Don’t have to give it up if you don’t take it up.

Ayo@darrylayo.bsky.social · 19h ago

Guys like this don’t realize that they are the freak

It’s syllabus prep season, and I’m thinking about what a privilege and benefit it must be for those academics who get to directly tie their teaching / syllabi to their research / writing. 1/5

Is there any research on how being raised within a particular religious tradition’s approach to text shapes the approach you have to text as a scholar (whether you remain in that religious tradition or not)?

Thinking about my online summer class that starts Monday and that I’m supposed to be updating for new ADA requirements…

“PAY OR LEAK”: Hackers Target Big Higher Ed Vendor

The criminal extortion group ShinyHunters breached Instructure last week. The hackers, who have also attacked individual universities, demanded the ed-tech giant pay up or face a data leak.

insidehighered.com

The more I think about salary and lackluster raises, the more I think that being faculty is an unviable long term pathway for many. For many faculty, that 1.8% increase raise on avg. still puts their purchasing power below annual inflation. And this 1.8% is before the major state budget cuts hit.

a man wearing a red shirt that says hulkmania

ALT: a man wearing a red shirt that says hulkmania

media.tenor.com

Private equity has been fantasizing about the capture of education for decades. This is the deepest they’ve ever gotten their tendrils into it.

The Secret History of Canvas LMS, Corporate Raiders, & The Chatbot Bubble (Vandal Live at UVU)

with Christa Albrecht-Crane, Angie McKinnon Carter, and Chiler Moore

open.substack.com

One of skills my middle schooler is developing is self-advocacy because he has to dispute the grades that AI graders assign his work in his English class.😒🤬

3. Imagine for a second that the university adopted the same “neutral” stance with respect to grades or plagiarism. Do you think that profs would in practice be free to establish standards, on an individual basis, that students would follow? Or would it not much more likely be a race to the bottom?

The Bluebell Creamery and Washington-on-the-Brazos combo trip.

I grew up knowing quite a few humanities PhDs who had to pursue non-academic careers; one thing that strikes me is that many careers just aren't as permeable, particularly for people who hold PhDs, as they may have once been.

There's a link between the AI disruption and the authoritarian political attacks on expertise. Highly educated white collar folks considered ourselves to be a powerful culture, on the basis of our expertise & credentials. But that's not where power comes from, and we're learning that the hard way.

Marco Rogers@polotek.bsky.social · 6mo ago

All I'm saying here is that there's a strong air from white collar people like we're not supposed to be disrupted. That's for blue collar folks. But we're not special. We never have been. Just lucky. And eventually your luck runs out. Capitalism comes for everybody eventually.

A $1,500 raise after a promotion, a celebrated 1% raise, and other tales from the frontlines of higher ed. How have you encountered higher ed's absurd compensation practices? Tell us about it. https://chroni.cl/3LZAGLP

Opinion | Higher Education’s Compensation Charade

We’ve come to accept illogical, unjust, and occasionally insulting pay practices. Why?

chronicle.com

"a great-books model at the undergraduate level is, in fact, so consonant with Freire’s radical critique that it represents a far better path forward for a left-wing vision of education than virtually anything else currently on offer in the US" thepointmag.com/examined-lif...

The Left Case for Great Books | The Point Magazine

A great-books model at the undergraduate level is, in fact, so consonant with Freire’s radical critique that it represents a far better path forward for a left-wing vision of education than virtually ...

thepointmag.com

Just completed an institutional survey about attitudes toward AI only to find out after I submitted it that portions of the survey were created with AI.😒

This is such valuable advice and put plainly. Please take a moment. TY @tressiemcphd.bsky.social

There isn't a single problem "solved" by edtech that couldn't be fixed with smaller classes led by well-paid teachers given real academic freedom

This piece gets at one of the underlying reasons students turn to LLMs - because they think it makes them sound like they belong in a university setting. It's the same motive that had students overusing the thesaurus pre-ChatGPT. theimportantwork.substack.com/p/chatgpt-an...

ChatGPT and "Inventing the University"

What we can learn from the em dash debate

theimportantwork.substack.com

"Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply." me on why Ezra Klein should be ashamed / why shame is Good Actually www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

How Can We Live Together? - Boston Review

Ezra Klein is wrong: shame is essential.

bostonreview.net

Shorter Sunstein: “I wanted to write a nice book, and if I addressed the things you bring up it would have been…not nice.”

Isaac Chotiner@ichotiner.bsky.social · 11mo ago

New Interview: www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

Taboo

“I’m not racist, some of my best chatbots are black”

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 11mo ago

Let’s start with the fact that dude is doing Digital Blackface and calling it his “sidekick”

So I guess trading away your best player is just a Dallas thing now.

People working in universities know a lot of the work that makes the organization function is outsourced to for-profit companies (catering, landscaping) or runs on platforms requiring payments to such companies: Workday, Canvas, Microsoft, Zoom. This thread will be for less obvious examples. 1/

This Cracker Barrel business is a perfect example of how the right wing can manufacture culture wars outrage over absolutely nothing.

Autumatopoeia@isreallytwodogs.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Referring to a mediocre breakfast restaurant as your culture and heritage is one of the whitest things I've ever read.

Tr*mp made them choose what he makes everyone choose: what to them was real and what was nice to have, but kind of ornamental. Foreigners, lefties, homos, POC were nice to have. The core of the university was the money and the research done by people who resemble our upper administrations. (3/4)

This whole thread. Damn.

Jess Calarco@jessicacalarco.com · last yr.

There's an ad for Smarty Pants vitamins--a parent says to another "raising smart kids isn't a competition" then to the camera "except it totally is." It's so over-the-top it could be parody. But it's real. So we need to talk about what's driving this competition, and why it's apt to get worse. 1/🧵

The sheer quantity of bullshit here. The solution to instructor exhaustion and overwork is not outsourcing grading (if that’s not direct mentoring of students, I don’t know what is) but hiring more faculty and reducing class sizes. Give the money to teachers, not Sam Altman

Shannon Mattern@shannonmattern.bsky.social · last yr.

“…faculty members will be able to click an icon that connects them with various AI features…, like a grading tool, a discussion-post summarizer… Canvas’s parent company, Instructure, is also in partnership w/ OpenAI… so instructors can use generative-AI technology as part of their assignments.”

It's hard to avoid recalling this passage from the English historian Tony Judt:

Nick Kapur@nickkapur.bsky.social · last yr.

Most incredible about this is that IU-Bloomington has long been the no. 1 university in the world for teaching Asian languages and cultures, with many programs found nowhere else. They're slashing many of IU-B's most distinctive programs with zero thought or debate. They probably don't even know.

What a horrific act of vandalism targeting a formidable set of public institutions. Solidarity with faculty and students.

Rebecca Spang@rlspang.bsky.social · last yr.

So, here it is. Thanks to a new state law that was NEVER DEBATED, Indiana University has committed itself to abolishing majors in African-American/African Diaspora Studies: American Studies; Art History; French; Italian; Religious Studies etc. DOZENS of majors. www.ipm.org/news-section...

It wasn’t until I became a professional that I realized how much college financing has in common with used car sales.

Matt Seybold@mattseybold.bsky.social · last yr.

College financing is a statistical shell game of tuition, discount rates, fees, endowment restrictions, rate swaps, overnight lending, arbitrary enrollment ratios, bullshit demography, & FAFSA arbitrage. This complexity is designed for narrative flexibility & Ponzi austerity. Free college for all.