By Sandra J. Peart, Dean and E. Claiborne Robins Distinguished Professor in Leadership Studies and President of the Jepson Scholars Foundation
Be clear about what a college education means and what sort of skills your students should have upon graduation. If you are, University of Chicago (UC) President Robert Zimmer argued recently at the University of Richmond, your stance towards free
Read moreI was recently reminded of the powerful nature of incentives. I shouldn’t need reminding — I am an economist, and economists work with incentives. I have also been in various positions of authority for most of my adult life. But
Read more“You made it.” Dr. Julian Hayter, the faculty speaker at Jepson’s 2018 Senior Banquet, launched his remarks with this simple statement. It’s a familiar theme during Commencement season because it reflects an important accomplishment — four years of hard work
Read moreLike Stover, I believe the humanities and social sciences are valuable in and of themselves. We are better for knowing ideas. Having seen Coriolanus or read Thucydides makes us more interesting, more complex, and more capable. Being interesting to one’s
Read moreIn the last installment, I laid out Alfred Marshall’s argument that we are better off because we have come to understand key ideas. Marshall further pointed out that if we destroy the embodiment of the ideas, such as the law
Read moreIn a March 4 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Justin Stover wrote, “The humanities are not just dying—they are almost dead.” He argued that there is no coherent instrumental argument to “save” the humanities. Instead, the humanities simply
Read more“Boss.” That simple word still startles me. In the academy, professors rarely acknowledge they have a boss; as an assistant professor, I thought I would be the architect of my career. The department chair was a nuisance to be tolerated
Read moreAlex Rodriguez, Lance Armstrong, and Bernie Madoff. What do they have in common? Trying to obtain high returns without regard for the rules—cheating. Pressures to bend the rules at colleges and elsewhere are enormous. We would all like to find a risk-free
Read moreSince the early days of universities, faculties have been criticized as inward-looking, cloistered — literally and figuratively — from the world around them. More recently, such criticisms have become sharper as the “value” and rising cost of a liberal arts
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