This is an article that’s being posted around the Interwebs from the New York Times: Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age.
Interesting points in it for teachers and students to keep in mind. Like Wikipedia (besides not being a serious academic source) is not common knowledge. You do have to cite it.
While reading this article I was thinking of how we teach students not to plagiarize. Usually we focus on rules and citing styles and the penalties for plagiarizing. Maybe we should focus more on why plagiarizing …Continue

The case of a professor who used a racial slur in a class at Brandeis has become a mess and from the attention it is getting may become a precedent on free speech and academic rights.
According to a report on Inside HigherEd, the professor, Donald Hindley who has tenure in the Political Science department, has yet to receive due notification of what exactly he said that qualifies as “racial harassment and/or discrimination.” A students reported to the school newspaper that he used the terms ‘wetback’ (a slur to refer to …Continue

Right now as Congress is working on amendments to the 1965 Higher Education Act, the big issue on the table is tuition. The bill under debate would among other things create a “watch list” of universities that increase their tuition by more than 6%. Some analysts note that this list may likely punish less well-endowed universities i.e. those that increase tuition drastically because they need the money. Universities like Harvard or Princeton who have high tuition and little need for income also tend not to increase tuition by more than …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