Cartoons about Academic Life

This post is a collection of some of my favorite cartoons about academic life, most of which come from the Jorge Chan website PHDComics.com.   Enjoy.

A System Without a Plan

This post is an essay of mine that laid the foundation for my 2017 book, A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education.  Getting there was a long and winding road.  Let me count the curves along the way. This version was published in Bildungsgeschichte: International Journal for the Historiography of Education in …

Johann Neem — The Model Minority Might Be Too Good at the Game

This post is a smart and timely essay by Johann Neem, which was recently published in The Hedgehog Review.  Here's a link to the original.  As we wait for the Supreme Court to issue its ruling on the Harvard admissions case, it's a good time to think about how elite universities manage the makeup of …

Luck and Pluck — Alternative Stories of Life in the Meritocracy

This post is a piece I published three years ago in Aeon.  Here’s the link to the original.  I wrote this after years of futile efforts to get Stanford students to think critically about how they got to their current location at the top of the meritocracy.  It was nearly impossible to get students to consider …

Eric Levitz — The Diploma Divide

This post is a recent essay by Eric Levitz, which was published in New York Magazine in October.  Here's a link to the original. He explores an issue that has been a major concern of mine in recent years, the role that higher education has had in exacerbating political divisions in the US and elsewhere in …

Too Easy a Target: The Trouble with Ed Schools and the Implications for the University

This post is a piece I published in Academe (the journal of AAUP) in 1999.  It provides an overview of the argument in my 2004 book, The Trouble with Ed Schools. I reproduce it here as a public service:  if you read this, you won’t need to read my book much less buy it.  You’re welcome.  Also, looking …

Educational Organizations as Loosely Coupled Systems

This post is a discussion of Karl Weick's classic essay, "Educational Organizations as Loosely Coupled Systems," which was published in Administrative Science Quarterly in 1976.  Here's a link to the original.  The essay begins with this wonderful thought experiment: Imagine that you're either the referee, coach, player or spectator at an unconventional soccer match: the …

How Football Helped Make US Universities Great

This post is a piece I published in Quartz in 2017.  Here’s a link to the original.  It’s an effort to explore the distinctively populist character of American higher education, drawing on my book, A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education. The idea is that a key to understanding the strong public support that …