One of the first things I noticed when I came to the United States for my graduate education was the ubiquity of online resources. The Internet back home in India was still a novelty and its potential for educational resources was extremely limited.
Questia Online Library is an example of one such online library that gives you access to a large collection of books and journal articles in the fields of humanities and social sciences. The database also includes magazines and newspaper articles and is searchable by title, author, subject, and keyword.
One of the impressive options in Questia is the availability of online tools that enable users to create footnotes, bibliographical references, and hyperlinking across titles. I cannot overemphasize the importance of such tools that not only recreate the way you would use physical resources but also enhance your experience in using online tools in order to help you maintain a list of resources you accessed. One more additional feature that impressed me was the availability of more than 5000 books in online format. These books are public domain books whose copyright has expired hence are available to read for free in their entirety. No more buying expensive books or looking them up in libraries. You can use all the above mentioned reference tools in these books as well.
There is increasing concern that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims. However, this should not be surprising. It can be proven that most claimed research findings are false.
Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution presents the basic idea in a simple-to-understand diagram. But does this conclusion apply to social research or urban planning research as well? There also has been talk of bringing out the ‘dark research’ out of the closet i.e. research studies that have yielded results contradictory to the researchers’ expectations and hence aren’t published. One of their suggestions regarding journal policy that I agree with is - As an editor or referee, don’t reject papers that fail to reject the null.
Since I am currently neck deep in research design studies and formulating my research proposal, I can completely relate to this. Click image to enlarge.
University and college rankings are always disputed regardless of the methodology they employ. The U.S.News and World Report rankings is the most used and oft-cited list although it has been repeatedly rubbished by academicians and professionals. These rankings are often based on reputation which is a self-feeding circle and endowment size which also like reputation doesn’t change ranks often. Thus to offer an alternative perspective, The Washington Monthly published their own rankings based on “how much of a contribution does each university make to the country”.
The methodology explained here is based on social mobility, research, and service i.e. “is the school recruiting and graduating low-income students? Is it producing PhDs and cutting-edge research? And is it encouraging in its students an ethic of service?” The ranking are displayed below and surprisingly puts my current graduate school, Texas A&M right at the top.
While I’m pleased as punch at the top billing given to my university, I must remain skeptical of such rankings. When the magazine lists its criteria as ‘contribution to the country’, are they neglecting the role of universities in the increasingly globalized world? Considering that international students contribute heavily at least to the research conducted in any top university, shouldn’t that factor in the rankings also? Are the universities necessarily established to keep America competitive in this global economy where human capital is increasingly mobile. You may argue that U.S. universities are clearly oriented toward bettering America’s standing since most of the research dollars come from federal agencies. However, is this also indicative of the immigration policies of the same government that doesn’t necessarily encourage immigration? I hope not.
Well, all rankings are subjective to criticism but I will attest to the top quality of research and education at Texas A&M. It is definitely one of the best. Also, I found it strangely funny that a liberal magazine chose a conservative university as its top choice.
A personal account by Monty C.M Metzger from CScout Trend Consultancy. It is basically a large scale model of the capital city’s layout in preparation for the next year’s summer Olympic games. Not much of a museum.
Robyn at Cities of Theory asks a pertinent and oft-raised question - “are we training people for a profession crying out for candidates but with candidates not fitting the requirements and unable to get a job?”
Seems unlikely, eh? The Case against Homework, a book by Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish explores the myth of importance of homework towards your child’s educational outcomes. I remember being piled with homework after school and threatened with completing it before going out to play so as to “stay ahead of my classmates”. I bet they were told the same in a classic game of pitting one kid against the other and watching them slowly rot away in the rat race. But does homework have any other external effect apart from harming an individual’s outlook toward life (as if that isn’t dire enough)?
No Child Left Behind and standardized testing not only turns your child into a slave to her test-scores, but they can even affect your property values: a school with low test-scores brings down the neighborhood property values. That means that whatever your approach to your kids, the chances are that the other parents in your neighborhood are busting their asses to get their kids great test scores, drilling them, sending them to tutors, helping them with assignments that they were meant to complete themselves. If you don’t do the same, your kids will suffer by comparison [emphases mine].
So it isn’t enough just getting in but also more important to keep fighting hard by keeping at it and how? By doing homework that in all probability is not going to make much difference in your education anyway. But it is like the rolling juggernaut that no one wishes to jump off in fear of being crushed under.
I live in a college town so probably can identify with the lure of one. UConn is taking that seriously as it sets out to build a college town from scratch.
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Tags: Learning
‘The Top 10 Things They Never Taught Me in Design School’
1. Talent is one-third of the success equation.
Talent is important in any profession, but it is no guarantee of success. Hard work and luck are equally important. Hard work means self-discipline and sacrifice. Luck means, among other things, access to power, whether it is social contacts or money or timing. In fact, if you are not very talented, you can still succeed by emphasizing the other two. If you think I am wrong, just look around.
2. 95 percent of any creative profession is shit work.
Only 5 percent is actually, in some simplistic way, fun. In school that is what you focus on; it is 100 percent fun. Tick-tock. In real life, most of the time there is paper work, drafting boring stuff, fact-checking, negotiating, selling, collecting money, paying taxes, and so forth. If you don’t learn to love the boring, aggravating, and stupid parts of your profession and perform them with diligence and care, you will never succeed.
3. If everything is equally important, then nothing is very important.
You hear a lot about details, from “Don’t sweat the details” to “God is in the details.” Both are true, but with a very important explanation: hierarchy. You must decide what is important, and then attend to it first and foremost. Everything is important, yes. But not everything is equally important. A very successful real estate person taught me this. He told me, “Watch King Rat. You’ll get it.”
One of the impressive options in Questia is the availability of online tools that enable users to create footnotes, bibliographical references, and hyperlinking across titles. I cannot overemphasize the importance of such tools that not only recreate the way you would use physical resources but also enhance your experience in using online tools in order to help you maintain a list of resources you accessed. One more additional feature that impressed me was the availability of more than 5000 books in online format. These books are public domain books whose copyright has expired hence are available to read for free in their entirety. No more buying expensive books or looking them up in libraries. You can use all the above mentioned reference tools in these books as well.
