Update: Welcome, readers from The FIRE! I’ve got more articles about free speech on campus and academic freedom which you might like to browse. Also take a walk through the Top 12 Posts retrospective page if you like.
- The importance of teaching kids to pay attention, over against the phenomenon of “multitasking”. Lord knows I’m trying to do this with my 2- and 4-year olds. [h/t Joanne Jacobs]
- What college administrators think about college faculty. The short version: Some admins think that faculty play too little of a role in campus administration, some think too much, but most think that faculty focus too much on their own territory and lack perspective.
- On the innumeracy of intellectuals. This is a juicy article and I will try to have more to say about it later. But I distinctly remember several colleagues in the humanities who at one time or another openly embraced their having no knowledge or enjoyment of math or science, often in full view of students whom we were trying to teach a lifelong love of learning. Intellectuals, if you prize education so highly, get a well-rounded one yourself!
- Some student journalists have earned themselves a bad reputation around this blog, but here’s a great example of a student journalist at IU-South Bend who is blowing the lid off an embarassing speech code case at IUPUI.
- Speaking of speech codes, here’s a piece on the death of parody on campus.
- Richard DeMillo is stepping down as dean of Georgia Tech’s College of Computing. I’ve blogged about Georgia Tech’s interesting new approach to the computer science major before, which was instituted on DeMillo’s watch, and its seemingly positive impact on computer science major enrollments. The interview at the link gives the strong impression that DeMillo’s resignation comes as a result of political struggles with the Provost, which is disheartening if true.
- India is developing its own $100 laptop, and this time it might not actually end up costing $200.
- According to a recent report, starting salaries for electrical engineers are up 13% from 2007, and starting salaries average around $56,000 per year — not including signing bonuses, which are more and more common and are reaching levels of around $4500. And that’s for a EE with just one degree; imagine what you could do with two!
Casting Out Nines 
As for admin v. faculty, isn’t it an artificial distinction? Admin are faculty.
Wrt the IUPUI idiocy, all of the proponents of moving the flagship campus to Indianapolis are probably very angry about this. IU’s prime directive is avoid bad press. Had the original incident happened at IU, not a whisper about it would have gotten out, and the administration would have smacked down the affirmative action officer before she had a chance to make an idiot of herself and the university. Any chance (and they were remarkably slim in the first place) of moving the flagship campus from Bloomington to Indianapolis has been set back ten years by this. The administrators at IUPUI can’t do damage control.