Academe Today

Administration

Easing the Pain of Program Closings

It’s a dreaded but familiar exercise at colleges when budgets are tight and enrollment pools shrinking. There are ways, though, to minimize the distress for both faculty members and students.

Curriculum

A College Weighs Its Priorities Before Making Cuts

Morningside College eased the pain by bringing faculty members aboard to evaluate and rank programs ahead of $2.7 million in spending reductions.

Commentary

What to Consider When Closing an Academic Program

Position your institution for the future, then proceed with caution.

Special Reports

A World of Ideas in Idea Lab

A collection of some three dozen explorations of the problems colleges face, and how they are solving them. The articles include news, analysis, data, advice, and opinion.

Leadership & Governance

Acceding to Fan Outrage, U. of Tennessee Draws More Critics

The university scrapped plans to hire Greg Schiano as its next head football coach, marking a rare capitulation to fans who seized on a disputed claim that he had failed to report Jerry Sandusky’s abuses at Penn State.

Teaching

Should Laptops Be Banned in Class? An Op-Ed Fires Up the Debate

The distraction of technology is a major driver of such bans. But some academics say that technology can be a force for good, or at least that professors have no right to tell students what they can and can’t use in class. An essay in The New York Times prompts renewed discussion.

The Chronicle Interview

How a Dean Got Over Impostor Syndrome — and Thinks You Can, Too

Valerie Ashby suffered from impostor syndrome until she identified the phenomenon and spent a year practicing 10 steps to overcome it.

Legal

Tufts Postpones Appearance by Anthony Scaramucci After Lawsuit Threat

Two opinion articles in the student newspaper bothered the former White House communications director so much that he threatened legal action.

Graduate Students

American U. of Beirut Restores Assistantships for Student Protesters

The positions had been revoked to penalize graduate students who demonstrated against labor conditions.

The Daily Briefing

The Daily Briefing tells individual subscribers everything they need to know about higher ed. Here’s a sample.

Advice

The Professor Is In: ‘So, How Would You Change Our Major?’

Be on the lookout for the big-picture agenda when search committees ask you a seemingly narrow question

Commentary

How to Help the University of Puerto Rico — and How Not To

Unlike the response to Katrina, inviting qualified students to stateside colleges in the wake of Hurricane Maria weakens the institution.

Lingua Franca

‘Nothing to See Here’: Evolution of a Catchphrase

Ben Yagoda says the recent popularity of the utterance stems from how it nails a bureaucratic tendency to sweep damaging news under the rug.