EDUCATION

What Is An Adult Coloring Book?
EDUCATION

What Is An Adult Coloring Book?

So what is an adult coloring book, and how is it that they are currently outselling top fiction authors with new releases such as E.L. James and Paula Hawkins? Adult coloring books are, very simply, coloring in books for grown ups. Like children's coloring books, they are full of outline illustrations designed to be filled in with colored pencils, markers, crayons, or whatever other media you wish to use. What's in an adult coloring in book? The main difference between adults' and kids' color books is that the grown up versions generally feature less juvenile images and designs. Instead of superheroes, barnyard animals, and television characters, adult coloring in books are more often filled with: elements of the natural world, such as trees, flowers, leaves, gardens, animals and ...
What Is Academic Tenure – And Why It Matters
EDUCATION

What Is Academic Tenure – And Why It Matters

George Justice, Arizona State University How would you like a job that was guaranteed and allowed you to do your work as you see fit and speak your mind with no repercussions? Most people would, and that’s the idea behind academic tenure. In the following Q&A, George Justice, an English professor and author of “How to Be a Dean,” explains the origin of tenure and the waning protections that it affords professors who have it. What is academic tenure? Of all the things a university professor can achieve in their career, few are as desirable as academic tenure. Academic tenure is a system of strong job protections that virtually guarantees a university professor will never be fired or let go except in the most extreme of circumstances. A key idea is to allow faculty to speak freely – w...
An Economist Explains – What’s The Charitable Deduction?
EDUCATION

An Economist Explains – What’s The Charitable Deduction?

Patrick Rooney, IUPUI The charitable deduction is a dollar-for-dollar reduction in taxable income that lowers what someone owes the Internal Revenue Service. Only donations to tax-exempt charities count. This giving incentive is available only for the 10% of American taxpayers who itemize their tax returns. Taxpayers who itemize can sum up certain expenses, such as the interest they pay to for a home mortgage, and then subtract that money from their taxable income. Here’s a hypothetical example: Clara Doe, a veterinarian, pays a 32% marginal tax rate on her US$200,000 income as a single filer. Because she itemizes, her $100 annual donation to a local food pantry costs her $68 after taxes. Uncle Sam essentially pays the rest by giving her a tax break. Most Americans instead use the stan...
Stop Shrinking To Fit Places You’ve Outgrown
EDUCATION

Stop Shrinking To Fit Places You’ve Outgrown

Stop shrinking to fit places you've outgrown. That saying is more pertinent today than ever before. Have you ever seen a cat curl up in the bathroom sink? It's such a cool and comfortable place for them to go. What if a giant Great Dane puppy was trying to fit into the bathroom sink? That suggestion doesn't seem like a very comfortable fit. Could that be you in your preparation to go back to work after the lockdown? If you have found yourself without a job during the pandemic and are dreading going back to the place that paid the bills but you didn't necessarily enjoy, now is the time to search for a place where you naturally fit in perfectly. Ask yourself what you enjoy or what you have spent time doing during the lockdown that might pay the bills because at this time there are worker...
What I Saw When I Spent A Year And A Half At A ‘No-Excuses’ Charter School
EDUCATION

What I Saw When I Spent A Year And A Half At A ‘No-Excuses’ Charter School

Charter schools are 30 years old as of 2021, and the contentious debate about their merits and place in American society continues. To better understand what happens at charter schools – and as a sociologist who focuses on education – I spent a year and a half at a particular type of urban charter school that takes a “no-excuses” approach toward education. My research was conducted from 2012 through 2013, but these practices are still prevalent in charter schools today. The no-excuses model is one of the most celebrated and most controversial education reform models for raising student achievement among Black and Latino students. Charters, which are public schools of choice that are independently managed, show comparable achievement to traditional public schools, but no-excuses charters ...
Efforts To Recruit More Diverse Faculties In Business School Are Failing
EDUCATION

Efforts To Recruit More Diverse Faculties In Business School Are Failing

Despite the increasing diversity among America’s college students, business school professors remain overwhelmingly white. In U.S. business schools, Black and Hispanic individuals make up 23.2% of students, yet only 6.7% of the faculty. As a researcher with a long-standing interest in the reasons business schools lack diverse faculty, I – along with marketing professor Sonja Martin Poole – set out to examine how business schools select their faculty. We did this by talking to 21 Black and Hispanic professors who have served on search committees at business schools throughout the U.S. We discovered four major reasons professors of color often get screened out of the process. 1. Race is unmentionable Search committees rarely have open conversations about race as they search to diversify ...
Whether Students Cheat – Motivation Is A Key Factor
EDUCATION

Whether Students Cheat – Motivation Is A Key Factor

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic caused many U.S. colleges to shift to remote learning in the spring of 2020, student cheating has been a concern for instructors and students alike. To detect student cheating, considerable resources have been devoted to using technology to monitor students online. This online surveillance has increased students’ anxiety and distress. For instance, some students have indicated the monitoring technology required them to stay at their desks or risk being labeled as cheaters. Although relying on electronic eyes may partially curb cheating, there’s another factor in the reasons students cheat that often gets overlooked – student motivation. As a team of researchers in educational psychology and higher education, we became interested in how students’ motivati...