Blogs

Things aren't looking good for public higher education in two different countries. I'm not happy about it.

If you haven't had a chance to read about Noodle's acquisition of the Lore, please go check out Doug Lederman's piece from 3/15. Before we get to our questions for Noodle's founder and chairman John Katzman , I think we should first congratulate Joseph Cohen and his partners and colleagues at Lore. We need more people like the Lore founders to start edtech businesses.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines quicksand as “sand readily yielding to pressure; especially : a deep mass of loose sand mixed with water into which heavy objects readily sink.” In the movies, some horrid interloper or intrepid explorer ends up in quicksand and starts to sink fast in the murky mess. Panic sets in. Arms flail! Curses are said! Death is imminent. A welcome savior comes to rescue you. Or you die in the muck. The end.

After nearly 12 years living in the United States, I continue to be perplexed by this country. As I said when acting as a respondent to Anya Kamenetz at ED Talks Wisconsin last Friday night, the US is an amazing place when it it comes to unleashing and scaling up a multiplicity of innovations related to higher education.

Comprehensive reforms of Polish higher education and research systems started in 2010-2011. Their major part was the 2010 law on a new national research council called the “National Science Centre” (NCN). The rationale behind its establishment was twofold: to leave decisions about research funding for fundamental research to the academic community and to increase the competition for research funding. The competitive funding made available through the NCN will gradually lead to the emergence of a new class of Polish research-intensive universities.

For a university to fully fulfill its mission, it needs to be inextricably interwoven with the community, both the internal community and the surrounding community. Some universities pay limited attention to their surroundings but I have always been proud of Hofstra’s history of embracing the community in ways that clearly meet important needs.

Jill Filipovic's recent Guardian column on the politics of changing one's name on marrying drew a strong response, both in the comments to the article and in other blog posts. Many commenters seemed to feel accused of being bad feminists if they chose to change their names, and some of the anti-change writers did sound the teensiest bit judgmental of their more traditional (in US terms) sisters.

It'll take less time than it would to eat one of those artisan mini-cupcakes they had outside the bookfair entrance.