Louis Menand of the New Yorker looks at the competing theories of education: that it is to create more well-rounded individuals vs. teaching someone what they need to know to get a job.
posted by reenum on Jun 13, 2011 - 68 comments

The reality of For Profit Educatation in Infographic form. [more inside]
posted by The Whelk on Apr 11, 2011 - 60 comments

An oldie, but a goodie: Michael Lewis goes to Columbia's School of Journalism to see what such schools actually do to prepare their students.
posted by reenum on Dec 28, 2010 - 16 comments

When a person graduates high school as one of the top students, all sorts of grand predictions are made for the person's future. But how many of them end up doing the things predicted of them? The Buffalo News did a feature in 2007 on what the top students in the Buffalo area from 1987 ended up doing after high school. Some of them have done remarkable things, while others have made their mark in smaller ways, all are interesting in their own way.
posted by reenum on Jul 4, 2010 - 57 comments

The Scholar Ship , an international floating university stewarded by top universities in Morocco, the United Kingdom, China, Australia, Mexico, USA, and Ghana, have temporarily suspended all voyages due to lack of funds - mainly caused by the withdrawal of main sponsor and initiator Royal Caribbean International. The program ran two voyages in 2007 and 2008 before shutdown. Alumni and prospective students on Facebook and Ning are busily sourcing options to revive the organization, while Semester at Sea is offering spaces to students who were accepted for the now-cancelled voyages. [more inside]
posted by divabat on Jun 14, 2008 - 9 comments

Love on Campus: Why We Should Encourage an Eroticism (of the Mind) Between Professor and Student. Yale English professor William Deresiewicz argues that the newly-emerged stereotype of professors as "pompous, lecherous, alcoholic failures" is in the main due to our culture's fear of and inability to understand the true intimacy between professor and student: that of the mind. Cf. controversial Hindu teacher-student relationships, the same in Christianity, or merely observe Oscar Wilde: "I knew that I had come face to face with someone whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself."
posted by shivohum on Jul 13, 2007 - 50 comments

Are College Students Stupider and Less Informed Than 30 Years Ago? Professor Anders Henriksson says they ain't necessarily so. He's been collecting students' bloopers for 30 years and suggests they aren't getting worse at all. That's assuming they could, of course. Is he right or just pulling our leg? (from today's Los Angeles Times)
posted by MiguelCardoso on Dec 30, 2001 - 45 comments

student sues school over poor results i could think of some of my teachers who sucked at the Univ! i wonder if any of our US schools (private high school or college/university) have been sued for poor teaching.
posted by m2bcubed on Oct 1, 2001 - 22 comments