Ninth Level Ireland

“Once-robust fields are being broken up and stripped for parts. The humanities, we’re often told, are dying. And yet, even as traditional majors like English and history are indeed shrinking, the past decade has also seen the rise of a new kind of humanities, including a wave of hybrid fields such as the digital humanities, environmental humanities, energy humanities, global humanities, urban humanities, food humanities, medical humanities, legal humanities, and public humanities …” (more)

[Jeffrey J Williams, Chronicle of Higher Education, 14 November]

“Students who stay in luxury accommodation achieve, on average, lower grades that those who stay in more traditional style student accommodation, according to a study carried out in the United States. The study, which examined the academic performances of college students staying in accommodation with a luxury-style apartment design that provided privacy and added amenities and students staying in a traditional double-corridor design with shared bathrooms at the ends, found that those staying in the latter type of accommodation achieved higher first semester grade point averages …” (more)

[Finn Purdy, Trinity News, 10 October]

“Education publisher Pearson has warned students are turning to online and digital resources faster than bosses expected – hitting its balance sheet. Profits are now expected to be at the bottom end of expectations between £590 million and £640 million, with the news sending shares plunging 17%, down 148p to 712.8p …” (more)

[Simon Neville, Independent, 26 September]

“Actress Felicity Huffman has been sentenced to 14 days in prison for her role in a sweeping college admissions scandal. The Desperate Housewives star was sentenced in Boston’s federal court after pleading guilty in May to a single count of conspiracy and fraud …” (more)

[Independent, 13 September]

“Academia’s pursuit of corporate and government dollars has undermined its commitment to learning. The debate over the role of research in the life of the university was settled a long time ago. In a classic 1852 book, The Idea of a University, the Catholic priest and future cardinal John Henry Newman made what in retrospect appears to have been a last stand against the proposition that research should be an intrinsic part of university life …” (more)

[Richard Drake, The American Scholar, 3 September]

“Fianna Fáil Spokesperson on Foreign Affairs and Trade Niall Collins TD has revealed that the number of students participating in the J1 Visa Programme has declined in recent years. The figures released to Deputy Collins reveal that the number of students heading to the US on the J1 Visa has declined from 4,347 in 2016 to 4,190 in 2017 to 3,522 in 2018 …” (more)

[Fianna Fáil, 21 July]

“Elsevier this week began revoking the University of California system’s journal access – more than six months after the two parties failed to reach agreement on a new bundled journal subscription deal. In December 2018, the university system announced that it would not renew its $10-million-a-year ‘big deal’ with the publisher after negotiations broke down …” (more)

[Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed, 11 July]

“University leaders in Alaska are scrambling to prepare for a 41% cut in state funding and mobilizing a last-ditch lobbying effort to try to persuade legislators to overturn the governor’s decision. ‘Simply put, if not overridden, today’s veto will strike an institutional and reputational blow from which we may likely never recover’ …” (more)

[Zachariah Hughes and Susan Svrluga, Washington Post, 1 July]

“The head of the Rhodes scholarship programme has dismissed as ‘misleading’ claims by the US-Ireland Alliance that a majority of students choose its scholarship instead. The Mitchell scholarship, which is managed by Trina Vargo, the head of the US-Ireland Alliance, was established almost 20 years ago and named after Senator George Mitchell …” (more)

[Suzanne Lynch, Irish Times, 3 June]

“All at once it hit me: a shudder. I’d been doing fine all day – merrily, even. Fresh off the bus to downtown Chicago, eased by a steady titration since breakfast of Maker’s Mark, I’d fairly danced down Wacker Drive, rolling suitcase in tow. I had this …” (more)

[Andrew Kay, Chronicle of Higher Education, 10 May]

“‘Publish or perish’ used to apply purely to faculty members, but in recent years it also has turned into a question facing academic presses – one that has particular relevance for graduate students and first-book authors …” (more)

[Leonard Cassuto, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2 April]

“On a recent panel on challenges to the future of teaching and research, Colleen Lyon outlined what was, to her, a ‘dangerous’ dynamic in the world of academic publishing. Lyon, a librarian of scholarly communications at the University of Texas at Austin, listed scholarly-publishing tools that had been acquired by the journal publishing giant Elsevier …” (more)

[Lindsay Ellis, Chronicle of Higher Education, 3 April]

“Yale University has rescinded the admission of a student who was accepted as part of the massive college cheating scandal revealed by the Department of Justice earlier in March. Federal prosecutors charged 50 people for participating in the scheme, which employed bribery, exam cheating and unearned athletic endorsements to help get applicants into prestigious colleges …” (more)

[Ciara Nugent, Time, 26 March]

“Almost half of female economists have experienced gender discrimination, according to an American Economic Association survey that also included hundreds of reports of assault and harassment. 48% of women reported unfair discrimination based on sex and 22% experienced bias for their marital status or caregiving responsibilities …” (more)

[Jeff Kearns, Bloomberg, 18 March]

“Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Dartmouth College each pledged to increase oversight of athletics recruiting in light of an elaborate bribery scheme in college admissions that brought the indictments last week of 11 employees at eight universities, along with more than two dozen parents …” (more)

[Lindsay Ellis, Chronicle of Higher Education, 18 March]

“There is renewed hope that a special US visa scheme will be extended to Irish citizens who want to work in the US. Irish-American congressman Richard Neal is set to reintroduce a bill that could see around 5,000 work visas made available to Irish people under the E3 programme …” (more)

[Independent, 15 March]

“The recently revealed admissions scandal seems to have it all: Three Stooges levels of ineptitude, crude Photoshops, six-figure payoffs, corrupt coaches, and a cadre of low-level celebrities for good measure. But those who see this scandal as anything other than a moment of levity are missing the forest for the trees …” (more)

[Jason England, Chronicle of Higher Education, 13 March]

“Bill and Hillary Clinton have dismissed allegations in a new book on the Ireland-US relationship that funding was cut for scholarship programme because of a personal vendetta against the scheme’s founder. Representatives for the Clintons hit back on Tuesday at a series of claims …” (more)

[Suzanne Lynch, Irish Times, 5 March]

“Bill and Hillary Clinton have denied claims contained in a new book that they tried to get a scholarship to Ireland for a boyfriend of their daughter Chelsea and deny cutting funding to the scholarship programme to punish the organiser …” (more)

[RTÉ News, 5 March]

“Erin K Fletcher, an economist with the global, nonprofit health-and-education organization Results for Development, feels so strongly about her field’s problem with sexism that she left academe. Fletcher was one of many women who spoke out last week at the American Economic Association’s annual meeting, in Atlanta …” (more)

[Lily Jackson, Chronicle of Higher Education, 11 January]