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I was moved by this piece. It's written by a professor from a small liberal arts school in the midwest. He's sharing and thinking through his experience, having worked his way up from a working class background and now, working in academe (higher education). He feels odd about his experience and he feels that he is a "traitor" in some way...interesting reading, especially in light of some of the conversations I've had with my CORE Lit/Phil class these past two weeks:

A Class Traitor in Academe

Wow, this is quite an article about the admissions process, its corruption, and...well, the belief by the author that the books he is reviewing miss some very important things. The article is long. It is a book review of four books on the college admission process, all of which, if I understand the review correctly, come to the conclusion that the admissions process is rigged in the favor of wealthy white kids. The reviewer, himself an admissions representative at a large southern flagship university, agrees with the arguments made by those whose books he is reviewing, but throws in his two cents as well! A good read, if you have the time and the attention span.

College Admissions as Conspiracy Theory

The following is a report on the civic engagement of college students today. Here's a blurb from the website, first:

"Today’s students—part of the Millennial Generation born between 1985 and 2004— are more engaged in their communities and feel responsible to become civically involved. They recognize the importance of being educated and involved citizens, but discard much of the information available to them because of its polarizing and partisan nature. They are turned off by intensely combative political debate, the report says. We also find that colleges and universities are providing very unequal opportunities for civic participation and learning.

Nearly 400 students convened in 47 focus groups on 12 four-year college campuses across the country to discuss their civic and political attitudes and experiences."

Millennials Talk Politics: A Study of College Student Civic Engagement


One more...this one needs no introduction, but here's a blurb from the first page or so:

Carrie Bradshaw is alive and well and living in Warsaw. Well, not just Warsaw. Conceived and raised in the United States, Carrie may still see New York as a spiritual home. But today you can find her in cities across Europe, Asia, and North America. Seek out the trendy shoe stores in Shanghai, Berlin, Singapore, Seoul, and Dublin, and you’ll see crowds of single young females (SYFs) in their twenties and thirties, who spend their hours working their abs and their careers, sipping cocktails, dancing at clubs, and (yawn) talking about relationships. Sex and the City has gone global; the SYF world is now flat.

Is this just the latest example of American cultural imperialism? Or is it the triumph of planetary feminism? Neither. The globalization of the SYF reflects a series of stunning demographic and economic shifts that are pointing much of the world—with important exceptions, including Africa and most of the Middle East—toward a New Girl Order. It’s a man’s world, James Brown always reminded us. But if these trends continue, not so much.

The New Girl Order