Sense and Nonsense

College Advice

Today's New York Times carries nine short pieces of advice to college freshmen from eminent professors at various universities.  (You can find them on the last page of the "Week in Review" section.)  On the website, each brief bit of advice has its own link.  Here are the best of them, in my view.

Stanley Fish, "The Hunt for a Good Teacher"   Here.

Harold Bloom, "Get Lost.  In Books"  Here.

Carol Berkin, "Don't Alienate Your Professor"  Here.

Garry Wills, "Play Politics"  Here.

James MacGregor Burns, "Off-Campus Life"   Here.

Grads Face Tough Job Market

Both the Boston Globe (here) and the Wall Street Journal (here) have front-page stories today about the brutal job market facing this year's crop of college graduates. 

Downsizing College Dreams

People face far worse problems in the world than the ones described here.  Still, this is tough for these kids and their families.  I feel for them.

Struggling to Pay for College

For many young Americans and their families, this recession is wreaking havoc with their plans for college.  This article from today's New York Times describes the frantic search for outside scholarship assistance on the part of one young Californian.  The stresses and strains on many families are heavy.

American colleges and universities have to do their part to address this problem by doing what they can to stop the incessant increases in tuition and fees for room and board.  They could start by paring back their bloated, overpaid administrative staffs and opting out of the race for more attractive amenities such as climbing walls in their student athletic complexes. 

"Scholars of Confusion"

Also from the Times "Education" supplement today, see this short piece by Walter Kirn, which illuminates what is wrong with so much of what passes for "scholarship" and education in contemporary universities.

The Vagaries of College Financial Aid

The "Education" supplement to today's New York Times carries an interesting article about the frustratingly opaque decisions of college financial-aid officers, second in inscrutability only to those of the admissions officers.

Applications Up at Elite Universities

The New York Times reports that most of the nation's top colleges and universities experienced significant increases in the number of applications for admission this year.  In some cases, the increases were sharp. 

Online Student-based Reviews of Colleges

The New York Times Magazine today is devoted to education.  It's a good issue.  One of the most interesting articles is about a new website that provides detailed reviews of about 275 colleges and universities.  The reviews are written and submitted voluntarily by students at the colleges, who often supplement their words with photos and videos.   Read the article -- "The Tell-all Campus Tour" -- here.   

The website is Unigo.com  It's a fabulous resource-- far more informative than any of the published guide books to American colleges. It's a good way of finding out what life is really like at some college you're considering.  Visit it here.

Avoiding College Stress

Another good piece from Study Hacks.

Avoiding "Academic Hell"

Here's some good advice for avoiding "academic hell" in college.  The gist of it is this:

Many students believe that taking a punishing course load will somehow indicate a higher ability; making it easier to land jobs or post-graduate positions. Here’s the reality: it won’t.
. . .
Employers and professional schools will notice your GPA, where you went to school, and your major. They don’t care about about how many credit hours you jammed into each semester or how hard your schedule was compared to others in the same major. The same goes for graduate schools. Though it’s true that specific professors on the admissions committee might look at your grades in the classes relevant to their specialty, they don’t care about the general hardness of your particular schedule [the way college-admissions people do].
. . .
If I was only allowed to offer you one piece of advice to make your college years easier, it might be this simple rule. Nothing seems to have as profound an effect on student stress than a killer course load (though a killer extracurricular load runs a close second). What pains me is that this stress is so unnecessary. Get the credit hours required to graduate. Take the courses required for your major. That’s all that matters. Don’t make you life much more difficult than it needs to be.