This paper considers critical reflection as a pedagogical strategy in UK higher education at a moment of an amplification of populist, reactionary discourses. It draws on written reflections of foundation-level students in a case study cohort and offers insights into their lived learning experiences and perceptions of the value of reflection. This…

Colleges and universities are some of the most important social institutions in America. These institutions have the privilege of educating large segments of future generations of Americans who will advance or undermine the American way of life that has been bequeathed to them. These same institutions also have the greatest longevity of any other…

To cultivate humanity is to invest in, enrich, or elevate all that it is to be human. But cultivating humanity has become a pressing challenge in higher education because learning about what it means to be human depends on significant and ongoing personal engagement of students with faculty and staff who serve as mentors, advisors, and guides.…

College student anti-intellectualism is defined as a general disdain of intellectual and academic endeavors. Eigenberger and Sealander (2001), using the student anti-intellectualism scale (SAIS), reported that SAIS scores were negatively correlated with openness to experience and elaborative/deep cognitive processing. Proneness to boredom,…

Have college students become careerists rather than intellectuals? Are working-class students to blame for grade inflation, grade-grubbing, and the downscaling of the university's noble mission of educating the whole person? These assertions, although somewhat buried in a mass of facts and findings, are present in almost every research study on…

Framed within the debate on African American "anti-intellectualism," this study examined a longitudinal sample of 460 African American students' intellectual self-concept and college grades (GPA) through regression analyses resulting from their college experiences. The findings showed that the college environment had a modest influence on African…

"Anti-intellectualism" refers to a student's lack of interest in and disrespect for intellectual pursuits and critical thinking and a preference for an education experience that is practical and requires only memorization. "Academic self-efficacy" refers to a student's confidence in his or her ability to succeed in challenging academic tasks. The…

In this article, the author refutes the arguments forwarded by William Deresiewicz in his much-discussed essay, "The American Scholar." Deresiewicz claimed that his background (as a student at Columbia and a former associate professor of English at Yale) rendered him incapable of a few minutes of small talk with the plumber who came to fix his…

Presents the results of a survey on student attitudes that the author's research firm carried out. (Editor)

Much of the present student ferment in France is a new manifestation of phenomena familiar since the end of the nineteenth century. A key element is student anomie." (Author/SE)