The two big stories on the academic front are Larry Summers (see Burke and Bitch and Kieran) and student e-mail (Burke, Kieran and Dan).
UPDATE: Meg from Xoom was misquoted by the Times. We at 11D are big fans of Meg and are very, very sore at the Times for messing with our buddy.
Apt. 11d 
my 2000 hits of fame
Like GZombie, I’m standing in the midst of a whirl of observations that refuse to organize themselves into a straight line or even a barely-coherent polygon. But here goes anyway… The interview My first contact with the NYT wasn’t
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here’s a post lifted from University Diaries, speaking of academic annoyances!
THE WAGES OF ACADEMIA
If you want to make any $$ at CUNY, be a plumber
By Steve Weinstein
A recent job posting at the City University of New York offered a position in teaching literature, rhetoric and composition. The instructor (not professor) had to publish and carry a full load of teaching, which includes grading papers and consulting with students after class. Candidates had to have a “doctorate from an accredited university” and “demonstrated excellence in teaching.” The salary started at $35,031.
Another job posting offered a position that required a bit less education: plumber. The qualified candidate had to know how to repair pipes and have five years of experience.
The salary began at $77,483.
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Snort. I’m very, very aware of the wages at CUNY. Bastards.
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more fun in University Diaries!..daily lottery ticket at a retirement plan…
Harvard Law School Professor William Stuntz, in The New Republic:
Three key American enterprises have seen costs rise much faster than inflation over the past generation… housing, health care, and higher education. Houses have grown bigger and better…. Doctors do things they could not imagine a generation ago. Costs may have risen faster than quality, but there is no doubt that quality has risen… substantially.
Higher education is similar — on the cost side. Benefit is another story. There is little reason to believe that undergrads and graduate students are better educated today than a generation ago…. Teaching loads of senior professors have declined; probably teaching quality has declined with it.
The culture of research universities has grown ever more contemptuous of students, especially undergraduates, who are seen as an interruption of one’s real work rather than the reason for the enterprise. Which means that, year by year, students and their parents pay more for less. That isn’t a sustainable business plan.
If undergraduate education is too often an afterthought, graduate education is too often a con game. A sizeable percentage of PhDs will never get tenure-track teaching jobs, which are the only jobs for which their education trains them. Since no jobs await them, they hang around longer getting their degrees, all the while teaching classes and doing research for their academic sponsors.
It’s a great deal–for the sponsors. For the grad students, it’s akin to buying a daily lottery ticket as a retirement plan….
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