From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets,
the name of the Lord is to be praised.
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly[a] with your God.
8 Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves,
for the rights of all who are destitute.
9 Speak up and judge fairly;
defend the rights of the poor and needy.
Fear of man will prove to be a snare,
but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe.
The waiting game — from college-inside.beehiiv.com by Charlotte West
College Inside breaks down the numbers from a first-of-its kind report on higher education in Illinois prisons.
For every person enrolled in higher education at Illinois prisons, someone else is waiting for their turn, according to new state data that reveals a system where access to college depends largely on where someone is incarcerated.
Right now, roughly 2,000 people in Illinois prisons are participating in higher education programs, according to a report released at the beginning of September. That’s about 1 out of every 15 people incarcerated in the state. At the same time, though, another 2,000 are stuck on waiting lists to get into classes because there’s not enough programming available.
Another 700 people on supervised release — Illinois’ version of parole — are also enrolled in higher education, per the report. Those numbers include enrollment in both college classes, and career and technical education.
In Rural Wisconsin, Pat Perry Connects the Various Forces That Shape Our World — from thisiscolossal.com by Pat Perry & Grace Ebert
To conceptualize the work, the collective helped to contact and secure permissions from the teachers pictured, and with the exception of the woman in the red floral garment at the bottom of the piece—she’s the artist’s mother and a retired educator—all work in the area. And why teachers? Perry explains:
Day after day, people find purpose. They wake up early, show up with intention, and try to make sense of things—not just for themselves, but also for others. Teachers do this every day. Not for recognition, and rarely for much pay. It’s a repetitive act of maintenance that holds things together. Choosing to shoulder that task, even while standing at the edge of something vast and indifferent, is a quiet act of defiance. Amidst overwhelmingness and uncontrollableness and unanswerableness, teachers—and all custodians of human affairs—keep meaning in the world by steadily and stubbornly tending to it.
While you’re out there, also see:
Song Dong’s Monumental Installations Mirror Memories, Globalization, and Impermanence — from thisiscolossal.com by Song Dong and Kate Mothes
Higher ed’s ‘hunker-down mindset’ — from open-campus-dispatch.beehiiv.com by Colleen Murphy
A tight housing market and a fragile job market mean those working in higher ed have fewer options than ever.
Faculty and administrators could be just as constrained by the golden handcuffs of a 2% interest rate as everybody else. That makes them less likely to move for a new job, Kelchen said, especially since they’re unlikely to get the type of salary increase they’d need to offset more pricey mortgage payments. Plus, even finding an affordable house in the first place could be a challenge right now.
All of this contributes to what Kelchen called a “hunker-down mindset” in higher ed.
“Even if the institutions are giving out pay raises, the pay raises aren’t matching housing costs,” Kelchen said. “And then that creates a pressure to stay.”
While that might seem like a “first-world problem,” it also affects college and university staff members, Kelchen told me. Often the only way for staff members to make more money is to move universities — there aren’t the same in-house growth opportunities as there are for faculty. But that’s easier said than done.
A Journalist’s Toolkit for the AI Era — from wondertools.substack.com by Jeremy Caplan and Joe Amditis
A guest expert shares his practical tools
As news organizations scramble to update their digital toolkits, I invited one of the most tech savvy journalism advisors I know to share his guidance.
In the guest post below, Joe Amditis shares a bunch of useful resources. A former CUNY student of mine, Joe now serves as associate director of operations at the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University.
