Moving Day -- Update Your Bookmarks!

Differences & Repetitions is moving! After five years here on Blogger, I've decided to relocate the site to its own unique, stand-alone address. Please update your bookmarks and RSS feeds. You can find the new Differences & Repetitions at:

http://www.diffandrep.org/

Why the move? I began D&R on Blogger because, back in 2005, I knew next to nothing about blogging, html, and the like. It seemed like the quickest, most accessible platform from which the uninitiated could set up a blog and begin writing. Since then I've become better acquainted with the world of blogging, especially with the open source community that's grown up around content management systems like WordPress and Drupal. The new D&R is powered by the former, which I find to be more feature-rich compared to Google's proprietary Blogger platform.

The other impetus for the move was a change that happened to D&R's companion site, the Differences & Repetitions Wiki. At some point the folks over at Wikidot, which hosts D&R^W, began placing ads on my pages. I understand their reasons for doing so. How else are they supposed to pay the bills? Nevertheless, I saw the involuntary placement of advertising on the site as incommensurate my own values, not to mention what I write about academically. Instead of paying Wikidot for a premium site unsupported by ads, I decided it would be preferable to begin an all new wiki as a sub-directory within a brand new D&R. I'm hoping to launch the new D&R^W within a couple of weeks, once the blog is even more fully up and running.

In case you're wondering, I'm not starting the Differences & Repetitions blog over from scratch. I've imported all of this site's posts and comments to the new D&R, so, content-wise, you'll find there pretty much what you see here. I'm planning to shut off the comments feature here in about a week, which effectively will mark this iteration of D&R's transition to a legacy site. This will be my last post hosted on Blogger.

Thanks for five wonderful years of reading, sharing, commenting on, and tweeting about my posts here on (the old) D&R. I hope that you'll follow me over to the new D&R, where we can continue the conversation.

Moving Day -- Update Your Bookmarks!

Higher Education: Let the Free Market Reign!

Great news for all of my readers who despise profligate government spending! My buddy Kembrew McLeod published a thought-provoking article in Tuesday's edition of the Huffington Post called, "A Modest Free Market Proposal for Higher Education Reform." In it, Kembrew outlines a compelling vision for ending the financial bloat that's endemic to today's public universities.

Among his proposals, he calls for corporate sponsorship of classes. Personally I'm looking forward to the day when the syllabus for my Introduction to Media class, which enrolls 250-plus students every fall, can finally say, "brought to you by the Walt Disney Company." Kembrew also suggests that undergraduates be given the green light to utilize paid-for research assistance companies, which makes a good deal of sense, really, for how else are we to grow the economy in tough financial times? My favorite idea of his, though, is to incentivize cheap graduate student teaching. Soon-to-be PhDs, Kembrew writes, ought to be able to outsource their doctoral dissertations:

By no longer having to conduct original research themselves, graduate students will have more hours to spend in the classroom as adjunct instructors. Let's do the math. PhD-Dissertations.com charges $17.00 per page, which adds up to $3,400 for a 200-page dissertation (plus, their website states that, "A discount of 10% applies to orders of 75+ pages!"). Although this might seem like a lot of money, consider the fact that most colleges pay adjuncts roughly the same, between $3,000 and $4,000, for each course taught per semester. Therefore, by just adding one extra course to his or her roster, a graduate student can pay for an entire dissertation in less than one academic year--while at the same time serving the university's undergraduate teaching needs. Once this new generation of scholar/project managers enters the profession, there will be no more need for traditional professors.

Since I'm an overpaid university professor who's contributing to all the bloat, I'll happily step aside to let someone with a bachelors or masters degree do my job for, say, seven or eight bucks an hour. But don't worry about me. I'll be lapping it up over at PhD-Dissertations.com, where at long last I can put my skills and experience to some real use.

Higher Education: Let the Free Market Reign!