Danny Crichton

Originally published in the Stanford Daily as part of a column series known as Adventures in Academia that explored issues related to the Stanford University community.

They represent forty percent of today's college graduates (and only 44% of incoming students). They will soon hold a minority of the nation's jobs - a development that has already taken place in many urban cities. Future job growth is taking place in health care and education - not construction.

Men are living in a world far different from the one that existed just a few decades ago. The nation has finally moved toward a more equal coexistence of the genders, but in the process, it has transformed gender roles. From the breadwinner of the family to the parent who tucks in the kids at night, roles are amorphous like they have never been before.

Unfortunately, Stanford and most universities do not provide an outlet to ask questions from a male perspective. We have six community centers on campus, but none of them have the defined mission to address the issues that men are likely to face. In response, I urge Stanford to establish a male community center.

According to Stanford's Undergraduate Life page, "Stanford Community Centers provide a gateway to intellectual, cultural and leadership opportunities for all Stanford students." In pursuit of these missions, community centers hold programming events and provide advising resources to ask questions related to different identified groups.

These centers are not zero sum. The existence of another community center should only enhance current ones by covering another demographic group (and a large one at that). The beauty of the community centers is their synergistic nature, and a male community center will not undermine this system.

A male community center would enhance the university community first and

Originally published in the Stanford Daily as part of a column series known as Adventures in Academia that explored issues related to the Stanford University community.

A few years ago during those quaint stock market boom years, there was a debate in Congress over the value of elite college institutions in America. Senator Charles Grassley, the chair and later ranking minority leader of the Senate Finance Committee, attacked well-endowed schools like Stanford who bring in enormous income from fundraising and investments yet continue to aggressively raise tuition.

During that time, he brought into clarity an important question that an institution like Stanford must continually answer: how well are we serving the public?

For Stanford, there has been an obligation to assist the public interest from our very founding. As part of the founding grant, Stanford's mission is "… to promote the public welfare by exercising an influence in behalf of humanity and civilization." Thus, the question posed goes directly to the core mission of the university.

Stanford is considered a non-profit educational institution, and thus does not pay taxes on endowment income or alumni donations that would amount to millions of dollars lost per year. The university also receives federal research grants totaling a little less than a billion dollars per year. These enormous subsidies make Stanford accountable to the public.

The legitimacy of the question is clear, but how to measure public interest is not. A complex institution like a university cannot be pigeonholed into a couple of metrics, regardless of what the editors of U.S. News would have us believe. A further question to ask is whether Stanford must excel in every area with regard to the public interest, or whether it can excel at some and not others.

Evaluating Stanford by its

Originally published in the Stanford Daily as part of a column series known as Adventures in Academia that explored issues related to the Stanford University community.

Last week, I dropped my first class at Stanford, bringing myself down from twenty to my new record low of fifteen units. Since then, I have done something that I have not done since arriving at Stanford two years ago: I read a book not required for class.

I also ran for the first time since early September. I had a wonderful time considering my graduate school options, debating honors thesis topics, and had time to read the textbook for class. I even started to sleep more - almost have the average up to six hours. I have not felt so stress-free since I had a full-time job.

Shortly after, I had a conversation with a friend of mine from freshman year, a computer science major. He looked a little haggard when I ran into him, and for good reason. He was completing two problem sets, a written response paper and a take-home midterm, all for a single class. He was averaging 3-4 hours of sleep a night.

Every day does not bring such a delicious schadenfreude moment, so I talked about all the things I had been doing since dropping that one class. He responded with a line that I have now heard from three different people this week: "Danny, I wish I had time to think."

According to people wiser than me, college is one of the most formative times in a person's life. The openness of campus, the wealth of resources, the diversity of opinions and thought can shape the thinking of individuals for their entire lives. What happens, though, when there simply is no

Originally published in the Stanford Daily as part of a column series known as Adventures in Academia that explored issues related to the Stanford University community.

The leaves are turning colors, and the rain has already begun to fall. It is autumn again at Stanford, and that means another admissions season is about to begin for seniors not quite ready to move on to the "working" world.

One of the degrees available is the doctor of philosophy, or PhD, commonly the highest degree attainable in a field. The degree uniquely forces its candidates to become world experts on a highly defined subject. There is also a darker side to this degree that few universities wish to discuss: the PhD is a disaster, and little evidence exists that the situation will improve in the near term.

Last week, I wrote a column deploring the trend of America's best students leaving careers of invention and discovery for careers in consulting. An element underlining the problem is that strong candidates for PhD programs are choosing to pursue other options instead of more education. Knowingly or not, these students are making the right decision today.

After spending years in a doctorate program, graduates are offered few options on the academic job market. The doctorate is a research degree that prepares its candidates exclusively for research - a profession that takes place in few institutions outside of academia. Budget cuts have reduced the number of tenure-line positions, limiting potential positions to record lows.

The number of open positions for history doctorate holders, for example, is almost one for every five graduates, a trend seen across departments in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. Even worse, once a graduate has failed at finding a position, search committees will often ignore that person

Originally published in the Stanford Daily as part of a column series known as Adventures in Academia that explored issues related to the Stanford University community.

