The phrase "academic bullshit" presents compositionists with a special dilemma. Because compositionists study, teach, and produce academic writing, they are open to the accusation that they both tolerate and perpetuate academic bullshit. We argue that confronting this problem must begin with a careful definition of "bullshit" and "academic…

How influential has the "US News" Best Colleges ranking been over the last twenty-five years since it was first started in 1983? In what ways does this influence manifest itself? There is strong evidence of the impact of the US News rankings among consumers, prospective students and their parents, and the higher education establishment in the…

Nestled in the mountainous, southeastern Mexican state of Puebla, the University of the Americas-Puebla has been a distinguished institution with close ties to the United States. It was a popular study-abroad choice and enjoyed accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. However, under the tenure of Pedro Angel Palou Garcia,…

In this article the author explores the controversial thesis that African American Collegiate Fraternities and Sororities, also known as Black Greek Letter Organizations (BGLOs), are "educated gangs". First, the author examines this polemic as a "truth claim" and compares BGLOs and gangs through: (1) hazing; (2) rape and substance abuse; (3)…

This paper is concerned with young people's perceptions and reported use of the two language varieties that co-exist in the urban centre of Guangzhou in southern China, Putonghua (P) and Cantonese (C). P is a typical H-variety, promoted by the government and used as a lingua franca throughout China; C is the local L-variety but it also has some…

Differentiates between reputation and image and suggests that reputation is real and image is a false thing that can be built up and immediately shattered. Discusses a proactive approach to reputation management: setting out to establish and maintain a good reputation for an organization. (JOW)

The notion of an impact factor was first posited by Eugene Garfield (1972) to study the use, prestige, and status of scientific journals. The Institute for Scientific Information created the impact factor as a means to measure the number of times an "average article" published in a journal was cited over a particular time period ("The impact…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to raise awareness of the dynamic character of career and its key attributes, and the embeddedness of their definitions and meanings in national social, political and economic contexts. Design/methodology/approach: Features of three recent distinct social, political and economic situations in Russia are used…

This case study chronicles Syracuse University's athletic department's attempt to achieve consistency in its identity program by changing its identity during 2004, and then again in 2005. The changes were owing to high-level personnel changes on both the academic and athletic sides of the university. This case details the many issues arising from…

As a senior honors student at Weston Ranch High School in Stockton, California, last spring, Lakea Youngblood gained admission to the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Los Angeles, California's two most sought-after public universities. While both schools offered the northern California native similar financial…

Many graduate creative writing programs depend on "star" faculty who have been hired more because of their professional reputation as writers than because of their commitment to teaching. As a result, such programs often fail to provide reflection on teaching that would truly serve their students. One step toward alleviating this problem is to…

This report summarizes the discussion from an invitational roundtable that engaged fifteen leaders in higher education. The essay finds that colleges and universities have become preoccupied with advancing their prestige instead of achieving publicly-defined purposes, and calls for the restoration of a greater sense of public purpose to learning…

Child abuse and neglect are serious social problems that make extraordinary demands on teachers' knowledge and professionalism. Yet the field of education has been slow to develop a discipline-specific knowledge base about child abuse and neglect for teachers and teacher education programmes and there is a paucity empirical research into teachers'…

The aim of this study is to investigate students' perceptions regarding reputation of primary schools and to interpret the differences among the students' perceptions. Descriptive survey research has been made in this study. The sample consists of 258 students who have been trained at primary schools. Data were collected by using a questionnaire…

This paper is based on a research project funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England which investigated employers' needs for information on higher education quality and standards. A key issue was identifying the type of knowledge that employers utilise in graduate recruitment. A finding of the study was that information on quality…