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Welcome to The EDU Ledger! We’ve moved from Diverse: Issues In Higher Education.

Section: Opinion

Adrift but Not Entirely Off Course

The New Year has seen an urgent call for accountability in higher education with the much anticipated release of Academically Adrift: Limited Learning in Higher Education, written by sociologists Richard Arum of New York University and the Social Science Research Council and Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia. The book, released Tuesday and drawing […]

January 19, 2011

Martin Luther King Jr. and Love

“Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.” — Martin Luther King Jr. We often remember Martin Luther King Jr. as someone who urged peace, even gave his life for it. We remember him as someone who marched with others to make vast and unparalleled […]

January 15, 2011

Thoughts About Storytelling, Slavery and the ‘N’ Word

The recent discussion of the term slave replacing the “N” word in the classic novel Huckleberry Finn has inspired me to think more critically about the teaching of racial and cultural awareness in America. Replacing the term has sparked controversy among scholars; notably, literary experts and historians who claim that changing the term is an […]

January 11, 2011

Domestic Violence Cuts Across Racial and Gender Lines

By now, most of us who follow the world of contemporary sports know that Mike Haywood was fired by the University of Pittsburgh for domestic abuse. Haywood countered that he is innocent and that the “truth will come out.” If he is, in fact, innocent of all charges, then hopefully justice will be served. However, […]

January 8, 2011

Homeless College Students: A Budding Crisis

Homeless college students. When I first read that phrase, it sounded like an oxymoron. I had to read it three times before it settled into my consciousness. But as soon as it had settled, its implications began to grow on me and cause serious alarm. Before World War II, higher education in America was primarily […]

January 5, 2011

The Mismatch Hypothesis Helps No One

A note to the reader: In this new year, diversifying the STEM fields has perhaps never been more important—for economic health, innovation, and for the health and well-being of America’s diverse communities. As the higher education community is firmly focused on college preparation and completion, we must push to keep equity at the center of […]

January 4, 2011

Has Technology Replaced Common Decency and Manners?

I was answering an email recently and thought about how far technology has taken us. In today’s need-it-right-now culture, a lot of things get done by simply pushing the send button on our computers. When did all of this actually start? Well, the age of technology is here and we are sitting right in the […]

December 22, 2010

TPFKARLH: The Professor Formerly Known as R.L. Hughes

I am protesting. I am not wearing a T-shirt. I am not adding an X to my name. I am not writing my name in all small letters or wearing a black arm band (but I wish that I had thought of all those brilliant forms of protest!). Instead, while recently listening to “Purple Rain,” […]

December 21, 2010

Respecting Race-Based Research

I do research about race. When I was a graduate student, a professor warned me against doing this research, noting, “you’ll be ghettoized for studying Black colleges.” Although I ignored the comment, I knew what he was saying. Based on how faculty members who do research on race are often treated by their colleagues, he […]

December 14, 2010

Learning Assessment: A Paramount 21st Century Higher Education Issue

In early January, the Lumina Foundation for Education will be releasing its Degree Qualifications Profile—an effort months in the making and preceded by a draft profile earlier this year. As a complement to the foundation’s goal of increasing “the proportion of Americans with high-quality degrees and credentials to 60 percent by the year 2025,” their […]

December 8, 2010

Tiger’s Ongoing Saga

This most recent Thanksgiving holiday, while reading about the more serious news that has impacted our current society, I was also reminded about the supposedly ongoing “problems” of golfer Tiger Woods. Over the past week, from online bloggers, columnists, sports analysts, public relations executives and opinion makers and pundits, there has been no shortage of […]

December 8, 2010

Developing a Research Agenda

Young people pursuing graduate study often ask me how I developed my research agenda. They wonder how one carves out an area of research. For those of you who read this blog often, you know that the majority of my work focuses on historically Black colleges and universities and students of color. Recently, I was […]

November 28, 2010

Institutional Adaptation for STEM Completion

In recent weeks the University of Southern California’s Center for Urban Education received due press for its report, Tapping HSI-STEM Funds to Improve Latina and Latino Access to STEM Professions. The report looks at how Latina/o science, technology, engineering and mathematics majors are funding their undergraduate education and how Hispanic-Serving Institutions can best use federal […]

November 21, 2010

Guess Who’s Coming to Lunch?

Last week, I sat down to have what I thought would be a pleasant lunch with someone I had talked on the phone with quite a few times. I’d never met her but we had developed a good professional rapport. Our conversation was moving along fine — we both exchanged some of our personal background […]

November 17, 2010

The Personality of the K-12 Achievement Gap

I still remember my academic bliss in fourth grade. At a small private school in Jamaica, Queens, N.Y., in a relatively large class taught by Mrs. Miles, I received 100 on all of my final exams. It probably went to my head but a cocky 9-year-old is considered cute. Almost 20 years later, whenever I […]

November 14, 2010

Mississippi Goddam: Free the Scott Sisters

Nina Simone called it in 1964 with her civil rights anthem. Apparently, not much has changed since. Today, Jamie and Gladys Scott sit in a Mississippi prison, sentenced to double consecutive life sentences for a crime they have denied committing. Neither had a previous criminal record. And what was the alleged crime? Robbery. Was it a violent offense? No. […]

November 13, 2010

How it Feels to Take Math Praxis

This week, I did something that few academicians would do. I voluntarily sat for one hour and took a 40-question math test. How would you feel sitting down for such a test? No Chi squared analyses, T-tests or ANOVAs. I’m talking the basics: geometry, algebra, ratios, fractions, proportions and probability—the stuff high school math is […]

November 10, 2010

What Can HBCUs Teach all Colleges and Universities?

Note: This blog post is co-authored with Dorsey Spencer Jr., who serves as assistant director of campus activities and programs at Bucknell University. Harvard and Howard. Smith and Spelman. Wabash and Morehouse. Columbia Law and North Carolina Central Law. One could say that these institutions of higher education are not comparable. In these pairs, one […]

November 3, 2010