Last week's hubbub over the Nobel Peace Prize nearly shrouded a far more interesting story about the Nobel Prize in Physics. The prize this year was awarded to three scientists for their research into CCD sensors - the device that underlies most digital cameras.

Two of the three researchers who made the discovery worked at Bell Labs, one of the premier basic research institutions in the country. Or at least it was. The storied history of the labs, including its now seven Nobel Prize wins, ended last year when parent company Alcatel-Lucent decided to shut them down.

The story of Bell Labs is a truly American one about the technological greatness of the past discarded in the drive for profit. Unfortunately, one needs to look no further than the aspirations of Stanford students to see that this disappointing trend will not be disappearing.

Ask graduates (or even prospective freshman) about their dream job, and a depressing truth becomes evident: the most desired positions are in finance and management consulting. Even in the wake of the largest economic meltdown in decades, students throng for industries that advise, rather than create.

The hard numbers are difficult to refute at peer institutions as well. At Princeton, 60% of graduates who find full-time employment will go into these industries. At MIT, 40% do the same, although neither number accounts for those students who pursue higher degrees before entering these industries.

Bill Gates recognized the allure of these industries, and attempted to draw a wider cross-section of America into science and technology through scholarship grants. Yet, many of those at Stanford receiving grants are giving up

Originally published in the Stanford Daily as part of a column series known as Adventures in Academia that explored issues related to the Stanford University community.

Last week's announcement that Chicago had failed in its bid for the 2016 Olympics was the latest in a series of missteps by the new Obama administration. As pessimism sinks in and unemployment inches upward, what was the exuberant candidate of 2008 has now turned into the lugubrious president of 2009. Obama has met the reality of the modern political world. How to proceed from here is his choice.

Flashback to last year. For those on campus, there was an electricity that pervaded the entire campus that is only seen after beating USC in football. Students, even those who rarely follow politics, were conversing on the issues of the day and schlepping all the way to Nevada and Florida to make their voice heard.

Although there was a hollowness on Election Day in the face of Prop 8's success, a well-attended election party at the CoHo capped an exciting campaign. That excitement remained palpable in January when Obama was inaugurated. Even the forgettable, early-morning speech could not deter those watching - or those who secured a ticket to the event - from celebrating a momentous day in American political history.

Seven months later, all the energy and passion on display during the campaign has petered out. Left-wing Democrats complain (almost bitterly) over forgotten promises and disappointing decisions while the center-left anxiously looks ahead to an increasingly gloomy 2010 campaign. Right now, Obama has a critical choice before him: will he be the candidate of his campaign or the president of the last seven months?

If he chooses the former, then he has a lot of work to do. The first

Originally published in the Stanford Daily as part of a column series known as Adventures in Academia that explored issues related to the Stanford University community.

There is nothing quite like the ecstasy that follows the eleventh-hour discovery of the perfect source for one's research paper. Reading the abstract, everything starts to fit, and this capstone citation will end the drafting process after days of weaving different sources. Then, that ecstasy is suddenly replaced with virulent anger as the screen announces that access can be bought for a measly $35.

Stanford University is gifted to have the resources to purchase thousands of journal subscriptions. Nonetheless, no budget, however large, can provide access to the immense number of published journals. Invariably, a critical article is not accessible by researchers at this school. As library budgets are cut nationwide due to the economic recession, it is time for universities to rethink the academic publishing model. The answer lies in open access journal articles.

This need was answered last week by a consortium of schools calling itself the Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity. A mouthful of a title, but one with a very simple goal: to place open-access publishers on an equal footing with their more common subscription-based competitors.

The five schools that joined the compact are Harvard, Dartmouth, Cornell, MIT and our rivals across the Bay, Berkeley. Stanford's name is quite conspicuously absent from this list. Our school has been one of the leaders of this movement for many years, and thus, it is discouraging to see that other schools are carrying the torch for this necessary push.

To understand the systemic problems of journal publishing, we need to look at some of the policies and economics that prevent research articles from being freely distributed.

First,

Originally published in the Stanford Daily as part of a column series known as Adventures in Academia that explored issues related to the Stanford University community.

It has not been a pleasant year for the country, and higher education has not been spared. Stanford has weathered the downturn in the global economy better than most, but it is not immune to the major challenges in academia that have been percolating beneath the surface. This is the year the old rulebook is thrown out.

Ranking after ranking indicates that the American higher education system remains second to none. Yet no time in recent memory has the mission of the university been put under so much strain.

Money is one problem. While states have dramatically increased funding for higher education over the last few decades, their budgets have not matched the growth of institutions. Private universities like Stanford rely on money from their endowments and income from government-sponsored research projects - money that has become scarcer even before the current recession (stimulus funding excepted).

Money, though, is only the first issue. Entire disciplines are facing a cathartic moment, most notably economics. After years of developing that social science with precise mathematical laws of the market, economists are faced with a world that few believed was even possible but three years ago. How much of the literature needs to be reworked, or worse, thrown out entirely?

These two failures come at a time when the fundamental unit of the academy - tenure - is under fire from administrators and state legislatures. At a basic level, tenure provides the security underpinning academic freedom. Yet fewer faculty members are making it to the tenure-track - damaging innovation and risking future advances in all fields.

These are merely a few of the front-burner issues that are currently