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Friday Fragments
From the “other duties as assigned” file: yesterday I had to go in for a medical procedure. In the course of making small talk with the tech, she mentioned that her daughter is looking at colleges, but they’re both worried about student loans. I mentioned where I work, and for the next half hour, the conversation was all about transfer, comparative tuition levels, student loans, and the difficulty for new grads who can’t find jobs but have huge loans to pay off. All of this during the procedure.
Coase and Carey: Be Careful What You Wish For
I’ve been a fan of Kevin Carey’s for some time. He gets a lot right, and even when he’s off, he’s interesting. This week he's true to form.
Dads
One of the reasons I like President Obama is that he’s clearly a Dad. I don’t just mean that he has children; I mean that he’s obviously an involved parent. (If you haven’t seen the video of the two-year-old at the Medal of Honor ceremony, check it out. Obama responded as a seasoned parent would.)
Ask the Administrator: What Do Transfer Students Want?
I need some help from my wise and worldly readers on this one. A longtime reader writes: Do you know of any data, reporting, etc, on the information-seeking habits of transfer students when looking at four-year colleges? I would make a guess that some things are the same, but if there are differences, then we should be taking them into account.
Ecosystems
The last time I wrote about Sandy Shugart, I gave him a bit of a hard time. Based on his essay last week, I regret that. It’s a wonderful piece, well worth reading. It’s about the “completion agenda,” and the useful and destructive ways that it can be interpreted.
MOOCs and Clinicals
The dean of the Health division -- which includes nursing -- and I took a field trip to a local health care provider to talk about working together to give nursing students some exposure to what goes on there. These wouldn’t be full-fledged clinical placements -- we already have those -- but a sort of structured introduction to a part of the health care system that isn’t always top-of-mind for nursing students.
Watching the Skies
Apparently, New England is in line for a “repent your sins” snowstorm on Friday. I know this because I heard it from at least a dozen different people on campus. Then again from the kids.
Thoughts on the For-Profit Crackdown
For-profit colleges are having a rough go of it these days. Just this week, Everest College (a branch of Corinthian Colleges) was forced to shut down operations in Milwaukee after only two years, during which it burned through two presidents. In my own state, Attorney General Coakley has announced a broader investigation into various for-profit providers in the wake of the abrupt closure of American Career Institutes.