Tiny Harvard Dorms, Black Mirror Grad School, & More - Around the College Town
Links related to urbanism and higher ed for the week of Oct. 21-27.
Note: each week Around the College Town will feature a list of links from stories I am reading that are related to urbanism and higher ed, often combining both. This will include a brief commentary on each link. These may grow into future articles by me. Submit a link if you think it fits.
Washington College Ditches ‘Difficult to Read’ Logo Inside Higher Ed
Washington College had a fun little logo with what was supposed to represent George Washington’s actual handwriting. The school just announced it would do away with a fun logo in favor of something simple and plain. Many such cases—much of design today is rooted in bland aesthetics of simplicity. Too many designers and marketers went to the same handful of schools teaching the same set of thinkers and aesthetics. We now get standardized guidelines that are safe. LindyMan calls it Refinement Culture. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
It’s Time To Make Doubles a Thing of the Past - The Harvard Crimson
A student calls for Harvard to end the practice of ‘double’ rooms in dorms, meaning two people sleeping in the same room (different beds). Double rooms have been a growing complaint since I was in college two decades ago, and cold dorms are even rarer. But what I find interesting is she lauds a campus model that is essentially a micro-unit. An individual bed in a very tiny room, something people on Twitter keep telling me is ‘inhumane’ during a recent raging debate. If it’s good enough for Harvard, how can it be inhumane? A topic worthy of a future post.
Walden University’s $28.5M class-action settlement with students gets court approval - Higher Ed Dive
Imagine going to grad school in a Black Mirror episode. The main character finishes her classes, she writes a capstone, but her adviser keeps her endlessly in the revision stage for erroneous issues. She keeps rewriting without escape, paying tuition again and again. Eternal Revisions, Endless Fees. Well, this sci-fi may be a reality with this lawsuit against for-profit Walden U that claims a similar tale. Students should always be careful of the for-profits.
Indian student 'betrayed' by Shakespeare PhD snub - BBC News
Another on grad school… a student from the University of Oxford was pushed out of a PhD program and into an MA program due to failing reviews of her Shakespeare research. The student claims to have spent almost £100K to earn two MAs from the English institution but wanted the PhD. While I agree there should be quality controls for a doctorate, the student questioned the training she received leading up to the evaluation. This is yet another apocryphal story for doing a PhD. Be warned, kids…
The Viral Homeless UCLA Professor and the High Cost of Living Crisis - Social Scholarly Substack
Speaking of, I wrote last week about the homeless UCLA professor as a warning to potential doctoral students. He actually responded to my piece with a clarification, which I reflected in an update. Others had a lot to say on the matter, including the Social Scholarly Substack, who highlighted how the story reflected our housing crisis, along with the complications of dealing with it.
The State of Sequoyah: Indigenous Sovereignty and the Quest for an Indian State - University of Oklahoma Press
Finally, I actually had a pretty good time in grad school. One of my old history professors, John Delury of Yonsei University (Seoul, South Korea), used to say “Historians don’t do conjecture”, but I still love historical conjecture. What If X scenario happened or didn’t happen is just so much fun. A new book from my home state of Oklahoma imagines a state that never was. At one time, the Five Civilized Tribes got together to petition the Federal government to create an Indian state. It was rejected. But the dream lives on through shared memory, the infamous McGirt v. Oklahoma (2020) case, and broader tribal movements. I can’t wait to read this one.
