Leprechauns & heaviness, obeisance-wise

obeisance: acknowledgment of another's superiority or importance : HOMAGE

There are some interesting—and perhaps important—items in this morning’s Inside Higher Ed. In its “Quick Takes” section, we learn:

● While many American policy makers of late have been worrying about increased competition from India’s universities, a report in the International Herald Tribune found that outside a small number of elite Indian universities, most of the country’s higher education system is in terrible shape. “Most of the 11 million students in the 18,000 Indian colleges and universities receive starkly inferior training, heavy on obeisance and light on marketable skills, students, educators and business leaders say,” according to the article. [My emphasis.]

Heavy on obeisance? Imagine that!

● A former student at the Art Institute of Portland, in Oregon, says that he was suspended and then expelled, in a series of events that started when he questioned another student’s belief in leprechauns and she complained about his questions, The Portland Mercury reported. Institute officials denied that anyone could be expelled for questioning another’s belief in leprechauns and suggested that other issues were involved.

● This morning’s lead article (Fixing Higher Ed, Legislator-Style) is a description of a new report on the state of higher ed in the U.S., and it ain’t pretty:

Higher education is in crisis, in large part because of government neglect, and states must take the lead in fixing the problems, a bipartisan group of state legislators says in a new report.

“Transforming Higher Education: National Imperative — State Responsibility,” the report from a 12-member special panel of the National Conference of State Legislators, in many ways falls in line with other recent studies that have identified concerns about access to and the performance of American colleges and universities….

Like those reports, the legislators’ study (a summary of which can be found here) cites statistics showing the United States slipping on international indicators, bemoans the effect that increasing tuitions and flattening financial aid have had on college access for low and middle income students and adult learners, and notes that those problems must be addressed if the country is to provide a meaningful future for the waves of educationally underprepared Americans preparing to slam into higher education and society….

…“The American higher education system is no longer the best in the world,” the NSCL report states without equivocation. “Although the United States has some of the best institutions in the world, we do a poor job overall in our mass education production.... The American higher education system is not preparing students for the 21st century global society.... Faculty are content with the teaching methods of the past and are not changing as the world is changing.”….

● ALSO: in this morning's New York Times (Pastor Chosen to Lead Christian Coalition Steps Down in Dispute Over Agenda):

The president-elect of the Christian Coalition of America, which has long served as a model for activism for the religious right, has stepped down, saying the group resisted his efforts to broaden its agenda to include reducing poverty and fighting global warming....

Jeez, what would Jesus say?