Wal-Mart University

Employees of Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores can receive college credit for restocking shelves. Wal-Mart has arranged a higher education program through a big-box online college, American Public University. Employees may be awarded “life experience” credit that can be applied towards an Associate Degree.

Wal-Mart imports much of its stock from Asia, so it is fitting that the store’s university has “more than 600 faculty members teaching from around the world ….” Perhaps the Chancellor is Professor Rollback.

Brandeis May Rent Out Museum’s Art

Last year, Brandeis University announced it would close the Rose Art Museum and sell off its renowned modern art collection to cover the school’s budget shortfall.  The result: condemnation, lawsuits from art donors and their families, student unrest, and cancelled alumni donations. 

Brandeis now says it won’t sell the art after all — it will rent it out instead.  The world of art museums has a specialized and genteel vocabulary. Selling off your collection is called “deaccessioning,” and renting out art may be called “loaning” or “collection-sharing.” If art loans are done for gain, we wonder if the IRS calls it “taxable.”

 More:

 ”Rent-a-Rose: Sotheby’s Persuades Brandeis to Lend Collection for Profit,” Lee Rosenbaum, Culturegrrl.

 ”University considering alternative options to selling art from Rose collection,” Alana Abramson,The Brandeis Justice.

“University exploring alternatives to art sale,” Brandeis University press release.

 

 Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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The Proper Study of Mankind

 

“The proper study of Mankind is Man,” claims the poet, but academic opinions differ on just how to go about it. Male Studies or Men’s Studies?

The Men’s Studies movement grew out of (or along with) the National Organization for Men Against Sexism. NOMAS is “pro-feminist, gay affirmative, anti-racist, dedicated to enhancing men’s lives.”  

Too touchy-feely for you, bubba? If you study men and boyz without constant references to gals or “Gender Studies,” that’s Male Studiies. Now on Facebook.

More:

“Male Studies vs. Men’s Studies,” Jennifer Epstein, InsideHigherEd.com

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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New University in Shanghai. Fries with That?

China sent the U.S. 83,000 college and graduate students this year. We sent China Hamburger U.

The McDonald’s Corporation opened its prestigious management training facility in Shanghai on Tuesday. There are over a thousand Mickey Ds in the nation of 1.3 billion and plans for thousands more.  China’s new Hamburger University expects to serve up 5,000 graduates in the next five years.

 

 

The fellow in the yellow suit is a registered trademark of McDonald’s, used here under the parody provisions of the Fair Use Doctrine. NotionsCapital received no promotional consideration for this, not even a Red Bean Pie.

Image (“Glorious Joint Venture Feeds the Masses”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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NCAA Non-Student Athletes

Is it madness to expect 40 percent of college athletes to graduate? The way NCAA basketball coaches responded to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, you would think so. Mr. Duncan proposed that schools with 60 percent drop-out rates be banned from the “March Madness” of the NCAA championship tournament.

Mr. Duncan has some credibility when it comes to hoops. He was co-captain of the Harvard team (yes, he graduated) and was a pro in Australia. He believes that gifted athletes with no interest in academics should be able to turn pro out of high school, but thinks college basketball players should be successful in the classroom if not on the hardwood.

Pagan University Chaplain

Syracuse University has appointed Mary Hudson as the school’s first pagan chaplain.  Just in time for Ostara!

The University of Southern Maine is the only other U.S. college known to have a pagan chaplain (Rev. Cynthia Jane Collins), but schools in Canada, Australia, and Britain have them.

Veteran’s Day 2009

This is Veterans Day in the United States. It was once called Armistice Day, marking the time the guns stopped in The Great War, at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. When that failed to be The War to End All Wars, the observance was renamed Veterans Day in 1954.

This year the holiday is marked by the launch of a new web site for vets, Today’s G.I. Bill, a guide to education benefits for post-9/11 veterans that is more user-friendly than the Department of Veterans Affairs or active-duty military sites. The project is supported by the Lumina Foundation and the American Council on Education.

While implementation of the education benefit is not without problems, it has been more successful than other vet programs. 131,000 U.S. veterans will be homeless tonight. 5.5 million vets are living with a disability. Up to 35% of Iraq veterans experience Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). You can help. Look here to find out how.

 

Hat tip: Inside Higher Ed

Hear and read the stories of veterans in their own words at the website of Veterans History Project of the American Folklife Center.

Image: Lumina Foundation.

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John Yoo Protesters Arrested, Sent to Gitmo

Four protesters were arrested outside the School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley campus Monday while calling for the dismissal of John Yoo. Mr. Yoo, a tenured professor of law at UC Berkeley, was the Deputy Assistant Attorney General under G.W. Bush whose memoranda justified waterboarding and other actions considered torture under U.S. and international law.

Mr. Yoo returned to Berkeley yesterday from low-profile stints at a DC think tank and an obscure institution in Orange County where no one reads newspapers.

Okay, we really don’t know what happened to the arrested protesters; there’s nothing in the newspapers about that. It’s just like they … disappeared ….

 

Image of Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater from FireJohnYoo.org 

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Professor Gonzales Regrets

Alberto Gonzales has expressed regret over calling The Geneva Conventions “quaint.”

Then White House Counsel, Mr. Gonzales wrote, in a 2002 memorandum that is said to have caused Secretary of State Colin Powell to “hit the roof”:

“In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.”

Next stop, Abu Ghraib.

Rose Family Member Sues to Prevent Closing of Rose Art Museum

Three overseers of the Rose Art Museum, including Meryl Rose, a member of the family whose donations created the museum, filed suit in a Massachusetts state court to prevent Brandeis University from closing the museum and selling off its collection. So far, university trustees have reaped about $100 million worth of bad publicity from their decision.

The lawsuit claims that the Brandeis plans “contradict the charitable intentions” of museum founders and donors, and “abrogate Brandeis’s promises that the Rose would be maintained in perpetuity.”

Read more about it in the New York Times or read the suit itself here.

 

Image (“Liberal Arts Without the Art”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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