Newmark's Door

"MLA Rankings of American Writers"

Hemingway is too low but given the frequent dopiness of the English professoriate, I guess it's amazing he's ranked as high as he is. 

"Time to Cut Government Funding For PoliSci Research?"

Yes. And the same holds true for virtually all research in the humanities and other social sciences. (Economics included.)

"An Economist's Guide to Teaching Styles"

Funny. But warning: is mostly economics in-jokes.

"The 13 Most Useless Majors, From Philosophy to Journalism"

Three guesses what kinds of majors dominate this list. (Actually, you should only get one.)

"Inside Harvard B-school's startup boot camp"

This sounds like a very worthwhile use of Harvard's money. 

"America’s College Students Are Sad, Alert"

"Study drugs"??

"More Universities Should Shut Down Their Computer Science Programs"

I don't know whether the author is right, but I have read a number of knowledgeable people make the same point:

Most undergraduates and professionals actually want to learn applied software engineering, not “computer science”. Most companies want to hire college graduates who know applied software engineering. But most university CS programs don’t actually teach applied software engineering. This isn’t to say that CS isn’t useful or valuable (even to someone who goes on to become an applied software engineer). But the majority of university CS programs are oriented to training undergraduates to become either systems programmers or academic computer scientists.

"Changed by the bell"

Yale student pays tribute to his KIPP schooling.

Here at Yale, just like at all the other schools I’ve been to, I often focus on the basics: Word Hard. Be Nice.

More terrible oppression of Harvard students

Hard on the heels of the deeply troubling lack of "social space" at Harvard comes news that Harvard is thinking of holding evening finals. 

Currently, final exams take place either from 9 A.M. to 12 P.M. or 2 P.M. to 5 P.M. We expect that an evening exam could take place from 7 P.M. to 10 P.M., in order to give students sitting both afternoon and evening exams the chance to eat dinner.

We are very concerned about the effect this exam schedule would have on students who already become considerably stressed during the current exam schedule. Although no one would be required to take three exams in one day, more students would face two exams in the same day, and some students could seemingly be required to take one exam that ended at 10 P.M. and another that started at 9 A.M., leaving them very little time to sleep, eat, and study in between exams.

Hey, ho, evening finals have got to go! (Clap, clap.)

Tip to the Crimson editorial writers: if you try studying all semester long, the loss of five hours of cramming the day before a final won't be so stressful. 

"Alumna Andrea Coravos on Econ, Consulting, and Life After Duke"

I tell my students having a good paper in their "portfolio" could well be useful in getting a job. Here, a Duke economics student relates how her senior thesis helped her win a job at McKinsey.