Blogs

On the weekend of June 15th, I will be attending the fifth THATCamp Prime. What is THATCamp? Founded by graduate students at the history department at George Mason University in 2008, THAT stands for 'the humanities and technology'. It is an 'unconference' in that the structure and agenda is decided on-site on the first day of the conference itself. No papers. No panels.

Remember when we all thought that the Internet would cause the car dealership to disappear? We'd all buy our cars online. We'd tell our grandchildren about the days when buying a car meant going to a "car dealership" and spending time with a "car salesperson". Life would be so sweet when car buying became a virtual, friction free experience.

Earlier this week, I sat through an excellent presentation on social media. And in terms of my skill set in this area, I consider myself to be an effective communicator. I was a very early adopter of email. I enjoy using PowerPoint. I blog on a regular basis. In addition, I text message regularly; I Google often; and I Iook at various YouTube postings relatively often. I also have a Facebook page that I hardly ever look at and a LinkedIn page that I look at occasionally. After the presentation, I have come to the conclusion that this is not good enough and that I need to upgrade my social media skills.

More modern higher education and innovation systems alone would not drive economic competitiveness. There is a wide, although gradual bridging of the East/West gap related to a multitude of factors including tax systems, legal systems and transportation infrastructure. Knowledge production in universities in the region cannot be assessed in isolation from the larger economic environment. Higher education institutions cannot be held solely responsible for low economic competitiveness, and higher education reforms cannot be expected to bear economic results as quickly as policymakers in the region expect.

I have been following with interest the comments section of the recent New York Times article on the "cupcake wars," which explores the tensions among PTA parents in neighborhoods that are gentrifying.

What’s New at UVenus: If you missed the recent #femlead Twitter chat on Mentorship, led by Brenda Bethman, you can find the transcript here.

To what degree is academic freedom being geographically unsettled – deterritorialized, more accurately – in the context of the globalization of higher education? This was one of the issues I was asked about a few days ago when I spoke to a class of New York-based Columbia University students about the globalization of higher education, with a brief case study about Singapore’s global higher education hub development agenda.

Each month, the writers at University of Venus share their answers to a question we pose for the higher education sector. This month’s question comes to us from Melonie Fullick: What is your least favourite stereotype about academic work?