Excellent article about the BS in Higher Education

Well, now and then you stumble over a text that describes your understanding of the world in a way that both makes you happy to realize that what you experience is possible to express but also makes you quite sad when you realize how bad things are.

I have been in academia most of my life and I truly love it. It is a wonderful world of exploration, learning and challenges. Since I was a little kid I wanted to become a professor, now I am one and has been it for a long time. The world I love is however not working the way it should or could.

Christian Smith (professor of sociology at Notre Dame) has written a great article in the Chronicle of Higher Education called "Higher Education is drowning in BS". Smith describes this world I love with all is deficiencies. The text resonates with my own reality.  [I hope you can access the text].

I am, as Smith also writes about himself, by working in the system, supporting the system. I have done well in this system. My career has been good. But almost every day, I (as someone who can to some extent influence the system), think about some of the aspects that Smith mentions in regard to my decisions and actions and I realize that my actions are probably contributing to the increase of BS. Pause for reflection....and then we go again....