Predatory Academic Journals; College Sports Facilities; Rahm Emanuel Not Running Again

On the 21st: Rahm Emanuel's surprise announcement that he will not seek a third term as Mayor of Chicago. Plus, we take a look at the "arms race" in higher education sports facilities. And, we learn about predatory publishers that make millions off of fake academic journals—which will often publish just about anything that gets submitted. 

Professors and scholars spend a lot of time trying to get their articles and studies published in academic journals. And members of the public trust that those academic journals represent a stamp of approval.

But it turns out that hundreds of academic journals are put out by companies that will publish almost anything that gets submitted. These companies make millions of dollars from both fake journals, and fake academic conferences.

Svea Eckert has been investigating these companies. She joined us from Hamburg, Germany where she’s an investigative journalist mainly covering technology for ARD, Germany’s largest public broadcaster. We also spoke with Chris Sumner, who joined us from London, where he's co-founder and research director with the Online Privacy Foundation. Finally, in our Urbana studios was Kelli Trei, a biosciences librarian and an assistant professor at the University of Illinois. 

Plus—

College football season is upon us! And the U of I had a winning start to their season against Kent State on Saturday.

In late 2017, the University of Illinois announced that their athletic department would receive $300 million from the university’s “With Illinois” fundraising initiative. $79.2 million of that money will go towards a new football practice facility slated to open in 2019.

Northwestern University is one of the latest schools to enter the athletic facilities “arms race” with a new, $270 million lakefront athletics facility. Even though just a few people end up using those athletic facilities, they’re a big reason why people give money to universities.

We spoke with Noah Drezner. Noah is an associate professor of higher education at Columbia University, along with Teddy Greenstein, a sports writer for the Chicago Tribune.

But first—

It’s been just 24 hours since Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel shocked the political establishment by announcing he won’t run for a third term in office. Mayor Emanuel had already raised more than $10 million for his run.

What does this mean for the rest of Illinois - especially when it comes to projects like bringing the Amazon HQ2 to Chicago? WBEZ’s investigative reporter Dan Mihalopoulos joined us from Chicago.