Blogs

Any observer of higher education in Africa would immediately realize that African universities, with the exception of a handful, stand no chance of appearing under the THE Rankings; or for that matter under other global university rankings that use criteria with a heavy bias on research, publications in international refereed journals and citations. African universities have to cope with huge student enrolment with limited financial and physical resources. They are short of academic staff, a large proportion of whom do not have a PhD. Not surprisingly, their research output and performance in postgraduate education are poor. It is clear that in the rankings race, they are playing on a non-level field.

Given the critical need for change in American higher education, many schools would gain a strategic advantage if they genuinely provide connections between educating for the liberal arts and the professions.

With its headquarters in the Boulder area and many a national conference in Denver, Colorado is EDUCAUSE country! It is great to be back here for another stunning national convention!

Last Monday, Hurricane Sandy was still being spoken of in the mainstream media as a threat to the East Coast. By late Tuesday, the vocabulary had changed -- Sandy was a "super-storm", flooding was pervasive and (for too many) fatal, and climate change was here and now. Denialists may not have changed their tunes all that much, but (at least in my perception) the tide (sorry about that, folks) of public climate discourse in North America had turned. The operative phrase seemed to be "new normal". Nobody who used it was smiling.

It is now Monday morning and we are resuming classes today. The campus has been very fortunate. Our loss of power was limited and of short duration and the campus damage was mostly limited to trees with very little other damage. Long Island’s damage was extensive with reports of 100,000 homes lost and almost 300,000 homes still without power 5 days later. The devastation on the north shore and south shore of the Island was massive.

Colleges and universities agree that student success is their central focus. But what important factors contribute to student success? An under-emphasized contributor is student campus work.

The alternative academic career path has recently caught a lot of attention from all angles of academia, in part because of the state of the job market for PhDs and in part because more and more alternative academics are talking about their career paths. However, this does not mean that many in academia know what an alternative academic career entails, especially when oftentimes alternative academics are filed under “staff” or “admin.”

It seems we may have another big, unpredictable storm close to home – MOOCs. They have been getting a lot of press this year, including another recent article from the New York Times.