Austerity 101

The obvious response to the current crisis in higher education is to demand more financing for public colleges and universities and to create more jobs for college graduates. However, the new austerians, such as Robert Samuelson, simply dismiss these possibilities and argue instead that fewer young people should go to college. The college-for-all crusade has [...]

Chart of the day

source dedicated to all my friends at UK

Fashionable F&M

Franklin and Marshall has gone global. It has now opened an outpost in Dubai. That I know of, Franklin and Marshall College of Lancaster, PA, established in 1787, has not expanded to the United Arab Emirates, although the Franklin and Marshall fashion chain, established in 1999, certainly has. Here’s the background story [ht: ja] of [...]

Pay-to-play economists

source* In an excerpt from his new book, Predator Nation, Charles H. Ferguson, the director of Inside Job, describes how “significant portions of American academia have deteriorated into ‘pay to play’ activities.” Academics on industry payrolls are now so numerous and powerful that they can often prevent universities, professional associations, and academic journals from adopting [...]

Then and now

How things have changed at the University of Notre Dame over the course of the past 45 years. In 1967, the University sponsored and then signed the so-called Land O’ Lakes Statement, in which representatives from the participating Catholic universities declared their independence from the Vatican and committed themselves to participating in “the total university [...]

Giuseppe Toniolo, scholar-practitioner

I invited my colleague and friend Todd Whitmore to write up his reaction to the Catholic Church’s recent beatification of Giuseppe Toniolo. Before modern Catholic social teaching, there was Giuseppe Toniolo (1845-1918). In April, Pope Benedict XVI beatified Toniolo, which is the last step in church procedure before canonization. What is in part remarkable about [...]

Tales from the new corporate university

It’s hard to keep up with the examples of the selling of education in the new corporate university. Here are two recent ones. The first is from West Virginia University, which according to John David [ht: db] has sold its economics department to the Koch brothers. When I arrived at WVU to study economics, it [...]

Protest of the day

University of Notre Dame faculty protest Bishop Daniel Jenky’s sermon in which he preached that President Obama’s policies were following a “similar path” to that of Hitler and Stalin.

Best of times, worst of times

We all know that, in the midst of the Second Great Depression, it is the best of times for a few and the worst of times for everyone else. That’s clear from all the macroeconomic indicators, as corporate profits, CEO salaries, and stock market prices rise but unemployment remains high, workers’ wages are stagnant, and [...]

Cartoon of the day

Special mention