The newly inaugurated second Trump administration has arrived, and among the changes that the president and his allies have proposed is large-scale simplification and elimination of government regulations. President Trump … Continue reading “Stop Overregulating Research”
In its first year, the Biden administration launched a fast-track Scientific Integrity Task Force, intended to “lift up the voices of Federal scientists of many perspectives and backgrounds” and put … Continue reading “So Now the Feds Will Monitor Research Integrity?”
Much “news” today consists of quick, divisive headlines with little regard for complexity or subtlety. A prominent example is the rapid firestorm that surrounded the conservative governments of Florida, Texas, … Continue reading “Even the Left Admits the Red-State Faculty “Brain-Drain” Never Happened”
Some North Carolina public universities hope to leverage revisions to higher education’s preeminent classification methodology to achieve game-changing status reserved presently for a small handful of state schools. If they … Continue reading “UNC-System Schools and the “R1” Wars”
No matter where one falls politically, one must admit that the pandemic brought to the foreground the importance of scientific research. A new report from The Economist’s think-tank spinoff, Economist … Continue reading “Do Academics Still Trust Research?”
The past decade has ushered in dramatic growth in the number of postsecondary degree options available to US students. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the number of … Continue reading “Are More Options Always a Good Thing? The Backfiring Effects of Academic Proliferation”
Last year, Forbes published a headline, “Americans rank a Google internship over a Harvard degree.” It seems higher education is quickly losing hold of its value proposition as the best … Continue reading “Are Students Learning the Right Skills? Why Academia Needs to Go Back to the “Basics””
In early August, archivists and other scholars erupted in protest when the American Historical Association (AHA) wrote a letter asking broad questions about how archives plan to reopen. The AHA … Continue reading “Archivists Serve Historians? A Case of Academic Hubris”
Academics are growing wary of the peer review process amid mounting evidence that it is compromised by ideological biases and that it does not effectively or reliably ensure the quality … Continue reading “An Innovative Solution to the Failures of Peer Review”
I recently submitted a manuscript to an education journal, a review essay of another scholar’s work. It opened with a compliment of the author’s “highly-praised and influential work.” To that … Continue reading “Peer Review, a Tarnished “Gold Standard””