Blogs

Our post on “What Surprised You When You First Started Working in Higher Education” (the results of our brief survey) generated a fair number of emails and tweets about the politics in higher education, so we thought we would look into this area a bit more for today’s post.

In Economics we talk about maximizing “utility” subject to a given constraint. For example, a shopper wants to choose the best combination of groceries that can be purchased given their present budget. I thought of this recently, as I recalled a class I fell into in my last days of college. Realizing that tuition had been paid that allowed me to take up to eighteen credits my last semester, and also assuming that I would never again have access to courses in Theology or Philosophy, I decided to take as many of those classes as I could before graduating.

I'm still struggling with whether (how) the teaching power of stories can be used to change people's beliefs and expectations about sustainability. However, in the process of the research which is part of pretty much any struggle I undertake, I came upon a two-sentence passage that's simply too close to perfect not to share. In a heartbeat, it conveys the essence of what a successful story-telling strategem must accomplish -- not how to do it by any means, but how to tell if it's been successful.

Lots of people enabled Lance Armstrong's lies. Why not hear why they believed him?

American Career Institutes, a for-profit higher ed chain that specialized in computer-based career-oriented majors, just closed abruptly. It had campuses in Maryland and Massachusetts, including one in Springfield, which is HCC’s largest feeder city.

I am fascinated by the transition of Blackboard from a one product business (the flagship LMS) to a diversified educational services company - one that offers both multiple platforms (through it purchase of MoodleRooms and Netspot) and a full range of educational consulting services. A key architect of these changes at Blackboard is Katie Blot, who prior to ascending to the role of president of the Education Service division spent 4 years as an SVP in Blackboard Consulting.

Well, I successfully dropped off my son Nick for his first day of college. If you’ve been following my column (and his), you will know that my son was a “high school burnout” who took some time off before college. Discovering that he was bored silly with the minimum wage working world, Nick conceded to apply to a local state school. He moved into a dorm last Sunday and started classes at 8:00 am on Monday (which happens when you register late.)

No other blog I have written for IHE has prompted me to think as deeply as the one the other...