Evan Matthew Cobb
Evan Matthew Cobb
Recent Stories
Casualization trend is bad for higher ed
The Department of Education reports that more than half the teachers in American higher education are part-timers, a share that rises year after year. Even here at Yale, three-quarters of the instructional staff are off the tenure track, according the AAUP. It’s clear that my life as an academic will look nothing like the lives of the teachers who have inspired me to choose this path.
Grad schools face greater troubles than time
Graduate School Dean Jon Butler has called on all departments to conduct reviews of their Ph.D. programs as part of the “2-4 Project.” The review is serious business — so serious, in fact, that last week the dean invited Ph.D. students to spend between 10 and 15 whole minutes on an anonymous electronic survey, as “no one at Yale is better placed … to offer candid and constructive feedback about our academic programs.”
_ (31508)
We're back from the holiday season, students have shopped until they dropped and my class has sufficient enrollment to continue, so I'm a happy camper. Yet when I find memos in my inbox from Deans Butler and Salovey enumerating the endless pleasures of...
Year 6: Yale and the half-loved grad student
The literary event of the summer was without question the release of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." For my part, I dodged the late-night release parties and costumed hullabaloo and picked up a copy in a bookshop in Berlin's Friedrichstrasse...
On two ways of serving the nation
Leafing through my copy of the most recent Yale Alumni Magazine, I arrived at an interview with President Levin about the role of university presidents in public affairs. When asked about his participation in the Commission on the Intelligence...
Yale's books don't add up for teachers
Yale's recently released 2003-2004 Financial Report proclaims that "no other major university is taking a more sweeping look at how administration can contribute to the academic mission." Unfortunately, my own experiences of administrative oversight...
Grad students work in class
Imagine my surprise Friday morning as I was preparing to teach my class when I came across Jessamyn Blau's column ("Now hiring: Koffee Too? but not grad school," 9/3) and discovered that I wasn't actually about to report to work. No, I was going back...