My musing are not going to cover any ideas concerning a U.S. citizen traveling abroad to gain a degree, or to work towards a degree. No, my musings have to do with foreign students who come to the United States with a degree already in hand from their home country. Degrees conferred by Western European…
What Teachers Make: In Praise of the World’s Greatest Job. By Taylor Mali. Penguin-Putnam Publishing. Hardback. 2012. $12 At 197 pages What Teachers Make is short, sweet and to-the-point. Mali has a wide following, having taught in numerous places, with experiences across curriculums and disciplines. He draws from his wide experiences in this brief collection…
I recently attended a day-long workshop at the Jefferson County Community and Technical College-Southwest in Louisville, KY. GeoEd 2012 targeted two-year college staff and faculty looking to incorporate geographic information sciences (GIS) in their coursework. My primary employer is a 4-yr institution but the presentations were not especially directed to universities, which is good; otherwise…
I’m sure I’m like many college faculty. We become so frustrated with our students. Frustration builds like a storm as we feel stymied class after class by the apparent lack of knowledge absorption by our supposedly eager students. “What can I do different to encourage them to soak this stuff up?” The reality is we…
Geography is so much a part of our everyday lives we take our experiences for granted. Being a geographer is not enough; we are still susceptible to bias and not immune to being oblivious. However, I would submit the holistic nature of Geography allows trained geographers to see, interpret, and question patterns many others would…
I grapple with the paradox of my post title daily. Think about those words. The Uneducated do not create or implement educational policy at any level. Degreed people do. “No Child Left Behind” was not developed by non-degreed folks, yet inarguably NCLB has been the worst “education reform” since President Reagan declared ketchup a vegetable.…
I’ve been an educator for almost two decades now, 19 years or so. My mother taught everything from pre-school to high school special education. My grandmother taught elementary school. My uncle was a university professor in his early career. In my adolescent, I remember Mom bringing home papers to grade, assignments to evaluate, and lesson…
At Ivory Tower State University, our dragon program historically has enjoyed a great reputation. Over last couple years, though, the dragon program has taken to slogging through the muck. Reputations are as fickle as the people upon whose shoulders those accolades rest, though. The hiring of individuals can really change a program, either for the…
March 27th, 2012 the Washington Post published an opinion/editorial by David C. Levy. Mr. Levy opined rising tuition cots are a function of a broken employment policy system within Higher Education. On the one hand, Mr. Levy attempted to assuage fears of gross misconduct across the higher education by suggesting few faculty were not working…
Someone, please, help me confirm the foundations of higher education. What is the basic purpose of higher education? And, if someone says, “to help me get a job,” I’m going to scream. Successful acquisition of employment is a by-product of higher education, not the answer I am looking for. Three-and-a-half to five years spent obtaining…
Constant Geography 
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