All posts by LindsayThomas

The Changing Profession

Inside Higher Ed has published a substantial article on the challenges facing many university professors in the United States, emphasizing the shrinking numbers of tenured and tenure-track faculty at many institutions. The article discusses many reasons for this decline, including long-term, systemic, external and ideological reasons that pre-date the current financial crisis: “The American professoriate […]

American Council of Learned Societies Annual Meeting: Humanities and Higher Education

The annual meeting of the American Council of Learned Societies, a national group that represents scholarly associations in the Humanities, ended on Saturday in Washington, D.C. Many talks focused on the value of the humanities to American innovation and to democratic citizenship. David Marshall, dean of humanities and fine arts at the University of California […]

Macquarie University’s Vice-Chancellor Steven Schwartz on the Humanities and a Meaningful Life

Steven Schwartz, the Vice-Chancellor of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, has  published a review of several books on the state of the humanities in this month’s Australian Literary Review. The books Schwartz reviews emphasize the value of the humanities in a university culture increasingly dominated by the goal of making money: In Saving Higher Education […]

BiblioTech: Bringing Humanities Ph.D. Innovation to Silicon Valley

On May 11, 2011, executive officers and venture capitalists from Silicon Valley and humanities faculty and doctoral students from Stanford University will come together to discuss the ways in which humanities doctoral students can help Silicon Valley businesses and how these businesses can enlist humanities Ph.D.’s. Keynote speakers will include Vivek Ranadivé, Chairman and CEO […]

Digging Into Data Challenge Open Again

In 2009, JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), a higher education IT consortium in the UK, launched the Digging Into Data Challenge. The digitization of large archives of books, folios, images, artworks and sound recordings in recent years has posed numerous challenges to scholars in the humanities; the Digging Into Data Challenge offered funding to 90 […]

Further Budget Cuts for Greek Universities

By Eva Kekou, 4Humanities International Correspondent In December 2010, the Greek Ministry of Education announced a 15-20% reduction in funds for adjunct lecturers and professors teaching at public Greek universities. The announcement came four months into the Fall 2010 semester, when, at the time, adjunct faculty had already been teaching without a signed contract and […]

Humanities at Risk in Britain

Post-1992 universities in Britain are more heavily affected by the government’s decision to withdraw the teaching grant from all but STEM subjects, and some fear the creation of vocational institutions for disadvantaged students, Inside Higher Ed reports. London Metropolitan University, which has the highest proportion of working-class students in the country, plans to eliminate history, […]