“Ultra-liberal Reed College in Oregon”? Wait, wait, don’t tell me …

“Ultra-liberal Reed College in Oregon is doing away with textbooks” is exactly how humorist P.J. O’Rourke described us when he started his yarn on yesterday’s (Nov 15, 2008) Bluff the Listener segment on NPR’s news-comedy show, Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. His fantasy (perhaps shared by more than a few students and professors?) featured Reed getting rid of all textbooks in order to fight “the unregulated hegemony of textbook publishers” and relying on bogus web sites and web calculators to support all student work. The listener turned out to be pretty savvy and didn’t buy the story. To hear the entire segment, go to This Week’s Show and select Bluff the Listener (runs 6:24). Or, to save time, you can jump in at 3:33 and listen O’Rourke’s tale of over-enthusiastic web-based education.