21st Century Scholar

In my last blog post, I shared a major milestone for the Collegeology project: we launched the beta version of Mission:Admission—the Facebook game we have been working on for the past three years. My invitation extended still stands—please log on and play. It has been such fun over the last week hearing back from students [...]

I can’t tell if this is the best time to bring this up, but I am going to anyway. By the time you read this blog, USC graduation will be about a week old. This means that within the next three months or so, most graduates, except those who are continuing on to new academic [...]

One of my fondest memories of college occurred during my first semester as an undergraduate at the University of Maryland, College Park. I remember walking from class one chilly November evening. As I was contemplating the class discussion of The Laramie Project, a play about the tragic death of Matthew Shepard, I exited from a [...]

Last week, I discussed the difference between deficit and surplus perspectives in education. A surplus of cultures exists in many low-income neighborhoods. And yet, current research, policy, and practice often assume a deficit perspective. I argued, instead, that scholars, policymakers, and practitioners ought to consider a surplus perspective. Such a perspective refocuses discussions from what [...]

I was famously quoted in a PBS documentary on for-profit education that I thought, for the vast majority of students who do not attend a highly-selective research university, that education was a business. Two years later, I have to admit, I still think so. What led me to revisit this issue was not the recent [...]

A young man arrived in the United States and moved with his family to one of the poorest sections of Los Angeles. The violence and poverty that surrounded him was a surprise. In his application for a scholarship to Stanford University he wrote, “I thought America was a land of riches and pleasures because of [...]

In education, scholars, practitioners, and policymakers often espouse a deficit cultural perspective to explain academic success and failure; students who succeed exemplify a mainstream culture whereas students who fail represent an oppositional culture. Unfortunately, by “blaming the victim,” such arguments echo previous culture of poverty debates, reinforce stereotypes, and do little to move us forward. [...]

Some of my most vivid memories as a high school teacher are of police. Police cars patrolled the neighborhood. They parked in front of the school and at nearby intersections. In school, police officers walked the hallways. Out of school, they walked the streets. Police were ever-present in the neighborhood. That is the context in [...]

Check out our new video for the Pullias Center for Higher Education …

My first encounter with Dr. Pullias was around 1967 when we met as members on the CTA Commission on Higher Education. He was a professor on the USC School of Education faculty, chairman of the Higher Education Department and the epitome of a fine southern gentleman. With each Commission meeting I attended, I became more [...]