Johann Neem

In the week between the revelation that the University of North Carolina’s Board of Governors was looking at former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings to lead the 16-campus system and her ultimate selection last Friday, most of the reporting and commentary focused on whether the board and…

Last month, the Washington state Supreme Court determined that charter schools are ineligible to receive public school funds under the 1889 state constitution.
Upholding precedent from a century ago, the court determined that because charter schools “are run by an appointed board…

Going to lunch with students changed Michael Wesch’s attitude about teaching, and he is trying to share his personal transformation through a series of videos he hopes will go viral.

Mr. Wesch is an associate professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State…

As Jon Stewart leaves the stage, we have a chance to reflect on his legacy. News comedy is much older than Stewart, but Stewart became not just a superstar but—for some Americans—a lodestar. How could that be?

Are the humanities useless? Or can they produce “inventions” like the natural sciences? If our only understanding of invention is a technological product, perhaps the humanities are useless. But if we include new insights into culture, insights that transform our relationship with the world…

Are the humanities useless? Or can they produce “inventions” like the natural sciences? If our only understanding of invention is a technological product, perhaps the humanities are useless. But if we include new insights into culture, insights that transform our relationship with the world…

Johann Neem, a professor at Western Washington University who has also been critical of WGU, says the model is especially troubling for its on focus low-income and working-class students. He fears that students with financial pressures at home will increasingly be steered to the WGU’s online…

There are, generally, three main reasons that students drop out of college. The first is financial. Even in-state annual tuition and fees at public universities averaged nearly $11,000 this school year, and if a funding source dries up, the bill can seem insurmountable. Another is inadequate…

Let’s pretend for a moment that the arguments of the so-called reformers are right: universities are about to face disruptive innovation from a disgruntled public, unhappy employers and policy makers, and new technologies. Let’s assume, moreover, that the many books that document the sad…

Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to slash $300 million in funding from the University of Wisconsin and in return for greater autonomy would make it make it harder for low-income and minority students to go to college there, said affiliates of WISCAPE (Wisconsin Center on the Advancement of Post-…