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Back in my faculty days at DeVry, during the Clinton years, students would ask me on a regular basis why they had to take “general education” courses, like mine. They would have preferred to do nothing other than their technical classes, and they weren’t shy about saying so. I told them that their technical skills would get them their first job, but that their analytical and communication skills would get them promoted. If they only ever wanted to work at the help desk, they didn’t need my class. But if they ever wanted to manage the people at the help desk, the stuff I helped them develop would be crucial.

The 30 essays in Presumed Incompetent expose a nasty truth about Academia: it is not above the realities of everyday American life. It, in fact, reproduces and reinforces society’s inequalities, stereotypes, and hierarchies within its own walls.

Dr. Peter Stokes is currently the executive director of postsecondary innovation in the College of Professional Studies at Northeastern University. Many of you probably got to know Peter during his tenure (almost 14 years!) in various leadership roles at Eduventures.

In the United States, college or university is a privilege. It is not a right, it most certainly is not a legal requirement. With their admission, students are invited to join a unique community of scholars and scholarship. Academic integrity is the core component of the expectations we set for students.

I said, "sure, why not?" to something nine years ago, and I'm very glad for it.

A longtime reader writes: "If I start a career in the admin side of higher education, am I heading toward a new ceiling I don't yet see? And what kind of job should I look to start in if I want to be able to grow into positions of greater responsibility as I develop greater skills?"

Amidst all the hype and media coverage related to the just released Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings (2013), it's worth reflecting on just how small of a proportion of the world's universities are captured in this exercise (see below). As I noted last November, the term 'world university rankings' does not reflect the reality of the exercise the rankers are engaged in; they only focus on a minuscule corner of the institutional ecosystem of the world's universities. below). The firms associated with rankings have also normalized the temporal cycle of rankings despite this being an illogical exercise (unless you are interested in selling advertising space in a magazine and on a website).

When we asked people that have been working in higher ed for more than a year for advice to people entering in similar positions to them, we received a wide variety of suggestions. In this post we’ll share what administrators (who represented 36% of the 464 survey respondents, respectively) would advise those just entering a similar role.