These days

I find myself disagreeing with Alex Usher much more often than not, but it’s hard to stay mad at a guy who comes up with the phrase “techno-fetishist windbags” to describe promoters of MOOCs and other “disruptive” technologies. Read the whole piece for some good quotes from Sebastian Thrun, founder of patient-zero Udacity, including his admission that “[w]e have a lousy product” or my fav: “We’re not doing anything as rich and powerful as what a traditional liberal-arts education would offer you.” Doesn’t get blunter than that.

(Read the original interview with Thrum.)

Alex Usher

is way, way wrong today.

Don’t get me wrong, university senates are great. I am a long-time senator myself and every now and then — once or twice anyway — we have managed to accomplish something in the face of the Empire administrative voting block.

But faculty unions: faculty unions are the circled wagons around our profession, our last best hope.

Academia pleads for aid