Blogs

We need to rethink the fair use doctrine by adding transformative works as they have been defined in United States case law to the existing four factors that are already codified, and expand its overall usage, especially in the area of not-for-profit educational endeavors.

Connecticut’s new centralized higher education system office has apparently been making either offers or threats -- there’s some dispute, and I have no inside information on it -- to community college presidents. As I understand it, the legislature passed a law last year limiting remedial coursework to a single semester. Apparently, some campuses have balked, so the system office has let the presidents know that if they feel unable to comply, they are welcome to leave.

When I graduated in March last year, I expected to enjoy the pomp of the ceremony, the sumptuous and faintly ridiculous robes and hat of formal academic dress, and the joy of receiving my doctoral degree with my parents in the audience. And I did enjoy all of this, but what surprised me was my pleasure at being able to call myself Dr Duff. I have a title which is absolutely gender neutral, and it reflects the decade’s worth of hard work which went into my university education. But I never expected to insist that others use my title, and I still feel slightly odd calling myself Dr Duff.

The idea to use NPR as model for how higher ed could change is not my own. I heard the analogy of how higher ed could evolve to mimic the NPR model from a colleague at a conference, and the idea has stuck in my head. (Perhaps you have heard the analogy before?).

Last weekend I was able to catch up with several Mama Phd friends who live in New York City. Many of these women are my age, but have (smartly) waited to have children until their careers/degrees/relationships are more established. Two friends have several tots under ten running around while seeking tenure, publishing books and chairing departments. I was impressed by how these friends still manage to be turned on by new ideas as much as by their partners. Indeed, many of these friends have taken motherhood out of their homes and into their research, art and service work.

Teaching a class in Strategic Management and consulting in this area to colleges and universities and companies in the higher education space, I’m asked a lot about various tools and techniques that can be effective in diagnosing problems and generating ideas/solutions, and the answer is that there are many. Perhaps too many.

Exploring an issue raised in the comments to the first post: the question of faculty-authored textbooks.

Last week a colleague at Cornell asked me to give a talk to his class on intellectual property. I found myself explaining the historical dynamics behind the American Revolution, Constitution and a free-market political economy. "Unless you were a pirate," I said, "you could not trade anywhere in the world from England without a license." Another quote: "The first law to establish exclusive rights, a monopoly in copyright, dates back to 1557 when Elizabeth I squelched counterfeiters use the new technology, the printing press, to manufacture fraudulent documents for everything, including Royal charters to trade.