Blogs

Dear Guidance Counselors, This is the time of year when panicked seniors who either didn’t get into the colleges they wanted, or can’t afford the colleges they wanted, are looking for options.

Over the next 5 years Netflix plans to spend about $185 million on the creation of original programming. The first show, Lilyhammer, has been launched - and 4 more are in the pipeline for this year. They are: House of Cards, Hemlock Grove, Orange Is the New Black, and a reboot of Arrested Development. Subscribers will be able to stream the whole season at anytime, bypassing the traditional episode-by-episode release schedule. Will for-profit higher ed follow the Netflix path?

Magazines are rarely something that I purchase when I'm at home in Boston. However, my tune changes when I'm in an airport. Maybe it's because I'm tired of working while in-flight or perhaps my brain needs something to chew on at elevation. Lately, there are a select few titles that have made their way into my indestructible backpack.

Over the years I have blogged about my son Nick and his dilemmas in school, which began when he was “kicked out” of a Montessori program at age three for behavior that the director described as “autistic.” We rushed to a doctor for an assessment, but Nick's autism tests were largely negative. We removed Nick from Montessori and enrolled him in a more structured public school program.

Since last week’s post, I’ve been thinking a lot about business models.

Executives in the Argentina's leading technology companies underscore the lack of engineers, particularly in some specialties such as electrical, electronics, civil, chemical, petroleum and mining engineering and the computer sciences. Employers say that it can take up to three months to fill a position and that a strong competition exists to attract the best graduates. Moreover, as a consequence of the lack of professionals in fields such as computing, employers hire advanced students. One negative side-effect of this practice is an increased dropout rate during the last two years of the undergraduate degree courses.

Turns out that someone has always felt that students are "unteachable."

How is it that a multimillion dollar grant offered to an underfunded community college system can make a minimal difference on the ground? The answer is in the math.