives. This paper reveals some of the opportunities and pitfalls in making that objective a reality in the context of a single university. The findings and organizational development resulting from an action research project undertaken in a small learning and teaching oriented university in the UK are outlined. The aim of the research was to facilitate an increased capacity for knowledge exchange and participation in enterprise activity. Action research was undertaken in a single organization and in collaboration with the university's academic workforce. The outcomes of an initial survey and a series of interviews were used to create a strategic proposal for developing knowledge exchange. The data revealed that a predominantly professionally-oriented academic staff was prepared to accept external engagement and was not averse to commercial outcomes for knowledge exchange. In contrast, the senior management was unwilling to establish systems and processes or enable organizational learning for knowledge exchange until a complete system restructure had been implemented; and this resulted in a very senior appointment (Pro Vice-Chancellor) being made, to lead external engagement. (Contains 1 note and 1 figure.)
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