The Bureau Bookshelf: Volume III

The final installment of my epic exploration of the bureau library during the waning days of my internship:

Fired!
By Annabelle Gurwitch
256 pages

This is a collection of anecdotes from people who’ve been handed the dreaded pink slip at some point in their lives, and concludes with tips and advice from those who’ve regained employment and dignity.
Ironically, you’d […]

Summer Reading

Every time I get a break from school, I make a reading list. At the top of it is the book that I would be reading at the time, and the rest of the list would be the books that have been accumulating on my bookshelf. I have always been a reader, Judy Blume got […]

Admissions: Hard on College Staffers, Too

High school seniors aren’t the only ones who suffer through college rejections. Admissions officers, too, have a hard time turning down applicants. It’s apparently an emotional, involved procedure — not the heartless one we imagine from the other side.
In Friday’s Los Angeles Times, Angel B. Pérez, the director of admission at Pitzer College, describes […]

Stimulus Stimulates For-Profit Colleges

Mmm, yummy stimulus package! What a delicious gift for universities, which will get bundles of money. But wait — these universities include for-profit colleges. Aren’t they already benefiting from the financial crisis?
Why yes, they are. Since for-profit schools are much cheaper than non-profit universities, undergrads have been flocking to them in record numbers.
But […]

Reading List: Students’ Changing Views on the Isreali/Palestinian Conflict

In the months since Israel’s attack on Gaza, students at many colleges have become more vocal in their support for the Palestinian cause. An article in today’s Inside Higher Ed chronicles the shift at schools like Emory, which hosted its first “Israeli Apartheid Week” this year, and NYU, where students implored administrators to give […]

Are Colleges Hoarding Endowments for No Reason?

Many elite schools are mourning the loss of big chunks of their endowments to the recession. But, BusinessWeek asks, what’s the point of hoarding all that endowment money in the first place?
Here’s an idea: Maybe rich universities should act more like companies, which somehow manage to operate without endowments. Universities could raise just as […]

Greek History Reading Recommendation

Add this to your reading list: The Company He Keeps — a new book by Nicholas L. Syrett, available next month — traces the history of white frats from the post-Civil War days through the present. In an e-mail interview with Inside Higher Ed, Syrett gives some quotables about frat boys’ self-identification and ideas […]

Prof. Says Plagiarism Is More Complex than We Thought

Alert, alert: there’s a new student advocate in town! It’s Susan D. Blum, a Notre Dame anthropologist who challenges the way we’ve thought about plagiarism in her new book, My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture.
You know the fear: you’ll get caught for plagiarism, even though you didn’t mean to do anything wrong — you […]

Colleges May Move Toward Kindergarten

That was an unnecessary jab.
Yesterday, at its annual meeting, the Association of American Colleges and Universities discussed the merits of eliminating grades in college. But before you undergrads shout “whoop-dee-do,” note that grades would be replaced with detailed evaluations, not a free-for-all.
Many said they assumed that it was politically impossible to eliminate grades. […]

The Keepers of the Flame at the Empire State Building

Free-thinking Christians are studying inside one of New York City’s most iconic structures, the Empire State Building, according to a breathless report in today’s New York Times. Apparently three floors of the skyscraper are occupied by The King’s College, an Evangelical school that seems, well, a little radical. Students, who live unchaperoned in nearby apartments, […]

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