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Time for research to study gun violence

Another day, another mass shooting. I don’t write that to be glib.  We’ve had 1,044 mass shootings in 1,066 days.  We are almost literally averaging a mass shooting per day in this country. Yet, despite this damaging statistic and an overwhelming majority in favor of strong gun control measures, we have been unable to enact any meaningful measures to try to reduce gun violence. I’m under no illusion that another mass shooting will lead to change (if killing our children in their classrooms didn’t motivate change, I’m not sure anything will). However, I do think there is one thing that we can do now to actually do something: it is time for research to study gun violence.

Memorial at Virginia Tech

By law, the federal government is essentially banned from studying gun violence.

Representative Jay Dickey led a legislative effort in 1996 to cut off funds for research that would infringe on Second Amendment rights.

(Former Rep. Dickey now says he regrets his role in stopping the research and advocates the Centers for Disease Control to study gun violence).

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A response to Pearlstein on college costs

In the latest uninformed higher education column in a major national newspaper, Steven Pearlstein writes about the four tough things universities should do to control costs. Pearlstein’s critiques are as tired as they are naive. He argues that all higher education needs to do is to 1) cap administrative costs; 2) Operate year-round, five days a week; 3) More teaching, less (mediocre) research; and 4) Cheaper, better general education.  Geez, why haven’t we thought of that before? Of course, the reality is that these issues are far more complicated than Pearlstein suggests.

Photo credit: Brad Warsh

The first fundamental mistake Pearlstein makes is confusing cost and price.  As I’ve written about before, the price of higher education has increased. He does mention some of the frequently touted causes by higher education faculty, administrators  including administrative bloat, unproductive faculty, and a decline of state funding. Yet, these ideas as simply dismissed as a pox on all their houses.

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Why you should study higher education

Few people grow up saying that they want to work in higher education. Most people don’t even know a career in a college or university exists. Higher education is also one of those few fields that don’t have an undergraduate major with everyone entering the field at the graduate level. I often get asked about the advantages of a the academic study of higher education so in this post I want to discuss why you should study higher education.

Photo credit: Lisa Campeau

A graduate program in higher education will prepare you with a foundation necessary to understand how colleges and universities work.

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Why I Declared War on Be Verbs

The only thing more difficult than learning scholarly writing may be trying to teach scholarly writing. Very few if any of us are well trained to teach writing skills or how to successfully navigate the writing process.  For many years, I did what I think most professors do. I had a long list of do’s and don’ts for students. However, I ultimately decided this way of teaching writing simply didn’t work. Even if students used the list, they didn’t learn how to improve their writing. Instead, I boiled the list down to a single item and declared war on be verbs.

Photo credit: kanegen

The last iteration of my writing do’s and don’ts list was 27 items long. It was out of hand.