Prompted by the Wisconsin Lutheran story, PTJ at The Duck of Minerva objects to the current state of scholarship in political science: Once people are hired, they also have to figure out what to assign to their students; for that purpose, they need books and articles. Naturally, people want to assig...

The entitlement society marches on: “I think putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade,” Mr. [Jason] Greenwood said. “What else is there really than the effort that you put in?” “If you put in all the effort you have and get a C, what is the point?” he ...

For my on-the-market readers who haven’t swung by the rumor forum yet, I have a short post about our International Relations and/or Political Theory position (originally it was two positions, hence the weird combination… but that’s a long, boring story) that allegedly is winding i...

At least now I know why we all suddenly had to complete a training module on FERPA last week, although in fairness it was the only required training module thus far that actually seemed minimally relevant to my job. Without wading into the specifics of the case at hand (all I know is what is printed...

So I assume the usual suspects at APSA will now be calling for a boycott of all future meetings in California. The sad thing is that I agree with the boycott ringleaders on policy but it’s hard to take their specious arguments against the 2012 New Orleans meeting as being motivated by anything...

Margaret Soltan is on the case of yet another diploma mill fraud, this time the head of Jackson Academy in one of my former hometowns. All involved apparently recognize that Pat Taylor’s doctorate is garbage. Yet I am forced to wonder how much we should really be bothered when Taylor could eas...

Congratulations to all of my former students who are graduating this week or thereabouts. It’s certainly hard to believe that the freshmen I taught in Fall 2004 at Millsaps in my first year of full-time teaching are now going to be college graduates—I officially now feel old....

One of my hobbies since before accepting my new job at TAMIU has been to peruse the Laredo Morning Times, so I can at least pretend to hit the ground running when I arrive in town. The occasional article provokes a bit of a double-take; this one, on the search for a new vice president for instructio...

In an apparent continuation of my recent movie-going kick, I went to see Smart People Thursday evening. Most of the reviews I’ve seen have rightly praised Dennis Quaid’s performance as a stereotypical “bitter prof” who, for added measure, also bags a former student, just in c...

Arnold Kling and Megan McArdle have generated some discussion concerning, in Margaret Soltan’s words, “why American university professors are bitterly jealous status-obsessives.” I tend to think the following reasons identified by Megan are the most important: It’s so hard to...