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

Section: Opinion

There Are No Safe Spaces

Conferences are about reunions with colleagues and friends, presentations on the next innovative research, and new connections made to build your academic community. However, conferences are also about performing in spaces, I argue, that can feel and be unsafe. A space where trauma reignites from our past or future selves.

December 2, 2019

Am I Missing Something? How to Make Applying to Graduate School More Affordable

As more universities and graduate programs drop requirements to submit standardized test scores like the GRE, LSAT, and GMAT, the obstacle of having to pay for expensive, unfair testing may no longer be an issue for prospective students.

November 30, 2019

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Should My Black Child Participate in Her Thanksgiving Day Play? A Look Into the Need for Culturally Competent Pedagogy

As a Black parent with an inquisitive Black child, I’m plagued with internal battles regarding whether I allow her to dress up like a pilgrim or indigenous person at her school’s Thanksgiving Day Play, at the request of her teacher. Do I continue to perpetuate this occasion as a jovial interaction between captor and captee by simply telling her she looks cute in her headdress and twirled her “I am Squanto” sign masterfully?

November 26, 2019

Why the Detroit Literacy Case Matters to Higher Education

Chronically low literacy rates; classrooms without certified teachers; buildings with leaking roofs, vermin, and mold; missing and outdated textbooks—these conditions in public schools have raised fundamental questions about the rights of children. They have strong implications for higher education.

November 20, 2019

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It’s Time to Give Critical Thought to Disaggregating the Term “MSIs”

There is a tendency in academia as well as in the media to compound all of the institution types that fall under the Minority Serving Institutions (MSI) designation into one category. Amalgamating all eight MSIs into one classification, fails to delineate the differences between these distinct institutions and can offer an erroneous image of these institutions and the students they serve.

November 19, 2019

Secret Service Highlights Importance of Student Threat Assessment

We cannot prevent every incident through threat assessment, but it is important that we reach students as soon as concerns are identified. We must train key school personnel on identifying behaviors of concern as much as we train on behaviors that should not be of concern.

November 18, 2019

Diversity, Ukraine, and Impeachment

There’s a diversity angle in the impeachment hearings you may have overlooked.It’s not just about Trump. It’s about a proud people who have overcome mass starvation and invasions for centuries. And they continue to struggle to be free from tyranny and corruption.

November 16, 2019

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Higher Education Has Changed. The Law Must Change with It

The Higher Education Act (HEA), the law that helps students finance their postsecondary education, has not been reauthorized since 2008. A lot has changed in the last 11 years, including higher education, and the law that was passed in 2008 is no longer responsive to the challenges facing today’s students.

November 12, 2019

African-American

Whitewashing Impeachment and 2020: Don’t Forget Who Got Us Here

Like the majority of Americans facing the new impeachment inquiry landscape, I am both jubilant and alarmed. What will happen now? Impeachment of a sitting president is a dead-serious business, with no predictable outcome.

November 8, 2019

Asian American Pacific Islander

What I Learned from The Vagina Monologues

One of the proudest accomplishments of my undergraduate experience was my involvement with the V-Day Movement that produces The Vagina Monologues every year. Freshman fall, I joined this organization whose mission is to “end violence against all women and girls (cisgender, transgender, and those who hold fluid identities that are subject to gender-based violence).”

November 7, 2019

Correctional Education: “America’s Balm of Gilead”

At no time post-civil rights, has there been a period that has offered a brighter glimmer of hope to the countless thousands of incarcerated offenders in America as we are experiencing today. The reemergence of correctional education opportunities through the Second Chance Pell initiative has given hope to prisoners who were not fully engaged in something as beneficial/rewarding as postsecondary education and without much hope.

November 6, 2019

“Color Blind” Is Not What It Seems

Among the concepts the law has distorted is “color blindness.” When Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. in 1963, before the Civil Rights Act was enacted, he popularized a phrase that has been invoked by those who have not shared his idealism.

November 5, 2019

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Higher Ed’s Impeachment Role

Make no mistake, Higher Ed must play a role in impeachment. Not as partisans. But as the context makers. The fact-checkers. The knowledge filters.

November 4, 2019

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Leadership & Policy

Five Scaffolds to Working with Your Minority or Female Boss

Bias against women and minority bosses threatens the progress of projects and curtails the collective vision for the organization.

October 30, 2019

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Free College Education Talk Is Cheap, Invest Now to Diversify and Secure the Future of Elite Colleges

Some of the Democratic candidates for president spend a lot of time talking about free college education. This is a complicated and important issue, as too many students who should be in college cannot afford to attend, and many of them come from underrepresented groups. Low- and middle-income underrepresented students who are able to attend college are often supported by generous scholarships from elite schools that are under huge pressure to diversify their student bodies.

October 29, 2019

African-American

Bring Your Authentic Self to Work

As the first Black female professor in the Communication Department at my university, I consider myself to be a blessed imposter. I’ve been fortunate in my career. I’ve taught a variety of communications courses, incorporated social justice into the curriculum, created professional formation programs for students, and established the Dream. Plan. Do.™ departmental scholarship for students of color. I’ve played the “game” well enough to accomplish these tasks. What game? The game of code-switching and being inauthentic.

October 28, 2019

Our Shared History

People are ignorant of history, even their own.

October 24, 2019

The Road to HBCU Self-Sustainability

Having been in the trenches of HBCUs for most of my life as a student, administrator and instructor, I know first-hand the difficulties our institutions face. I believe, however, that HBCUs have the capacity to turn around their fortunes.

October 23, 2019