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

Section: Opinion

Putting Priorities and Expectations in Perspective

How do you prioritize higher education when you are struggling to survive and provide for your own family? The recent devastation in Haiti is a vivid reminder for me of this reality. In Haiti, as in many impoverished Latin American countries, survival is the priority, not college. We can pontificate all we want about […]

January 21, 2010

Race and Representation

I don’t think I’ve given YouTube and some of the other web video portals their just due as pedagogical tools. However, my class this week focuses on the representations of African-Americans in the media over the past 100 years. I showed my students a clip of failed “American Idol” contestant Larry Platt’s “Pants on the […]

January 20, 2010

Endangered Species: Male Students of Color in Higher Education

Editor’s note: This blog post was co-authored by Dr. Luis Ponjuan. There is growing concern among educators, researchers, and many local communities over the educational plight of male students of color. Postsecondary enrollment patterns over the past two decades highlight a disturbing trend that traditional college-aged males compared to their female peers are less likely to […]

January 19, 2010

King’s message of hope keeps us together

I couldn’t help but think of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as the news broke last night and into the morning about the earthquake in Haiti. The odds are stacked up against this country, yet with prayer and help from others it will survive. The pictures suggest ruin, yet the determination of the people will […]

January 14, 2010

Using Hip-hop as a Teaching Tool

I was recently approached by a friend of mine at Lincoln about suggesting ways that the university could better incorporate hip-hop into its mass communications program. Though some Lincoln professors have tried to use hip-hop as a teaching tool in the classroom, the university has kept a safe distance from hip-hop, particularly the commercial rap […]

January 13, 2010

The Hegemon and Hawaii: Teaching History through the Law

I teach a course called, “United States in the Pacific Islands,” in which students learn about American historical involvement in the Pacific structured by strategic interests in the region that constitute neocolonial hegemony including economic, military and cultural power. It is a rare thing for students anywhere in the United States to learn about the […]

January 12, 2010

In the Heights of Higher Education

For the new year, I finally went to see the musical “In the Heights” in New York. “In the Heights” won the 2008 Tony Award for best musical and its storyline focuses on Latinos and college-going. The story revolves around a small community in Washington Heights, N.Y., where various Latinos all live in harmony. One […]

January 12, 2010

Like It or Not, America Has Played the Race Card Again

Why do I allege that America has played the race card? Because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s private musings about race have now come out of the closet. Reid said what many Americans think: President Barack Obama is light skinned and has no “Negro dialect” unless he wants to. Reid is spot on. If […]

January 11, 2010

The Gender Imbalance on College Campuses

During the past few years, I have walked into a number of classes I’ve taught, looked around and have been startled at what I have witnessed. I am talking about the X/Y factor, or the gender ratio. Gender imbalance was striking. A number (though not all) of my classes were more than two-thirds female. […]

January 10, 2010

Cultivating A Knack For Cross-Cultural Understanding

When I was an undergraduate student at the University of Minnesota in the 1990s, during the height of conservative efforts to repeal affirmative action, I often found myself the lone Indian-American attending demonstrations by minority-student groups to save it. I used to also be the only non-Black person at the Africana Student Center because it […]

January 6, 2010

Completion By Design or By Chance?

Completing college should not be synonymous with a “roll of the dice,” but too often it is. How many of us were asked during college orientation to look to the left and right of us, because only one of the three of you was going to make it to graduation? Given our national goal to […]

January 5, 2010

Princess and the Frog, Tiger and the Cablinasian, Tier One and the Good Journal: Of Fairy Tales Meta-narratives and Affirmation

In a recent newspaper article, an author claimed Disney broke barriers by presenting the first African-American princess to audiences across the globe. Ribbit! Had I too been kissed by a frog? You see, I have seen African-Americans depicted as royalty in life and in film – years ago and now. What were they talking about? […]

December 22, 2009

Policy Challenges and Opportunities for Latinos in Higher Education

In this time of reflection and preparation for the new year, I have identified seven policy challenges and opportunities for improving Latino student success. I believe they are challenges to our perspectives on higher education as well as opportunities to reconsider the lens with which we examine higher education today. 1. Heterogeneity – The Latino […]

December 21, 2009

Merging Mississippi’s Black Colleges: A Decision That Neglects History

In an effort to cut costs in Mississippi, Gov. Haley Barbour suggested merging the state’s three historically Black institutions. Let me tell you what is wrong with this recommendation. First, Barbour makes the false assumption that Black colleges are all alike and lack diversity. Recommending that the urban Jackson State merge with rural Alcorn […]

December 14, 2009

Racial and Gender Myths Surrounding College Admissions

A few weeks ago, I was listening to the radio in my car as I was on my way to one of the local coffeehouses in the college town in which I reside. My radio just happened to be tuned into a talk show discussion concerning a group of high school students (all White and […]

December 10, 2009

Whew! What a Semester!

My first semester at Lincoln was filled with ups and downs (mostly ups, fortunately), and I had to learn quickly to adjust to life at a small, relatively isolated historically Black university (HBCU). Of all the universities I’ve taught at, I think this was the most challenging first semester. For starters, I had to learn […]

December 9, 2009

Sending Conflicting Messages – Is College Possible?

Nothing travels faster than bad news. In the last two weeks, we have read negative stories about higher education in the mainstream media. For example, the 32 percent increase in educational fees at the University of California system made national news. Also widely covered is the case of a college graduate who could not pay […]

December 7, 2009

Stealing in Academe

Yesterday, I received an e-mail from a colleague at another institution that prompted me to write this blog entry about stealing in academe. The e-mail asked me to look over a syllabus that a colleague of his had “developed” for a class on historically Black colleges and universities. He wondered what I thought. As I […]

December 3, 2009