A Brutal Review of My First Book

I don't know about you, but I love reading brutal book reviews.  It's a lot of fun to watch a skilled writer skewer someone else's work with surgical precision (see here and here).  In the interest of balance, I thought it would be right and proper to present a review that eviscerates one of my …

Universities Give Away Knowledge and Sell Degrees

This post is a piece that is included in my new book, Being a Scholar: Reflections on Doctoral Study, Scholarly Writing, and Academic Life. In it I focus on an issue that I’ve been thinking about for quite a while:  How to understand the core business model that governs American universities.   The answer is in …

Doctoral Dysfunction

This piece was published in Inside Higher Ed in June, 2020.  Here’s a link to the original.  It speaks for itself.  It also appears in my new book, Being a Scholar: Reflections on Doctoral Study, Scholarly Writing, and Academic Life. DOCTORAL DYSFUNCTION Many doctoral students today are tending to fall into one of two disturbing categories: academic …

Links to All My Publications and Course Materials — An Updated List

For anyone who’s interested, I’m posting below an updated list of all my publications and course syllabi, including links to these works and to full course materials.  Here’s a link to the list as a Word document, which is way more useful. Feel free to share. Links to Publications and Course Materials March 31, 2023 David …

Doctoral Dysfunction — We’re Creating Too Many Academic Technicians and Justice Warriors

This piece was published in Inside Higher Ed in June, 2020.  Here’s a link to the original.  It speaks for itself. Doctoral Dysfunction Many doctoral students today are tending to fall into one of two disturbing categories: academic technician or justice warrior, writes David F. Labaree. David F. Labaree June 18, 2020 After nearly 40 years as a …

Links to PDFs of All My Papers, Chapters, and Articles

This post is a set of links to all of my published papers, book chapters, and magazine articles and also to six course syllabi.  Here's a link to a PDF of the entire list, which is more usable.  Feel free to share with anyone you like. David F. Labaree Links to Publications and Course Materials …

Mitchell Aboulafia — Higher Ed’s Real Productivity Problem

This post is a piece by philosopher Mitchell Aboulafia about the destructive emphasis on productivity in American higher education.  It was published in 2018 in Chronicle Review.  Here's a link to the original. The essay is a fresh take on a familiar problem in academic life, the pressure to publish or perish.  He focuses in …

Doctoral Proseminar: An Introduction to Big Issues in the Field of Education

This post contains all of the material for the doctoral proseminar -- Introduction to Big Issues in the Field of Education -- that I taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Education for the last four years. The aim of this class is to give first-year doctoral students in education a grounding in some of …

Peter Rossi: The Iron Law of Evaluation and Other Metallic Rules

This post is a classic paper by Peter Rossi from 1987 (Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, Volume 4, pages 3-20) which addresses a chronic problem in all policy efforts to change complex social systems.  The social organizations of modern life are so large, so complex, so dependent on the cooperation of so many …

Academic Writing Issues #1: Excessive Signposting

One of the most characteristic and annoying tendencies in academic writing is the excessive use of signposting: here's what I'm going to do, here I am doing it, and here's what I just did.  You can trim a lot of text from your next paper (and earn the gratitude of your readers) by just telling …