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One of the difficulties of promoting economic sustainability at Greenback (or, I suspect, on most US university campuses) is describing what it might look like without seeming to be some sort of pie-eyed socialist. Given the overwhelmingly prevalent civil religion of consumer capitalism and the de facto dominance of Chicago School neoliberalism, it's challenging to try to explain to that our economic system is nothing Adam Smith would recognize nor particularly approve, and that during the most recent generation when the USA was really on the economic upswing (think 1945 - 1975) the rules were entirely different than what we now take for granted.

I have read three articles this morning. NYT's Thomas Friedman's "Come the Revolution," and the top two articles in IHE, "Rethinking the Humanities" and "Outsourcing On Line Coaches." To use a phrase that was a good one until the book with the same name made it hackneyed, higher education is undoubtedly at a tipping point. Not even in idyllic Ithaca can I or anyone else pretend that serious and enduring change is upon us, from for-profit education in its myriad forms to new programs for Ph.D.s and worthwhile venture described in this article.

"In five years, this will be a huge industry." Thomas Friedman is a little more sure of this than he should be. Indeed his column this morning is awfully close to advertising copy for Coursera and other MOOCs - like Udemy, the MOOC through which UD teaches her series of lectures on poetry. But it's now clear that American universities ought to pay attention to the rapidity with which this technology is turning not only into the mildly interactive worldwide sorts of lectures that UD offers, but a fully interactive, credentialed, even job-searching phenomenon.

Navigating the internet as a doctoral candidate becomes a bit more difficult than it did for some of our straight-to-work peers. Seven-ish years in school provides for a lot of time for status updates that might offend or alienate a future employer, and cleaning up a Facebook profile can involve more than merely taking down a couple of photos from the undergrad years. The arrested development of graduate education often leaves us feeling like we can live large on the internet, up until the moment when those seven years of tweets suddenly become a topic in an employment interview. As a result, acting professional on personal social networks seems to be an often elusive goal for doctoral students, and I have watched peers struggle after mis-judging their abilities to network, sometimes with professionally damaging consequences.

Do you like being an academic editor? Honestly, I have many important reasons for a ‘no’ answer.

Internships are a mixed blessing. At their best, they offer valuable exposure to the work world, and can give students both experience and a sense of whether the field they think they want is really for them. (A well-timed internship in college taught me that I didn’t actually want to be a lawyer.) Ideally, they can help students blend the real world with theory in a way that enriches both.

Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and technology and media investor, is getting some buzz around the web for his blog post "The Coming Meltdown in College Education & Why the Economy Won't Get Better Any Time Soon".

A friend of mine has pointed out repeatedly that, while Environmental Studies graduates can talk about the environment, Environmental Science graduates can actually do something. (Of course, the guy's an Environmental Science professor. No surprise, there.)