Inside Higher Ed reported a while back on new ideas for teaching political science from the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association Thursday in Chicago.
Perhaps the most controversial idea introduced was replacing the textbook for the Introduction to Political Science course with John Stewart’s America: the Book. John Stewart is the host of a satirical comedy news show on Comedy Central, and his book continues the vein of satirizing. The choice is controversial because the book doesn’t claim to be a textbook, contains graphic humor, and Stewart …Continue

If you read a lot of professor blogs–and check my blogroll in the next couple of days since I am working to add my favorite prof blogs to it–you will see a level of frustration at the student-as-consumer model which is being adopted by many universities. In this model, students (or their parents) pay money to a university which is a service-provider. Customer satisfaction is therefore the most important goal. Why do professors resist this? Or in some cases rage against it? Because customer satisfaction seems to imply in the …Continue

Another good one from Rateyourstudents.com, the site where professors get to rant about their students. This post is top ten first year pre-midterm quotes. Think of it as a guide to what not to say to your professor.
Let me also throw in some of my favorite anti-quotes from Kazakhstan high school students, some of my least favorite things said to me by school children here:

Hi. While I appreciate the enthusiasm, we do not say ‘Hi’ to teachers. We say ‘Hello’ or ‘Good morning’ I assume most students do not say …Continue

I recently came across an article in ETS’ TOEFL Access Newsletter, featuring a typical schedule in the day of the life of an American undergraduate university student entitled Everyday Life. It certainly was one take on American university life and may give you some idea of the rhythm of universities here. However for a counterpoint, I thought I would present my typical day at school and I would love to hear from you gentle readers. What is your typical day at school like? It would be great to hear from …Continue

If there’s a sign of the times in college admissions, it may be this: Steven Roy Goodman, an independent college counselor, tells clients to make a small mistake somewhere in their application on purpose.
“Sometimes it’s a typo,” he says. “I don’t want my students to sound like robots. It’s pretty easy to fall into that trap of trying to do everything perfectly and there’s no spark left.”
This advice to deliberately make a mistake in your application comes from a story on ABC News, Colleges Seek ‘Authenticity’ in Hopefuls. Controversial advice, …Continue

A great article from the New York Times was just brought to my attention, To: Professor@University.edu Subject: Why It’s All About Me. Maybe because today’s 18 year olds grew up with email, chat rooms and the Internet, many professors get annoying emails from students. Students write in informal language sometimes using L33T, demand instant replies to their emails, call the professor by the first name, and even share incredibly personal information. No matter what the reason, it seems like email makes students feel that all rules of formality go out …Continue

There is a site called Rate My Professor which allows students to rate their professors by university, subject and name. In principle this is not a bad idea. Before taking a class with a new professor, I always tried to find a few people who knew the prof so I had an idea of whether he/she was a good lecturer, what kind of workload was expected, how accessible the prof was outside of class. A professor makes or breaks a class, without question so knowing something about the prof. is …Continue

This post is part of a series of articles I wrote on rankings, which starts here
It’s not just me that thinks rankings are not a useful tool for selecting a university. On April 2, , The Education Conservancy, a US non-profit, sent a letter to college presidents asking them not to participate in the U.S. News rankings.
The Education Conservancy cites the lack of accuracy, lack of important criteria such as whether students are actually learning anything, and the fact that the “rankings game” distracts from the main purpose …Continue

This article is part of a series on university rankings. Part One dealt with some general problems with the concept of rankings. Part Two looked at the methodology of the rankings and some problems with it. Now we look at moving beyond rankings.
What Do We Without Rankings?
Remember that every student is different. what you think makes a good school may not be what others think. So the first thing to do is make a list of everything that you want in your university. You might consider:

Location
: Do you want …Continue

This article is part of a series on university rankings. Part One dealt with some general problems with the concept of rankings. Part Three will look at some alternatives to rankings and how to pick the perfect university for you.
Here I’m going to focus on the most popular and widely used rankings for undergraduate programs, the US News and World Report rankings. Usually when someone gives an overall ranking to a school in the US, this is the number they are referring to. As we noted before, these rankings do …Continue

While I hate to generalize, I have to say that Kazakhstan students are crazy about rankings! It’s one of the most common questions I get asked about American universities:
“What is it ranked?” Or, “What is the highest ranked university in my area?” Or, “I went to Duke which is ranked 8 and he went to Columbia which is ranked 9, so I must be better!”
The most frustrating moment of my life was when I was speaking to a student about a very good state school in the area of …Continue

Stanford
Harvard
MIT
Texas A and M
Indiana University

Stanford

Once upon a time, a man and wife, dressed in old and unfashionable clothes, asked to see the President of Harvard. The secretary, practically laughing, brought them in. They sat down and said that they wanted to donate some money to Harvard to start a new college or department.The President of Harvard looked over their clothes and figured they wanted to give a hundred dollars or so. He said, “Well it’s very expensive to start a new school. You have to pay for the building, …Continue

While students are students the world around, the US has a unique culture of universities, some of which you can pick up from looking at my post on University Trivia. In the US, university is often seen as not only a place to get professional knowledge or a step toward an academic career, but also a place to become socialized, to learn how to be an independent adult, and often a place to experiment.
It is very typical for Americans to go to university far from their home, and often it …Continue